Maelzel’s Chess Payer or How Edgar Allen Poe Set the Literary World Ablaze with a New Genre, Mystery

 

 

   Before Poe made a name for himself as the author of The Raven, The Mask of the Red Death and others, he was a journalist and a literary critic. How he got the assignment covering the Turk when it came to America remains a mystery, but it had a lifelong impression on him and his approach to writing.

   The Mechanical Turk was invented in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen to impress the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria.  The Turk was an automaton that could play chess against a human opponent as well as perform the Knight’s Tour, a puzzle that requires the player to occupy every square on a chessboard exactly once. Was this machine even possible? And did this machine beat both Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon (more than one paper I read stated that the Turk caught Napoleon cheating)? But what if it was not a thinking machine at all, but instead a mechanical illusion that allows a human chess player to be inside the cabinet, and it took the world by storm. After the death of the creator in 1804, it was purchased by Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, who took it on tours including Europe and America. Eventually it made its way to John Kearsley Mitchell of Philadelphia, a physician. For over 84 years, it played chess until its unfortunate demise on July 5^th 1854, when a fire that started at the National Theater in Philadelphia reached the museum where the Turk was on display and destroyed this piece of mechanical magic. Mitchell’s son, Silas, believed that he heard through the flames “The last words of our departed friend, the sternly whispered, oft repeated syllables, ‘echec! echec!’” (French for check).

   But we now must backtrack to April 1826 when the Mechanical Turk came to America. The debut was in New York, and it was all the rage and had many reviews in New York newspapers. But it wasn’t just the idea of a chess playing robot that made the people interested in it, it was the idea of the Industrial Age that was blossoming and the idea that machines like the Turk could become commonplace. Many people thought that The Turk was a fake, but it inspired people to dream. A writer for The Evening Post commented on it, “Nothing of a similar nature has ever been seen in this city, that will bear the smallest comparison with it.” Poe also wrote about this technological wonder in the Southern Literary Messenger published in 1836.

   His essay on the Turk was true to Poe’s form, ruthless and discriminating. He read many articles and essays on the automaton, before examining it himself, including Letters on Natural Magic by Sir David Brewster.  Poe came up with many theories on how the machine worked and although some of them were wrong, they showed where his mind was going and how he would use that train of thought in his later fiction. I included this one portion to show the workings of his mind on the matter of the Turk, “When the question is demanded explicitly of Maelzel — “Is the Automaton a pure machine or not?” his reply is invariably the same — “I will say nothing about it.” Now the notoriety of the Automaton, and the great curiosity it has everywhere excited, are owing more especially to the prevalent opinion that it is a pure machine, than to any other circumstance. Of course, then, it is the interest of the proprietor to represent it as a pure machine. And what more obvious, and more effectual method could there be of impressing the spectators with this desired idea, than a positive and explicit declaration to that effect? On the other hand, what more obvious and effectual method could there be of exciting a disbelief in the Automaton's being a pure machine, than by withholding such explicit declaration? For, people will naturally reason thus, — It is Maelzel's interest to represent this thing a pure machine — he refuses to do so, directly, in words, although he does not scruple, and is evidently anxious to do so, indirectly by actions — were it actually what he wishes to represent it by actions, he would gladly avail himself of the more direct testimony of words — the inference is, that a consciousness of its not being a pure machine, is the reason of his silence — his actions cannot implicate him in a falsehood — his words may.” This sounds like Poe’s fictional character C. Auguste Dupin more than Edgar Allen Poe himself doing what the author called “ratiocination.”

    In the end, Poe thought that it was a hoax, yet his theory on how it was done was wrong. Close, but no cigar. Eventually it was the son of the last owner, Silas Mitchell who revealed the secret of the Turk. I came across this explanation from the Museum of Hoaxes, that probably explains it best:

A series of sliding panels and a rolling chair allowed the automaton's operator to hide while the interior of the machine was being displayed. The operator then controlled the Turk by means of a 'pantograph' device that synchronized his arm movements with those of the wooden Turk. Magnetic chess pieces allowed him to know what pieces were being moved on the board above his head.

   If it was not for the Turk, Poe may not have come up with his characters such as Dupin, and the beginnings of the earliest form of the detective genre. His literary career might have taken off in a different direction, and the world would have been a sadder place for it. Because without the work of Poe, we would not have Lovecraft, and King, and a multitude of authors that read his work as children.

   A lot of times, I get some inspiration for my posts. The inspiration for this came when I was out a couple of weeks ago with another magician, Vince Wilson. I was showing him around Hollywood, and we were having lunch at the Roosevelt Hotel, when his phone rang. He got us permission to visit the workshop of John Gaughan, master of props and other magic devices. Gaughan has built the only copy of the Turk using the most detailed drawings available.  His reproduction even has the original chessboard, which was not with the Automaton at the time of the fire. Gaughan spent $120,00 dollars in 1984 and took over 5 years to complete the copy. Vince wanted to see the Turk because he runs Poe’s Magic Theatre and the Poe’s Magic Conference each year.   He is on the board of directors of the Poe Museum in Baltimore. I could see his passion and so I needed to see it for myself. Gaughan was a gracious host, as we toured a room that includes several antique pieces of magic. And then we saw the Turk, and I was floored. The details and intricacies of the reproduction were magnificent. We spoke about the Turk for awhile and we talked about other automatons as well as magic itself. As we concluded our tour and walked through his workshop I noticed several boxes that included magic wands in various stages of completion. There were two young men were working on them. Their eye for detail uncompromising as they made these precious gifts. And gifts they were, but they were also trophies, as these were the wands that were to be handed out to the winners of the AMA (American Magician Award) award ceremony that next week.

   But what is my impression of seeing the Turk? It is a fraud? No, it’s not a fraud. It’s magic and illusion. Yes, I suppose all magic is in essence fraud. But magic lets you see what your conscious mind cannot believe. It allows you to dream while you are still awake. And that dream that happened in 1770 possibly gave us the intellectual fiction of Poe, and the first detective story, The Murders in the Rue Morgue.

In The Dark

 

   A big shout out to Rhonda Rae, who gave me the topic and an article to start with. I want to talk about something that has always bugged me in the past about the ghost hunting shows; the lack of light during the program as they are hunting ghosts. I am sorry, did I say lack of light? I mean in complete darkness with night vision cameras. One of the best paranormal investigators in my mind is Benjamin Radford, who tackled this investigative technique in a 2017 issue of Skeptical Inquirer.

   Radford equates the lack of light to the fakery of early spiritualism. Christine Wicker, who wrote the book Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead, also studied the history of Spiritualism. In her book she notes that “mediums so disliked light that they nailed planks over the windows to their séance room.” She also commented that according to her historical research the “spirits demanded these conditions.” Now hindsight is 20/20. And to the Victorian mind, that may have made sense, but with a modern magician’s mind, I think it was pure genius on the part of the Spiritualist that came up with that. As Benjamin Radford commented, one of the unbroken rules of magic is that no one gets backstage, and the magician is in control of how the audience sits. But how can the magician do that? How does the magician control the audience’s field of view? Plunge them in darkness.

    Almost all the mediums that were caught using trickery were because the investigators played by their own rules and not the mediums. A lighted match, and later the investigator’s flashlight has put many so-called mediums to shame. The same could be said with spirit slates and spirit trumpet and other paraphernalia of the Spiritualist and medium.

   Because the popular television ghost hunting shows are shot in the dark, most ghost hunter’s groups will do the same, which hampers the scientific pursuit of the paranormal in many ways. Bradford commented that most ghost sightings happen not at night, but during the day. Elanor Sidgwick, did a paper in 1885 for the SPR (Society for Psychical Research) and reported that “ghosts may be seen in the daylight or in artificial light, at dawn or at dusk, and in various parts of the house or outside in the yard.” If you want to look further into the history of ghost hunting, I thoroughly recommend The Ghost Hunters by Deborah Blum.

I totally agree with Bradford that investigating in the dark is the equivalent of tying an anvil to a marathon runner’s foot. If you are trying to investigate using a scientific method, why would you hamper your best sense, sight? But, if you are trying pull the wool over somebody’s eyes, the dark could be your best friend. If I am doing magic, I want to control the angles of my audience, if I cannot, I want to make sure that I do not “flash.”  This is magician’s jargon for not letting the layperson see what I do not want them to see. For the ghost hunter shows that are so popular today, the best way for them not to “flash” is to plunge their audience into complete darkness.  Using night vision cameras can be even worse because it gives the audience the idea that they can see when they really cannot. One of the best things that ghost hunter shows do is stimulate drama and excitement when there is none. “Did you see that?” asks one paranormal investigator as the camera moves towards him with the night camera setting on because they are in complete darkness. And I am screaming at the television, “no I didn’t, because you are in the dark and the camera just got on you.”

Charles Dickens and Human Spontaneous Combustion

 

  

   I find it interesting that Charles Dickens, the beloved writer who gave us A Tale of Two Cities and A Christmas Carol, would be in the proverbial hot seat with his 1852 serialized novel Bleak House. The reason for this isn’t due to his satire of the legal system and the conflicting of wills, but that of spontaneous human combustion. Perhaps, it’s been a few years, or decades, since you read it, or maybe you’ve never read this author’s work, and for this, I give you the small snippet that started the ruckus.

The first thing they noticed was the smell—like someone frying rancid meat. The two men sat in their flat in central London, awaiting their midnight appointment with the old, alcoholic Mr. Krook, who lived downstairs. As they chatted uneasily, ominous sights and smells kept distracting them. Black soot swirled through the room. A pungent yellow grease stained the windowsill. And that smell!

At last, after midnight, they descended the stairs. Mr. Krook’s shop—crammed with dirty rags, bottles, bones, and other hoarded trash—was unpleasant even in daytime. But tonight, they sensed something positively evil. Outside Krook’s bedroom near the back of the shop, a cat leaped out and snarled. When they entered Krook’s room, the odor choked them. Grease stained the walls and ceiling as if it were painted on. Krook’s coat and cap lay on a chair; a bottle of gin sat on the table. But the only sign of life was the cat, still hissing. The men swung their lantern around, looking for Krook, who was nowhere to be seen.

Then they saw the pile of ash on the floor. They stared for a moment, before turning and running. They burst onto the street, shouting for help. But it was too late: Old Krook was gone, a victim of spontaneous combustion.

   Dickens wrote about many physical ailments, such as smallpox, and penned them in a scientific way so most of his readers took the story as scientific fact. At this time in the scientific field Michael Faraday was conducting his experiments in electromagnetism and electrochemistry, and many scientists were looking at things such as mesmerism, clairvoyance, and ghosts. William Crookes, who is known in my circle as one of the first paranormal investigators, had discovered the element thallium as well as helium. And one scientific mind took on the idea of spontaneous combustion as noted in Dickens’ tale, George Lewes.

   George Lewes, who was an English philosopher as well as a literature critic, was also an amateur physiologist. Even though Lewes was a friend of Charles Dickens he felt he needed to put in his two cents. Lewes wrote in a well-known newspaper at the time, The Leader, that Dickens was obviously bending the truth and that, “The[se] circumstances are beyond the limits of acceptable fiction,” he wrote, “and give credence to a scientific impossibility.” He accused Dickens of cheap sensationalism and “of giving currency to a vulgar error.”

   This became a series of both public and private letters of debate whether the phenomenon of spontaneous human combustion was real. Dickens in a private letter told of an Italian countess in 1731 who died of spontaneous combustion. The countess had bathed in camphorated spirits of wine (a mixture of brandy and camphor) and the next morning her maid found the countess’ legs, just her legs, near a pile of ash and a charred skull. Nothing else seemed amiss, except for two melted candles nearby. A priest transcribed the story and so Dickens took it as fact. Lewes thought that all the stories that Dickens gave to back his own story up was “humorous, but not convincing.”

   Most of Dickens’ accounts involved alcohol in the system. Lewes retorted by giving data to show recent experiments that revealed how the liver metabolized alcohol, breaking it down for elimination, and Lewes pointed out that the human body is roughly 75 percent water, so it could not catch fire by itself. Their disagreement would continue for 10 months, while Bleak House was being serialized, eventually Lewes and Dickens made up and continued to be good friends.

   

There are those today who still believe in the possibility of human combustion. Others believe that an external agent, such as candles or cigarettes, is the real culprit that leads to the premature cremation of a person.  History and modern science tell us that Lewes was the winner. No human body has been the victim of spontaneous combustion, except of course in the tabloids.

The Wizard of the North

 

   Continuing on with my blog of the history of magic and the magicians that made it happen, I want to write about John Henry Anderson, “The Wizard of the North”. Anderson was born on a tenant farm in 1812, in the north-east part of Scotland, a few miles from Aberdeen. Unfortunately, his parents died while he was young, and he would get an apprentice job with a blacksmith. He then became involved with a troop of actors and would start traveling with them as a call-boy. He stayed with the action troop for several years as an actor and he knew that he was meant to be a performer. He loved acting, especially in the dramas of the time. A conjurer would eventually join the troop. His name was Ingleby, and he sparked the young actor into learning magic. Anderson spent years trying to work out the secrets of Ingleby’s magic, and he finally decided it was time to leave the acting troop and strike out on his own.

   By the time Anderson was seventeen, he was working in the local inns and village town halls in the north of Scotland. His tour brought him to Brechin, and there he caught the eyes of a local laird, Lord Panmure. Panmure thought that young Andreson would be a great magician to entertain his guests at a dinner party in Brechin Castle. The dinner was a disaster, because the young magician didn’t know the ins and outs of society and the dinner guests thought he was a fool, until the magician started to perform his conjuring. The following day he received a 10-pound banknote (the first he had ever seen) along with a note:

Brechin Castle, 12^th March, 1831

Sir, - Your performance last night at Brechin Castle much delighted myself and party. You far excel any other necromancer that I have ever seen either at home or abroad.

I am, Sir, yours etc., PANMURE.

   Anderson took this letter, and had it subsequently printed on every poster that he made for years as a testimonial of his skill, yet he had problems securing larger venues. He eventually teamed up with another performance troop. He would marry the stage manager’s daughter and take his young wife on a performance tour of Scotland and England. During this tour he would take on the mantle of “The Great Caledonian Magician” and play over 103 nights in Edinburgh and 80 nights in Manchester. By 1840 he would be appearing at the new Strand theatre and was known as “Professor Anderson, the Wizard of the North”, a title that he will keep for the rest of his life.

  During his travels, he would have many ups and downs, as magicians do, but he always found a way to land on his feet. There is a story that while he was at a masked ball in Russia he ran into the Tsar and since he didn’t recognize the Tsar he didn’t apologize. Instead of being sent to Siberia, the Tsar had him entertain the court a few days later. He then said that the Tsar showed him a magic trick involving the production of a bowl of water. A trick that Tsar learned from a tribe known as the Khirgizians, near the Chinese border. Later the Tzar gave Anderson a robe which Anderson wore on stage. Now, whether this actually happened is mostly hearsay, but it’s great publicity. It was Anderson’s greatest trick, the trick of self-promotion, which rivaled that of Houdini himself. Anderson traveled with his own printing press and townspeople would wake early in the morning to find posters all over the town, and even the pavements would be painted with the words “ANDERSON IS COMING”. He even concocted the story that it was Sir Walter Scott who gave him the moniker of the “Wizard of the North”. Now that would be grand if Scott hadn’t died while Anderson was just a child. Sometimes a magician, especially a stage magician, needs to have more chutzpah than actual skill itself.

  Anderson was skilled indeed, as noted in a letter from Charles Betram, another great Victorian conjurer commenting on Anderson’s skill in the 1860’s:

Amongst others he performed the great gun trick, the trick that really made him…I fear that towards the end of his performance my mind was so confused with the seeming miracles I had seen that I am unable to remember all the items of his programme. I have never seen any performance so brilliant, or any stage so lavishly fitted as that of the wizard.

   John Herny Anderson gave the world what it wanted to see in magic and then some. Not only did he master the Bullet Catch but Anderson is credited with one of the most known tricks in a magician’s arsenal, that of producing a rabbit out of a hat. James Henry Anderson died in 1874 at the Fleece hotel in Darlington, County Durham. He was buried next to his mother. The same year that Anderson died, Erich Weiss was born in Budapest. Erich Weiss will become the famous magician, Harry Houdini. Houdini revered Anderson and thought of Anderson as an inspiration. In 1909, Houdini took over the upkeep of Anderson’s gravesite, which had fallen into disrepair, and did so until Houdini’s death in 1926.

Carcosa

 

   It’s a rainy evening in the City of Angels, and I have hot chocolate keeping me warm, and a black cat at my feet and it’s perfect for me to write about the mythical city known as Carcosa. My most recent conversation about the fabled city was with a friend and we were talking about television shows, and I asked her to check out True Detective, Season One. In it, two detectives come across a horrific and ritualistic murder scene and during its investigation, there are clues that reference Carcosa, as well as The King in Yellow which I will get to in a moment. There are scenes in the series that make you question their reality, or at least question the mind of one of the detectives, and at the end there is Carcosa. But what is its origin?

   The first time Carcosa is written about is in An Inhabitant of Carcosa written by Ambrose Bierce in 1886. Bierce’s character speaks only in hindsight about the mythical city after its destruction, “The wind sighed in the bare branches of the dead trees and the gray grass bent to whisper its dread secret to the earth; but no other sound nor motion broke the awful repose of that dismal place.” Bierce also penned the short work Haita the Shepard that will also inspire other authors as well by introducing Hastur, a god.

 

   Robert W. Chambers will add to that Carcosa mythos in his book of short stories entitled The King in Yellow which was published in 1895. In the first story, The Repairer of Reputations, the tales began with a song:

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies,
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

—"Cassilda's Song" in The King in Yellow Act 1, Scene 2

   The story itself is amazing for it is set in a futuristic world of the 1920s where we have just come out of a war with Germany. When the main character is injured falling off of his horse, in his convalescing he will read a play named The King in Yellow, “This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forgive Carcosa where black stars hand in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the lake of Hali; and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask. I pray God will curse this writer as the artist has cursed the world with this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth- a world which now tremble before the King in Yellow.” It is, in essence, a book that will drive the reader insane.

    H.P. Lovecraft will continue the story told by Bierce and Chambers in his 26,000-word novella The “Whisperer in the Darkness” that was published in Weird Tales in 1931. In his tale, the main character is a folklorist who stumbles across some information, “I found myself faced by names and terms that I had heard elsewhere in the most hideous of connections—Yuggoth, Great Cthulhu, Tsathoggua, Yog-Sothoth, R'lyeh, Nyarlathotep, Azathoth, Hastur, Yian, Leng, the Lake of Hali, Bethmoora, the Yellow Sign, L’mur-Kathulos, Bran, and the Magnum Innominandum…” The Lake of Hali and the character of Hastur are mentioned in Bierce’s literature and “The Yellow Sign” is the name of a short story by Chambers. In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, Lovecraft comments, “Chambers must have been impressed with 'An Inhabitant of Carcosa' & 'Haita the Shepherd', which were first published during his youth. But he even improves on Bierce in creating a shuddering background of horror—a vague, disquieting memory which makes one reluctant to use the faculty of recollection too vigorously."

   Even George R.R. Martin cannot escape the walls of Carcosa. In his book “A Song of Ice and Fire” published in 1996 a city named Carcosa is next to a large lake in the East. In the novel it is mentioned that a sorcerer lord lives there who claims to be the sixty-ninth Yellow Emperor from a dynasty fallen for a thousand years.

   Carcosa is even available for players to explore in The Call of Cthulhu Role Playing Game. In that game we leave Carcosa for others to explore and go mad in. At this point I would like to mention in season 4 of True Detectives, which I have not seen, there is another literature Easter egg, that of Jodie Foster reading Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian.

   
Even though the city of Carcosa was first mentioned almost 140 years ago, it continues to be part of today’s literary and pop culture worlds. May the twin suns of Carcosa shine forever.

Pepper's Ghost

 

One of my favorite scenes on the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland is the main hall complete with spectral dinner guests and multiple ghostly apparitions dancing the night away for all eternity. Not only does it tell a great story in one scene, but it is also a fantastic appearance that has stood the test of time since the ride opening in 1969. The ghosts portrayed in that one room were produced by an effect used in magic, plays, and cinemas for over 150 years.  Although many people are attributed to it and contributed to its fruition, one man will be known for it almost exclusively, John Henry Pepper which is why this effect is known as Pepper’s Ghost.

Before we come to the story of Pepper, we must first talk about a man named Henry Dircks. He was born in Liverpool in 1806 and was a civil engineer, author, and a patent examiner. He was also a wonderful basement inventor.  He constructed a model in which by looking in an aperture you would see figures, such as an actor, through a sheet of glass that was pitched at an angle and that figure would seem to be transparent.  Dircks called them ghosts. Dircks never revealed how he created the effect, but in 1858 he took it to the British Association for the Advancement in Leeds and called it the Dircksian Phantasmagoria. Amongst the natural phenomena, and mechanical devices lectures, Dircks felt out of place there, so he took it to the Crystal Palace and the Royal Polytechnic in London in 1862. The Royal Polytechnic gave a series of lectures each year there and one of the lecturers was John Henry Pepper.

Pepper was an analytical chemist who had a showmanship appeal to his lectures and many people gathered to watch his lectures on fermentation, and the detection of poison (apparently, there was not a lot to do in 1862 in London). It was at this gathering that Pepper got a peek at the Dircksian Phantasmagoria for the first time. As Pepper examined Dirck’s model and saw the transparent figures within, he knew that it could be built for a stage. Pepper had found his ghosts.

The Pepper’s Ghost was on stage on December 24th at the Polytechnic small theatre for Charles Dicken’s Christmas story, “The Haunted Man”. During the production, Pepper made a ghostly skeleton appear on stage. It couldn’t walk or converse, but it was a hit. Pepper gave Dircks five hundred pounds to own the idea and to ensure that Dircks wouldn’t want any royalties.  All Dircks wanted was for his name to be attached to the invention. Unfortunately, that never happened, and Pepper started producing plays such as “The Ghost of Hamlet” and others. He also licensed the device to various music halls and theaters. A decade after its premier in London, Pepper brought it to Boston. And so it goes, Dircks’ invention is brought to a larger platform, and it will take the world by storm, as Pepper’s Ghost.

Now before we clap Pepper and Dircks on the back for their illustrious invention, we need to go back to the 16^th Century when an Italian author by the name of Baptista Porta describes a similar effect in his treatise Natural Magic which was published in 1558, creating an illusion that was called “How We May See in a Chamber Things That Are Not”. And again, in 1852, a patent was filed by Pierre Seguin, an artist. This patent detailed a toy for children that used glass at a 45-degree angle to create small figures as an amusement for children.

I have done a stint in the haunt industry with a friend, and we created our own Pepper’s Ghost illusion, and it came out very well. In the short story, Einsenheim, the Illusionist, which was the inspiration for the movie The Illusionist, the magician uses Pepper’s Ghost illusion as part of his finale. Pepper’s Ghost is a wonderful example of how science can be used for other things such as theater, magic, and even theme parks. So, next time you ride the Haunted Mansion you can appreciate this effect in a new light. Over 500 years of tinkering with optics have brought you this enchanting scene, or as Walt Disney would say, “The magic is as wide as a smile and as narrow as a wink, loud as laughter and quiet as a tear, tall as a tale and deep as emotion. So strong, it can lift the spirit. So gentle, it can touch the heart. It is the magic that begins the happily ever after.”

Magicians Who Have Died During the Bullet Catch

 

   The bullet catch is one of the most interesting illusions to be done in the Victorian era. The effect, its namesake, either catching the bullet in their own mouth or inside a plate or small bowl. Seems simple in concept, but the execution (pun intended) is a lot harder than it seems. The premise of the illusion needs a non-firing gun that seems to still fire or the introduction of a blank bullet or the riskiest method, a bullet that will not cause harm. One of the earliest documentations of this illusion is in Threats of God's Judgments by Reverend Thomas Beard in 1631, even though it was performed around 50 years before the book was written. It became a favorite of street performers during the 1700s, and to this day, it is responsible for killing at least six.

   One of the first to die is Madame DeLinsky, the assistant to her magician husband, who was shot in 1820 during a performance in the royal court of Germany. During this time, guns were loaded using cartridges, which were made of paper, and inside of this this cartridge was gunpowder as well as the bullet. For those that don’t know me, I am also a Revolutionary War reenactor, and so I own several guns of this manufacture and am very familiar with their loading. The cartridge is removed from the pouch and then the cartridge is opened using the teeth and the contents are put into the barrel of the gun. During this performance of the trick, the soldiers who performed the illusions was secretly bribed to make sure that the bullet was bitten off from the cartridge and kept in their mouth while the gunpowder was put in the gun. Unfortunately, one of the soldiers was very nervous and accidentally loaded the bullet as well as the gunpowder. When the bullet struck Madame Delinsky in the abdomen, several of the audience fainted. Medical treatment was given but unfortunately Madame Delinsky would pass away two days later. The truly sad part of this story is that her husband, who was supervising the illusion onstage, went mad shortly after witnessing the death of his wife and their unborn child.

   Another was Arnold Buck who was killed in 1840. During his performance of the illusion, Buck had an audience member shoot the gun. While Buck loaded the gun, he would palm the bullet instead of putting it inside the barrel and the gun was then handed over to a member of the audience. The audience member, a known troublemaker, secretly put a handful of nails into the barrel which killed the magician upon impact. In the movie The Prestige (2006), Christian Bale’s character Alfred, talks about the dangers of having an audience member as the person firing the gun. In the movie, Alfred talks about a button being inserted in the gun. Even just a wood or metal button would be lethal at that range.

  Next, was Professor Adam Epstein who died in 1869. His death was one of blatant stupidity. The magician’s wand is great for misdirecting and doing tricks like the cups and balls, it’s not good for using as a ramrod for your gun. The wood that is used for ramrod is usually a walnut or a maple and usually has a metal endcap, and used to taking punishment, the magician’s wand is not. Epstein used his wand as a ramrod too many times and didn’t take the time to make sure his wand came out alright. When the gun fired, he was struck in the forehead by the flying shards from his broken wand.

  Only about twenty years later, Harry Franklin Sartelle was killed by performing The Bullet Catch. The 23-year-old magician was just starting out when he died in 1889. Unfortunately, I cannot find more information on what went wrong with the trick that caused his demise.

  One of the most famous though was Chung Ling Soo who perished in 1918. Born William Ellsworth Campbell Robinson, William first started performing by masquerading as an Egyptian and then a Hindu magician.  He would settle on the Chinese persona that he would tailor for many years until his death. His final act was known as “Condemned to Death by The Boxers" in which he would face a firing squad while he held a silver plate. The guns were gimmicked and had two chambers. One in which to insert a round and another for the gunpowder.  The freak accident occurred when one of the rifle’s chambers hadn’t been cleaned properly and was clogged with gunpowder residue.  This residual gunpowder caused the bullet to exit the barrel and struck the magician. When I read about this freak accident, I was reminded of the accidental death of film star Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow. Robinson, who never spoke English to maintain his Chinese persona and would use interpreters screamed, "Oh my god, something's happened. Lower the curtain." He died the next morning. Harry Houdini, who was a friend of Robinson wanted to try the trick himself after the death of his fellow magician, but the words of Harry Keller, one of the most famous magicians during the Victorian Age chided him with this letter:

“Now, my dear boy, this is advice from the heart, DON’T TRY THE D—N Bullet Catching…no matter how sure you may feel of its success. There is always the biggest kind of risk that some dog will “job” you. And we can’t afford to lose Houdini. You have enough good stuff to maintain your position at the head of the profession. And you owe it to your friends and your family to cut out all stuff that entails risk of your life. Please, Harry, listen to your old friend Kellar who loves you as his own son and don’t do it.”

   And finally, we have H.T. Sartell, who went by the stage name of “The Black Wizard of the West” who died in 1922 in Deadwood, South Dakota. This was a case of mistaken identity of the worst kind. Sartell would use wax bullets that would break apart in the barrel and the projectile would become harmless to the magician. The major problem was that his assistant, his wife, wanted to get rid of him, so she simply switched the wax bullet for a real one. Again, there is something to be said about who you let point the gun at you.

   The Bullet Catch is an amazing illusion that belongs to the past. As technology progressed, the trick became more advanced to satisfy a new audience generation. And the more convincing that you try to perform it, the more deadly it can become. Yes, the Bullet Catch is still done today, and has been performed by great magicians such as Penn and Teller and David Blaine. I also saw it done live in LA at a “Parlour” magic show, a Parlour that contained about 300 members in the audience. It was okay. The illusion was with a modern pellet gun instead of a real gun and it was mounted on a tripod (it was of course in LA). There was a disconnect between the illusion and the audience because of the tripod and the pellet gun being set up by the magician himself. The setup was too long and the instructions to the audience member who actually fired the gun were too winded and so by the time the magician got set to do the trick, I almost wanted to see something go wrong just to see what would happen.

 

By the way, I was told that the Bullet Catch is the only illusion that I am not allowed to perform.