Fancy a quick look at some late Victorian spiritualist merchandising? Of course you do. Its tat, but OLD tat, the best kind. It’s rare that I find a bit of spiritualist history that I can feasibly obtain and hold in my own hands, but this time, we’re onto a good ‘un.

In the late 19th century, two fields really took off – personal merchandising and token collecting. The spiritualist wave had been rising since the late 1840s and was about to crest with a worldwide network of psychic superstars. One such prominent medium who combined the two was Anna Eva Fay; a renowned spiritualist and clairvoyant, she would become a mainstay of psychic circles and a key figure in the growing fields of mind reading and dream interpretation.

Before we look at these tokens, who was Anna Eva Fay? Anna Eva Fay was born Ann Eliza Heathman in Southington, Ohio on 31st March 1851. She had no involvement in mystical fields until her marriage to the medium Henry Melville Cummings (Fay was his stage name), who promptly indoctrinated Ann into the touring medium lifestyle and the necessity of stage names. Initially billed as Annie Fay, she quickly began work as a stage medium, touring gatherings and theatres across America, astounding audiences with her psychic abilities and demonstrations of other-worldly powers. The public were smitten, and she was often billed under the heading of ‘The Indescribable Phenomenon.’

However, for all of Fay’s devoted fans, there were detractors, magicians and irate sceptics ready to knock her from her pedestal. And it was pretty well warranted. Anna Eva Fay was exposed as a fraud throughout her professional life, but each time she simply returned with a new skill, a new audience or a new claim and managed to continue working as a medium up to her retirement in the 1920s.

She would often send many accomplices ahead of her to the next town, whereby thy would source information about audience members, local figures, recent news etc, all to feed back to the medium so that she may reveal these facts in a suitably ‘impossible’ way during her act.

Her former manager and stage mentalist, Washington Irving Bishop, also betrayed her trust in the 1870s, revealing to the press that her psychic abilities were simple magic tricks. Another example of no honour among thieves came in the 1880s, when the former medium John W. Truesdell made a statement that explained how Anna freed herself from bandages during a séance session.

In 1875, she was the subject of a series of experiments conducted by the British scientist William Crookes. Crookes would endure greater spiritualist fame through his prolonged experiments with the teenage medium, Florence Cook, but built his own unwanted reputation of spiritual credulity with his involvement with figures such as Fay. During these experiments, Fay was to hold two ends of an electrical circuit together, and produce psychic phenomena. If the electrodes were moved apart, the circuit would break and she would be shown to be a fraud. Yet the circuit remained complete and still the phenomena – music, items moving – continued. However, Crookes had left Anna alone while he monitored electrical currents in another room, meaning that she most likely held the electrodes with other parts of her body as soon as he had left.

Anna’s first husband died in 1889 and she soon remarried her stage manager, David H. Pingree who would outlive her, dying in 1932. The pair continued on the spiritualist and stage psychic circles, even after such a steady string of exposures. She would diversify her act, shifting more into the world of theatrical mind-reading and away from traditional spiritualist seances, immersing herself in the world of stage magic. As such, she later applied for membership to The Magic Circle in London during a 1913 tour; so great were her magic abilities that she was subsequently elected the first Honorary Lady Associate of the Magic Circle in London. Before retiring in 1924, she continued to earn from her ‘magical’ abilities by answering letters by post, ever the entrepreneur.

But all was not sunshine and rainbows behind closed doors. Anna had raised her son in the business of magic and fraud, expecting him to go into a similar field and carry on the tradition. Which he did. By taking her whole identity.

Anna’s son John taught all the skills he’d accrued to a woman called Anna Norman who could then perform his mother’s act in its entirety. They would later marry, John would rename his wife ‘Eva’, and the pair began touring their act – Anna’s act – under the name ‘Eva Fay’, ‘The Marvellous Fays’ and ‘The Fays’, causing mass confusion to audiences and historians alike. While Anna eventually forgave her son, she never forgave Eva, and the pair barely spoke a word to one another for the rest of their lives.

Both set of touring Fays produced their own eerily similar sets of merchandising, mostly to be sold at their live events. While Anna Fay wrote a book on dream interpretation called ‘The Somnolency Dream Book’, Eva wrote ‘The Fay Thaumaturgy Dream Book’ on the exact same topic. Both were printed by different publishers, but sold under the same Fay reputation. These books could be bought from live Fay theatrical performances, alongside magical tokens, which were thin copper coins, made cheaply and sold as affordable lucky trinkets, complete with pseudo-magical decoration. ‘Egyptian magic tokens’ were a popular trend at the turn of the century right through to the 1940s (inspired by the Egyptian revival of the late 19th century), used both as lucky charms and as fashion accessories. These coins were used as parts of watch fobs, worn as pendants or simply kept in the bearer’s pocket.

Both sets of Fays produced these branded coins, both bearing the word ‘Mascot’ and a selection of jumbled mystical symbols. Anna Eva Fay’s is the more simplistic of the two, featuring her initials and a seated figure that gestures to eastern mysticism. According to Fay’s biographer, there were several variations on this simplistic coin, changing slightly with each round of minting, making them a little like Pokémon cards…but less appealing to kids.

The coin of John and Eva is more Egyptian-inspired than Anna’s, featuring an elaborate canopic jar and a selection of hieroglyphs to the back.

These coins aren’t especially rare, and can be picked up occasionally from American auction sites, but even today, Eva’s coins are attributed to Anna. The confusion has never stopped.

Anna Eva Fay died on 20th May 1927 and was buried at Wyoming Cemetery in Melrose, Massachusetts. In one final two-fingered salute to her loathed daughter in law, such confusion occurred upon the announcement of Anna’s death to the press, that Eva’s banks closed all of her accounts, believing that she had died, rather than Anna. A very fitting final word.

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Further Reading:

The Life of Anna Eva Fay: https://www.themagicdetective.com/2011/09/life-of-anna-eva-fay.html

The Fay Controversy Continues: https://www.themagicdetective.com/2016/12/

Barry Wiley ‘The Indescribable Phenomenon’ by Hermetic Press. Buy here: https://www.collectingmagicbooks.com/product-page/the-indescribable-phenomenon-anna-eva-fay-barry-h-wiley

Brian Rxm Tokens and Medals: http://www.brianrxm.com/comdir/cnstokmed_faysmascot.htm

Coin Talk Forum:

https://www.cointalk.com/threads/anna-eva-fay-token-translation.297123/