Anna Eva Fay Pingree (March 31, 1851 – May 12, 1927) was a famous medium and stage mentalist of the twentieth century.
[4] In the early 1870s the American stage mentalist Washington Irving Bishop was the manager of Fay's spiritualist acts, but in 1876 exposed her trick methods to the media.
Psychical researchers pointed out that Fay could have used other parts of her body or a resistance coil to maintain the electric current intact whilst her hands could be free to produce the phenomena during the experiment.
[18] Fay told Houdini the trick she had used on the Crookes galvanometer test: she gripped one handle of the battery beneath her knee joint, keeping the circuit unbroken, leaving one hand free.
[19] Magic historian Barry Wiley suggested that Fay had beaten the galvanometer tests by working with a secret accomplice Charles Henry Gimingham (1853–90), an assistant of Crookes who had built the experimental apparatus.