Episode 29: When Magic Goes Wrong

 It's all fun and games until it isn't. Let's learn about Chung Ling Soo, Balabrega and The Great Lafayette. 

Transcript

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Hey everybody, I'm Shannon, and welcome to the They Hid What Podcast. On this podcast, we discuss parts of history that have been kept hidden or swept under the rug. In this week's episode, I will be discussing when magic goes wrong. Let's get into it. Slight of hand, card trick, illusion. All these are fun and none of them are real. Real people stand on a stage and perform each of these acts, and there can be very real consequences. Today I will only be discussing a few such instances, but there are plenty more out there. Let's begin with Mr. Robinson. William Ellsworth Robinson was born in Westchester County, New York on April 2nd, 1861. His parents, James and Sarah, were of Scottish descent, and his father traveled in Charlie White's minstrel shows. In 1875, at the age of 14, William performed his first magic show and soon began performing professionally on the vaudeville circuit. In 1882, when William was 21, he met 16-year-old Bessie Smith. She signed on to be his magician's assistant, and on February 2nd, 1883, they were married. The pair began touring around New York, and William called himself the man of mystery. All of this seems nice and tidy, but William's life is about to get messy. In December of 1883, a daughter named Annie was born of an affair. To hush up any scandal and to keep performing, Annie was raised by William's parents as their grandchild. In February 1885, Bessie and William welcomed a son named Elmore. Now with a child of her own, Bessie decided to stop touring with William and instead remain in their family home. While performing in a variety show, William meets Augusta Faf, whose stage name is Olive Path. William hires Olive to be his new assistant and decided to call her Dot because she was so petite. He also began an affair with her around this time. By 1887, William was performing black art illusions under the name Ahmed Ben Ali. Black art illusions involves using black fabric and lighting to conceal objects. This form of magic was originated by an Egyptian mystic. William actually stole this whole act and name from a German performer going by Ben Ali Bey. Seems a bit lazy, but this is something I saw come up a lot during my research. Performers would take someone else's trick or full act entirely and just put their own flair to it. The two would then duke it out in the press until one either gave up or came up with the end all be all of tricks. So while William is performing as Ahmed Ben Ali, there were two competing American magicians, Alexander Herman and Harry Keller. These two constantly competed with their most dramatic illusions and finding the best talent to join their shows. Harry Keller wanted William to join his act to perform his Black Art illusions. William accepted the offer for$60 a week, which is about$2,100 today. This salary included Olive as the assistant and William working backstage to set up and perform the illusions. Harry Keller changed William's character to Nana Sahib, the East Indian necromancer in Oriental occultism. Yikes. During his time with Keller, William developed a levitation illusion using a special harness he developed with machinist Benjamin Keys. After some time performing with Keller, William got a better offer from Keller's rival, Alexander Herman. William packed up his tricks and he and Olive joined Herman's company. Both William and Olive played supporting characters in Herman's Illusions and also performed some of William's black art tricks. Herman gave William the stage name of Abdul Khan. So this is name number three? Four? No. Three? Doesn't matter. By 1894, Alexander Herman had incorporated some new tricks into his act. Two of these new tricks were identical to the tricks that William had developed with Harry Keller. So it looks like Herman lured William to his side with money, and then William offered up the enemy's secrets. It's kind of shady. Herman also started to perform the bullet catch. For those of you that don't know, this is a trick where the magician catches a bullet that is shot at them. It's all faked by using blanks in the gun being fired and the magician hiding a bullet within their sleeve to then catch from the gun. Herman caught six bullets fired from rifles in an audience onto a plate in front of his chest. Because of the risk of the trick, he only performed it seven times, and those were for charity shows. This wasn't legal since she and William never got a legal divorce. And their son Elmore, he didn't really fit into either parents' lifestyles, so Elmore was placed in an orphanage. And since the cancellation, William and Olive began promoting themselves as a married couple. In 1896, Alexander Herman died, and William decided to work for two years with Herman's wife before striking it out on his own. On January 1st, 1898, William visited the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, and there he saw a Chinese magician named Qing Ling Fu perform. William then attended several of Fu's performances in New York to study the act. There's this weird story about Fu dismissing William when William says he can show how Fu does a trick, and in turn, William wrote a book exposing tricks by mediums, yet Fu wasn't a medium? So it's very weird. It's probably not important to this story. I just thought I'd throw it in. I also ordered the book. Anyway, in 1899, William began to perform under the name Hop Sing Lu. This went beyond the stage. William started dressing in traditional Chinese clothes. He shaved his facial hair and wore his hair in a cue, which is where the top of the head is shaved and the back portion is grown long and braided. And he even darkened his skin with grease paint. He went one step further and acted as though he didn't even speak English and he needed a translator. In March of 1900, William learned that an agent was looking for a Chinese magician to perform in Paris. William got the job, but his act totally tanked. The show's manager Ike Rose wanted William to change his stage name and he took on the name Chung Ling Su, and Olive became Su Scene. Their new act became such a crowd pleaser that William was earning about$5,000 a week with bookings for two years in advance. In March 1906, William and Olive had a wedding ceremony in England, which of course wasn't legal. Then in 1907, 46-year-old William met 21-year-old Janet Louise Mary Blatchford, and the two began an affair. In May of 1907, Janet was pregnant. Olive was furious, but she and William decided to set Janet up in their West London home. Kinda weird. But when Janet would visit the theater, she was called Mrs. Robinson, which is even weirder. Janet had Ellsworth James in February of 1908, and in the beginning, William would visit the two often. Often enough, at least, since Janet had Hector in December 1909 and Mary in March 1911. William had added his own version of the bullet catch to his act. On March 23, 1918, at the Wood Green Empire in London, he performed Defying the Bullets for his very last time. His assistant, Jack Grossman, fired the gun used for the trick, but some of the gunpowder residue inside the gun exploded, and the gun fired the bullet that Jack loaded for the trick. The bullet hit William, who said in perfect English, because keep in mind his entire act is that he is a Chinese man, oh my god, something's happened, lower the curtain. Olive rushed to the stage and William told her to get a doctor. It took 45 minutes for doctors to arrive, and by then William was unconscious. William was taken to the Passmore Edwards Cottage Hospital around 2.30 a.m. And it was found that the bullet had grazed his heart and fractured the fifth rib upon entering his body and then exited through the bat. William Robinson died just two hours after arriving to the hospital. I'm going to read the summary of the inquest word for word. Olive.path explained the nature of Cheng Ling Su's trick. The muskets Su used in his act were brazed with extra steel barrels. After each performance, to avoid expending powder and bullets, Su never unloaded his guns properly. Rather than firing them off or drawing the bullets with a screw rod, as was normal practice, he removed the bullet and powder by dismantling the breeches of the guns. Over time, a residue of unburned gunpowder was able to form in the channel he had made to allow the flash to bypass the barrel and ignite a blank charge in the ramrod tube. Thus, when Sue performed the trick that night, ignition of the residue in the channel allowed the flash from the pan to also ignite the charge behind the bullet, not intended to be fired, that was loaded into the barrel of the gun being used. Consequently, the bullet fired in the normal way, hitting Sue in the chest. The circumstances of the accident were verified by the gun expert Robert Churchill. Sue's death was ruled accidental with a final verdict of misadventure. William Robinson left his over$397,980.81 in today's money to Janet. Johann Moller was born August 20th, 1857, in Helsingborg, Sweden. His father Thomas was the one who taught Johan magic tricks, and the two of them went to America in 1868 when Johan was 11 years old. Upon his arrival, Johann Moller's name was changed to John Miller, and he eventually made his debut at the Swedish Society in Brooklyn. In 1878, John appeared as Balabrega, the Swedish wonder, the boy magician, at the Olympic Theater in New York and in several other cities with great success. I do not know where this stage name came from. I read that in the Parambuco language, Balabrega is said to be slang for deception or charlatan. Who knows? It sounds good no matter where it came from. John married Emily Linden in 1885. She had been performing on stage since she was 16. She was a specialist in working with trained canaries and was skilled at performing music with the xylophone, glasses, bottles, and anything else she could make a sound out of. Emily was also considered outstanding with the second sight act, a thought transmission effect, basically mind reading. John and Emily were the first to perform the second sight act in South America and in Spanish. The pair continued to tour around South America to much success. It's believed that John spent so much time there because he had purchased a few fruit plantations. Either way, towards the end of 1899, while crossing the Strait of Magellan, there was an accident with the ship, and John lost his entire show when the ship sank. In 1900, John and Emily rebuilt their act and began a tour of Brazil. John had seen an illusion during his travels and ended up purchasing it. It was called The Moth and the Flame. And it was described as, quote, a captivating and elaborate trick involving six assistants dressed as moths, all of whom appeared to dance as flames engulfed them. I read somewhere else that it looks like the moths jump into the fire and then disappear. So my guess is that when the assistants dressed as moths jump towards the flame, the flame would be fanned to appear bigger, and the moth could then jump behind a black curtain. We may never know, or maybe we do, uh, but that's not the point of the story. On June 20th, 1900, at the Theatro Santa Rosa, John was setting up his act. The venue couldn't accommodate the kind of gas John needed for the flames, and so he opted to use acetylene instead. Acetylene is a colorless, flammable gas widely used as fuel in welding. When John and one of his assistants, Lou Bartel, went to test the gas for the trick, the acetylene immediately ignited and John and Lou were blown to bits. It's said that their body parts landed on the cast and crew and that one other person was injured. The theater also caught fire and almost burned down. Now, after this, John's wife Emily found her way to Taunton, Massachusetts and remarried. She ended up getting a divorce, then moved to New York and opened a cafe. Unfortunately, the business failed and she went back to Taunton and died on January 7th, 1916. Sigmund was born on February 25, 1871, in Munich, Germany. Sigmund moved to America in 1884 at 13 years old, I assume with family, and began performing in vaudeville shows by age 19. His act was marksmanship using a bow and an arrow. He later became a conjurer and also impersonated Qing Ling Fu from our first story. At 21 years old, in 1892, Sigmund made his first appearance as the great Lafayette in England. He would perform quick change tricks and illusions. Sigmund became the highest paid vaudeville performer, earning 44,000 pounds a year, which is equivalent to almost 6.5 million dollars today. And he was booking shows 10 years in advance. In 1900, Sigmund began his traveling show with 40 performers and animals. His most popular stunt was to appear, disappear, and then reappear elsewhere in the theater. In 1911, Sigmund and his group began a tour of Britain. Now, one of the most important animals in Sigmund's troupe was his dog Beauty. Beauty was a mixed breed, and she was given to Sigmund as a puppy by Harry Houdini before either of them had made it big. Beauty lived a glamorous life. She had her own suite of rooms at every hotel. She ate five coarse meals and wore a diamond-studded collar. Sigmund was obsessed with his dog. He had a plaque put on the outside of his house in London that read, quote, The more I see of people, the more I love my dog. And inside there was another plaque that read, quote, You may eat my food, you may command my servants, but you must respect my dog. And I feel like we're still seeing these phrases or these idioms around today. Beauty traveled with her owner to every venue, and during one performance, she broke loose from her handlers in the wings and ran onto the stage. The audience thought it was part of the act, and Lafayette was quick to see the potential. Beauty was taught to do tricks and became part of the great Lafayette's routine. Now, unfortunately, on May 5th, 1911, Beauty died. It's believed that she passed from a combination of age and too rich of a diet. And this happened four days before Sigmund was to open his two-week show at the Empire Palace Theater in Edinburgh. It was said that Sigmund was shattered by Beauty's death. He even announced that his own death could not be far away. After initial resistance from Edinburgh City Council, Sigmund arranged for Beauty to be buried in Pierce Hill Cemetery, and the council agreed to provide a plot for Beauty on the condition that Sigmund himself would be buried there upon his own death. On May 9, 1911, the doors to the theater opened and 3,000 patrons filed in. They couldn't wait to see the great Lafayette's most famous trick, the lion's mane. This illusion took 25 minutes to perform. It included a female assistant, a horse, a real lion, and several actors. It also had Sigmund magically metamorphosizing into a lion. The dramatic climax came as Lafayette jumped off his horse just as the female assistant was about to be thrown into the cage with the lion, and he assumed the bride's character, complete with costume, using a quick change. As Sigmund, wearing a veil, was about to be devoured by the big cat, the animal shed its skin to reveal Sigmund where moments before a real lion had been. Which is pretty freaking cool. As Sigmund was getting ready to perform the final moments of the illusion, a lamp set fire to the stage set. We do not know how it happened. Was it knocked over? Was the flame set too big? We don't know. The audience thought it was part of the illusion and didn't leave the theater until the manager signaled the orchestra to play God Save the King. Now I know I have some listeners from across the pond, so could you let me know if this playing God Save the King was the older version of like pulling a fire alarm? Because that's what it seemed like. Anyway, many of the company members, however, were trapped on stage when the safety curtain was lowered before it got stuck, leaving only a small gap at the bottom through which a strong draught of air fanned the flames. Sigmund initially escaped, but he returned to try and rescue his horse. And instead, Sigmund became trapped on the stage surrounded by fire. Ten of his troop were also killed in the fire as the theater burnt to the ground. Sigmund had one last illusion up his sleeve, though. His body was initially discovered beside the horse and the lion used in the show, and it was sent to Glasgow for cremation. Now Sigmund's lawyer arrived from London and wanted to know why the Great Lafayette's rings were not on his body, and the crematorium didn't have an answer. A few days after the fire, though, workers were clearing the area under the stage and found another body identically dressed as Sigmund. This new body was wearing the Great Lafayette's rings. Turns out the first body that was recovered with the horse and the lion was Sigmund's body double. Can you imagine? On May 14th, the urn containing the real Great Lafayette's ashes were taken through Edinburgh as witnessed by over 250. A thousand people and laid to rest with his dog beauty. Now, as I said in the beginning, magic is fun, but magic is not real. There can be very real consequences to very dangerous stunts. So if you want to explore magic, go ahead. Plenty of shows you can see. You can look up numerous videos online to learn how to do just about anything. But please be safe, please be smart, and please come back next week to see what else has been hidden.