Following last week’s post, we found this item which explains that ventriloquism may have been the means by which the trick was achieved.
“The Double-sighted phenomenon. – We lately copied, from a London paper, a paragraph giving an account of a boy now exhibiting, who, it was stated, described the legend, &c. on a piece of coin, although his back was turned to it, and performed several other similar wonders. A correspondent suggests that then whole, in all probability, is a juggle, and that the deceit is accomplished by the father of the boy being a ventriloquist, and that the answers were given by him in such a way as to cause it to be believed that they came from the boy. This solution (which, we observe, has also been given in a London journal), is extremely probable. We have, however, never ourselves had the good fortune to hear any professor of ventriloquism so expert in his art as to be able to deceive a large body of persons in the way stated. It is, nevertheless, the most reasonable mode of accounting for the wonder in question.”
The Stamford Mercury, 2 December, 1831.