Gibecière Vol. 5 No. 2

Con ten ts Pocket Notes—Stephen Minch 7 Nellie Bly on Magnets, Mind Readers & Fakirs! Fakirs! Fakirs!— Barry H. Wiley 9 Tragic Magic—Joshua Jay 71 About the Sloane 424 Manuscript— Stephen Minch and William Kalush 131 Sloane 424—Anonymous translated by Lori Pieper 141 Contributors 173

Vol. 5, No. 2 • 5

Nellie Bly, 1890

•• ••• •• •• •• • Nellie Bly on M agnets, M ind R e ader s & Fakir s! Fakir s! Fakir s!

•• ••• •• •• •• • Barry H. Wiley

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If one would become great two things are absolutely necessary: the first is to know yourself; the second is not to let the world know you.

—Nellie Bly

he famous, notorious, adventurous, courageous, skillfully outrageous reporter, Nellie Bly (Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, called Pink by her family) was on a constant prowl for suitable targets for her well-honed exposés and, at times, merciless attacks. In the 1880s and ’90s, Nellie, or NB as she was often labeled, was the quintessential woman reporter and would become the role model for generations of women journalists to come.

The name “Nellie Bly” was given to Cochrane in 1885 by George Madden, managing editor of the Pittsburgh Dispatch. He wanted something “neat and catchy” for his new hire. Female reporters of the time never used their own names, so a pen name was necessary. The name, among others quickly tossed around by the men in the city room, was originally “Nelly Bly” from a popular 1855 song by Stephen Foster; but Madden was in a hurry and misspelled it as Nellie, and so it remained.1 Nellie Bly was attractive, five feet five, 112 pounds, blue-eyed and with delicate features. One fellow reporter remarked that her hands seemed too small to hold a pen for her writing.

Vol. 5, No. 2 • 11

N e l l i e B l y o n M a g n e t s , M i n d R e a d e r s a n d Fa k i r s Miss Lancaster cannot stand it. With tears bursting from her eyes she rushes out into the hall.

Then I feel sorry—sorry for her downfall. And, quitting the nonsense I only repeated to be more like her, I got down to business.

“I feel that the knife is concealed upon this person,” I say, going straight up to Miss Lancaster, the elder.

The woman standing at the door is Maud Lancaster. Her elder sister is seated beside the door. One manager is seated next to the door. The second is standing behind the sister. Miss B. is the young woman seated behind Nellie Bly. Three other gentlemen are not shown in the drawing.

Vol. 5, No. 2 • 35

••• ••• TR AGIC M AGIC

••• •••

A Survey of Fatal Conjuring: 1584–2007 Joshua Jay

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Yet scarce I praise their venturous part Who tamper with such dangerous art.

—Sir Walter Scott

The Death of Dr. Epstein

n April 25, 1869, Dr. Adam Salomon Epstein was on stage at Paris’s Cirque d’Hiver (then called Le Cirque Napoléon), with a loaded rifle aimed at his face. Epstein was performing the Gun Trick. Having poked a marked handkerchief into the barrel of a rifle, Epstein addressed a man in the second row and asked him to fire the gun.

The man refused.

Epstein asked another person to act as marksman. He too refused.

The fourth man he asked finally accepted, and Epstein invited him to the stage. The volunteer stood on the left side of the stage while Epstein drew a sword and stood at the ready, stage right. Epstein proposed to pluck the propelled handkerchief onto the tip of his sword.

The volunteer aimed the gun at Epstein. Epstein then commanded in a heavy Polish accent, “Tirez, Monsieur, je suis prêt.” (Fire, sir, I am ready.)

The man fired at him, and a handkerchief appeared on the tip of Epstein’s sword. But something was amiss.

“How awful,” Epstein said. He grabbed his chest and staggered as if drunk. “I am dead.”

Vol. 5, No. 2 • 73

Jo s h u a Jay other. He was killed instantly when his car collided with another, and his body was thrown clear of the accident. Playing cards littered the scene of the crash.

Courtesy of Magic Christian

Anastasius Kasfikis, a performer widely thought to be of Greek extraction, was actually Russian-born. By most accounts, Kasfikis was a mediocre magician, but his performance itinerary indicates he found plenty of work. He and his wife toured the whole of Europe with an act largely copied from other performers.

In 1934, Kasfikis appeared in Mos­ cow at the same time as Horace Goldin, and it’s likely that there he would have seen Goldin’s famous Buzz-saw illusion.

Kasfikis copied Goldin’s latest incarnation of sawing through a woman and hit the road.

Kasfikis and his driver were on their way to Salamanca in Spain for a show one evening. They were driving on the Valladolid Highway with a truck full of illusions. The driver swerved to avoid a collision, and a packing crate containing the buzz saw slid forward with such speed and force that it decapitated Kas­ fikis in the passenger seat.

Cleopatra—Valaria Kasfikis

Gibecière • Summer 2010

Tr a g i c M a g i c Later versions of this story report that Kasfikis was beheaded on stage or that his head was cut off by the buzz saw. But the saw was packed in a crate, and it was the tremendous force of its blunt blow that killed him.

Kasfikis’s props were sold at auction and his wife took on the stage name Cleopatra. She did a manipulation act for a time, but her performances, like her husband’s, frequently received a cold reception. In a conjuring periodical of the time, a columnist had mixed feelings about the life and death of Kasfikis: “It was too horrible an accident for anyone to suggest it was poetic justice, but I sometimes feel like decapitating imitators.”

Playing with Fire Conjurers have always wished to appear the masters of fire. Flashes are good misdirection, and flames are intrinsically dramatic. For escapologists, fire raises the stakes. Magicians play with fire, and sometimes they get burned—or, in the case of Balabrega, blown up.

Born John Miller in Helsingborg, Sweden, Balabrega’s family immigrated to the United States in 1868. As a child, he achieved some degree of success as “The Boy Magician.”

In January 1900, Balabrega and his wife appeared in Boston, on a bill shared with Houdini. But Balabrega was restless for a tour of his own.

Balabrega

Vol. 5, No. 2 • 81

Jo s h u a Jay

Courtesy of Kent Blackmore

Levante cheering his human ammunition in her capsule

Gibecière • Summer 2010

Tr a g i c M a g i c

Courtesy of Kent Blackmore

The second house filed in and Levante carried on with his show.

Near the end of the second set, word of Hilda Waterworth’s death reached the magician via an onstage whisper.

Levante wept publicly.

There is a sad epilogue to Hilda Waterworth’s tragic demise. Though newspaper articles mention Hilda’s distressed parents, it appears their primary concern was money. According to Saxon Tylney, who worked with Levante, “[Hilda’s] parents arrived at the station the next day with their solicitor asking no questions about their daughter, but only asking for a certain amount of money in compensation. Les [Levante] relayed this to his insurers who said, ‘Pay it quick. We will have the money in your account tomorrow.’ It was done and he never heard from the parents again.”

On June 14, 2007, the Gun Trick claimed what is probably its most recent victim, Togo’s Kofi Brugah.

While the cause isn’t clear, the whole thing reeks of foul play.

Vol. 5, No. 2 • 105

By permission of the British Library

•• ••• •• •• •• • Ab o u t the Sloane 424 M anuscr ip t

•• ••• •• •• •• •

B

William Kalush and stephen minch

ound into a collection of centuries-old manuscripts housed in the depths of the British Library are sixty-one pages giving explanations of conjuring tricks, written in one hand in Italian. The author of the text is unknown; as is the date of its composition. The British Library has estimated the age for these pages as likely the 1600s. The volume in which the text is bound is known as Sloane 424. Sloane is not an author or a publisher. Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) was the owner of the library from which this collection of manuscripts was acquired. Sloane was a extraordinary collector, and when he bequeathed his library and accumulation of articles to the British government, this one man’s private collection became the foundation for the British Museum.

The completeness of the trick descriptions in Sloane 424 suggests the work was not a notebook meant for jogging the author’s memory, but rather instructions to be read by others, with publication a possible intent. It cannot be ruled out that the work was published, and that no printed copies have survived or have yet been found.

Sloane 424 is an important discovery for at least two reasons. First, from internal evidence it was written either by a professional conjurer, an amateur of unusual insight, or by someone transcribing the instructions of such a person. Ignoring two parlor stunts and a few formulas for

Vol. 5, No. 2 • 133

Anonymous

A method for knowing the card taken by someone from a whole deck of cards but dividing the deck into two parts.

To perform this trick, you must first arrange your cards in this way. Put all the cards that have an even number of pips together; that is, for example, the Tens, the Eights, the 6s, the 4s, the 2s, and on the opposite side all the cards that have an odd number of pips together, which are the 9s, the 7s, the 5s, the 3s and the Aces, and with the cards with the even number of pips put the four Kings, and with those with the odd number of pips, the Ladies and the Soldiers; then put the cards with the even number of pips on one side of the table where you are performing, and those with the odd number of pips on the other; and you will say to one of those standing by, “Take a card wherever you like and look at what card it is”; and in the case that he has taken a card from the pile of cards with the even number of pips, you take in your hand the pile of cards that consists of an odd number of pips (and vice versa), and having him put the card that he took back on the pile that you have taken in your hand have him (in order to cover the trick) shuffle the said pile as much as he likes; and then looking at the pile, you will find the card that was taken. Because if it is a card with an even number of pips, when it is put among those with an odd number of pips you will recognize it, and vice versa. The same reasoning follows and holds good for recognizing a King in the case that it is taken, since the King is placed among the cards with an even number of pips, and the same with the Ladies and Soldiers.

A method for knowing a card thought of by someone in a whole deck.

You will give the whole deck of cards to someone and tell him that he is to think of a card, whichever one he likes, at the same time saying to

Gibecière • Summer 2010

Sloane 424 him that he is to keep in mind the card he thought of and how many cards in[to the deck] the one he has thought of is; for example, if the first card toward his face is the King of Flowers, the 2nd the 4 of Diamonds, the 3rd the Ten of Swords, the 4th the Nine of Hearts, and he thought of the Nine of Hearts, he has thought of his card among four cards; you will take the whole deck of cards, and taking the card that is toward your face, you will begin to count with it, one, and putting the 2nd card on top of the first, you will count, two, and so on for as many cards as you like, observing the same method; and when you have counted as many as you want, you will put the last card among those you counted (which all remain together in one hand), together with all those you have counted, on top of that card that is toward your face in the remaining [part] of the deck; and by adding one more than the number of cards you have counted, and counting from the number of the card that he thought of, that card that completes the number counted by you will be the card. For example: You will count according to the said way 23 cards, you will say that the card that he thought of is the 25th [author’s error: one more than 23 is the 24th], and then you will ask what card he has thought of, and if he says the fourth card, you will count from the first card in the deck that is toward your face, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, etc., up to 25, and the 25th will be the card thought of [as noted, the mental selection will lie 24th from the face, not 25th]. Note that in counting you must not move your mouth; also, make it seem that you are shuffling the cards but do not shuffle them; in order to make the trick certain you should count a fairly large number of cards.

A method for knowing any card someone takes from the deck, and he can take 3, 4, 5, 6 or as many as he wants.

You must first arrange the deck of cards according to the rule that follows. Take the deck and separate all the four suits, putting the Swords on

Vol. 5, No. 2 • 143

Anonymous

By permission of the British Library

Gibecière • Summer 2010