Original post here. Sourced to travsd.wordpress.com. Original text:

feeling-is-first:

training classes at Miskatonic Medical Institute were conducted with ventriloquist dummies until WWII

Walter H. Lambert was a British ventriloquist and female impersonator whose famous early 20th century vaudeville routine was a hospital skit in which his female character “Lydia Dreams” played a nurse, and his figure played an accident victim.  He was also an accomplished painter, famous for his 1903 large-scale painting of 225 Edwardian music-hall performers you can see here  (via)