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E.D. Davies, a.k.a. "Evil Dan" or "Enemy of the Dwarfs"
Davies was indeed the premier ventriloquist of the world in
the early 1860's.
But his fame was based on a perverse facade. Instead of
ventriloquist's dummies he used a small family of midgets to
actually speak the purportedly "thrown" words themselves.
Davies brought the poor wretches into servitude after
winning them on a riverboat gambling trip.
The cruel persecution was exposed in 1866 when the family
escaped and the father, one Silas Smalltower, wrote a book
about the experience.
The story really took off when it was serialized in the
influential London Pigeoner's Gazette, although it was
somewhat sensationalized when the paper insisted on changing
the title from "Sitting on a Tyrant's Knee", to "Boy! Was I
a Dummy!"
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