He worked as a cabinet-maker as a young manitoba He later took up mediumship and spirit photography. He was also known for his automatic drawings and paintings, which impressed the psychical researcher Frederic West. H. Myers.
However in 1878, Frank Podmore attended a séance of Duguid and strongly suspected that he had cheated by using a card that had already been painted.
His spirit photography was exposed when it was revealed he had used paper with chemically bleached-out images on them, and during his séances would secretly press the paper against a blotter dampened with a developing solution. Harry Price wrote that Duguid "was caught cheating over and over again.
One of his "extras", a "Cyprian priestess", was found to be a facsimile of a German picture.".