Harry Houdini..........................................................................................................................................1

``All wonder,'' said Samuel Johnson, ``is the effect of novelty on ignorance.'' Yet we are so created that

without something to wonder at we should find life scarcely worth living. That fact does not make ignorance

bliss, or make it ``folly to be wise.'' For the wisest man never gets beyond the reach of novelty, nor can ever

make it his boast that there is nothing he is ignorant of; on the contrary, the wiser he becomes the more

clearly he sees how much there is of which he remains in ignorance. The more he knows, the more he will

My professional life has been a constant record of disillusion, and many things that seem wonderful to most

men are the everyday commonplaces of my business. But I have never been without some seeming marvel

to pique my curiosity and challenge my investigation. In this book I have set down some of the stories of

strange folk and unusual performers that I have gathered in many years of such research.

Much has been written about the feats of miraclemongers, and not a little in the way of explaining them.

Chaucer was by no means the first to turn shrewd eyes upon wonderworkers and show the clay feet of these

popular idols. And since his time innumerable marvels, held to be supernatural, have been exposed for the

tricks they were. Yet today, if a mystifier lack the ingenuity to invent a new and startling stunt, he can safely

fall back upon a trick that has been the favorite of pressagents the world over in all ages. He can imitate the

Hindoo fakir who, having thrown a rope high into the air, has a boy climb it until he is lost to view. He can

even have the feat photographed. The camera will click; nothing will appear on the developed film; and this,

the performer will glibly explain, ``proves'' that the whole company of onlookers was hypnotized! And he can

So I do not feel that I need to apologize for adding another volume to the shelves of works dealing with the

marvels of the miraclemongers. My business has given me an intimate knowledge of stage illusions, together

with many years of experience among show people of all types. My familiarity with the former, and what I

have learned of the psychology of the latter, has placed me at a certain advantage in uncovering the natural

explanation of feats that to the ignorant have seemed supernatural. And even if my readers are too well

informed to be interested in my descriptions of the methods of the various performers who have seemed to

me worthy of attention in these pages, I hope they will find some amusement in following the fortunes and

misfortunes of all manner of strange folk who once bewildered the wise men of their day. If I have

Fire has always been and, seemingly, will always remain, the most terrible of the elements. To the early tribes

it must also have been the most mysterious; for, while earth and air and water were always in evidence, fire

came and went in a manner which must have been quite unaccountable to them. Thus it naturally followed

that the custom of deifying all things which the primitive mind was unable to grasp, led in direct line to the

That fire could be produced through friction finally came into the knowledge of man, but the early methods

entailed much labor. Consequently our easeloving forebears cast about for a method to ``keep the home

fires burning'' and hit upon the plan of appointing a person in each community who should at all times carry a

burning brand. This arrangement had many faults, however, and after a while it was superseded by the

expedient of a fire kept continually burning in a building erected for the purpose.

The Greeks worshiped at an altar of this kind which they called the Altar of Hestia and which the Romans

called the Altar of Vesta. The sacred fire itself was known as Vesta, and its burning was considered a proof of

the presence of the goddess. The Persians had such a building in each town and village; and the Egyptians,

such a fire in every temple; while the Mexicans, Natches, Peruvians and Mayas kept their ``national fires''

burning upon great pyramids. Eventually the keeping of such fires became a sacred rite, and the ``Eternal

Lamps'' kept burning in synagogues and in Byzantine and Catholic churches may be a survival of these

There is a theory that all architecture, public and private, sacred and profane, began with the erection of sheds

to protect the sacred fire. This naturally led men to build for their own protection as well, and thus the family

Another theory holds that the keepers of the sacred fires were the first public servants, and that from this

The worship of the fire itself had been a legacy from the earliest tribes; but it remained for the Rosicrucians

and the fire philosophers of the Sixteenth Century under the lead of Paracelsus to establish a concrete

religious belief on that basis, finding in the Scriptures what seemed to them ample proof that fire was the

symbol of the actual presence of God, as in all cases where He is said to have visited this earth. He came

either in a flame of fire, or surrounded with glory, which they conceived to mean the same thing.

For example: when God appeared on Mount Sinai (Exod. xix, 18) ``The Lord descended upon it in fire.''

Moses, repeating this history, said: ``The Lord spake unto you out of the midst of fire'' (Deut. iv, 12). Again,

when the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses out of the flaming bush, ``the bush burned with fire and the

bush was not consumed'' (Exod. iii, 3). Fire from the Lord consumed the burnt offering of Aaron (Lev. ix,

24), the sacrifice of Gideon (Judg. vi, 21), the burnt offering of David (1 Chron. xxxi, 26), and that at the

dedication of King Solomon's temple (Chron. vii, 1). And when Elijah made his sacrifice to prove that Baal

was not God, ``the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and

Since sacrifice had from the earliest days been considered as food offered to the gods, it was quite logical to

argue that when fire from Heaven fell upon the offering, God himself was present and consumed His own.

Thus the Paracelsists and other fire believers sought, and as they believed found, high authority for

The Theosophists, according to Hargrave Jennings in ``The Rosicrucians,'' called the soul a fire taken from

the eternal ocean of light, and in common with other FirePhilosophers believed that all knowable things,

both of the soul and the body, were evolved out of fire and finally resolvable into it; and that fire was the last

In passing I might call attention to the fact that the Devil is supposed to dwell in the same element.

Some of the secrets of heat resistance as practiced by the dimemuseum and sideshow performers of our

time, secrets grouped under the general title of ``Fireeating,'' must have been known in very early times. To

quote from Chambers' ``Book of Days'': ``In ancient history we find several examples of people who

possessed the art of touching fire without being burned. The Priestesses of Diana, at Castabala, in

Cappadocia, commanded public veneration by walking over redhot iron. The Herpi, a people of Etruria,

walked among glowing embers at an annual festival held on Mount Soracte, and thus proved their sacred

character, receiving certain privileges, among others, exemption from military service, from the Roman

Senate. One of the most astounding stories of antiquity is related in the `ZendaVesta,' to the effect that

Zoroaster, to confute his calumniators, allowed fluid lead to be poured over his body, without receiving any

To me the ``astounding'' part of this story is not in the feat itself, for that is extremely easy to accomplish, but

in the fact that the secret was known at such an early date, which the best authorities place at 500 to 1000

It is said that the earliest recorded instance, in our era, of ordeal by fire was in the fourth century. Simplicius,

Bishop of Autun, who had been married before his promotion, continued to live with his wife, and in order to

demonstrate the Platonic purity of their intercourse placed burning coals upon their flesh without injury.

That the clergy of the Middle Ages, who caused accused persons to walk blindfold among redhot

plowshares, or hold heated irons in their hands, were in possession of the secret of the trick, is shown by the

fact that after trial by ordeal had been abolished the secret of their methods was published by Albert, Count of

Bollstadt, usually called Albertus Magnus but sometimes Albertus Teutonicus, a man distinguished by the

These secrets will be fully explained in the section of this history devoted to the Arcana of the FireEaters

The famous fire dance of the Navajo Indians, often described as though it involved some sort of genuine

necromancy, is explained by a matteroffact spectator. It is true, he says, that the naked worshipers cavort

round a big bonfire, with blazing faggots in their hands, and dash the flames over their own and their fellows'

bodies, all in a most picturesque and maniacal fashion; but their skins are first so thickly coated with a clay

An illustrated article entitled Rites of the Firewalking Fanatics of Japan, by W. C. Jameson Reid, in the

Chicago Sunday InterOcean of September 27th, 1903, reveals so splendid an example of the gullibility of the

wellinformed when the most ordinary trick is cleverly presented and surrounded with the atmosphere of the

occult, that I am impelled to place before my readers a few illuminating excerpts from Mr. Reid's narrative.

This man would, in all probability, scorn to spend a dime to witness the performance of a fireeater in a

circus sideshow; but after traveling half round the world he pays a dollar and spends an hour's time watching

the fanatical incantations of the solemn little Japanese priests for the sake of seeing the

``HiWattarai''which is merely the stunt of walking over hot coals and he then writes it down as the

``eighth wonder of the world,'' while if he had taken the trouble to give the matter even the most superficial

investigation, he could have discovered that the secret of the trick had been made public centuries before.

Mr. Reid is authority for the statement that the Shintoist priests' firewalking rites have ``long been one of

the puzzling mysteries of the scientific world,'' and adds ``If you ever are in Tokio, and can find a few

minutes to spare, by all means do not neglect witnessing at least one performance of `HiWattarai' (fire

walking, and that is really what takes place), for, if you are of that incredulous nature which laughs with

scorn at socalled Eastern mysticism, you will come away, as has many a visitor before you, with an

impression sufficient to last through an ordinary lifetime.'' Further on he says ``If you do not come away

convinced that you have been witness of a spectacle which makes you disbelieve the evidence of your own

eyes and your most matterof fact judgment, then you are a man of stone.'' All of which proves nothing more

than that Mr. Reid was inclined to make positive statements about subjects in which he knew little or nothing.

He tells us further that formerly this rite was performed only in the spring and fall, when, beside the gratuities

of the foreigners, the native worshipers brought ``gifts of wine, large trays of fish, fruit, rice cakes, loaves,

vegetables, and candies.'' Evidently the combination of boxoffice receipts with donation parties proved

extremely tempting to the thrifty priests, for they now give what might be termed a ``continuous

Those who have read the foregoing pages will apply a liberal sprinkling of salt to the solemn assurance of

Mr. Reid, advanced on the authority of Jinrikisha boys, that ``for days beforehand the priests connected with

the temple devote themselves to fasting and prayer to prepare for the ordeal. . . . The performance itself

usually takes place in the late afternoon during twilight in the temple court, the preceding three hours being

spent by the priests in final outbursts of prayer before the unveiled altar in the inner sanctuary of the little

matted temple, and during these invocations no visitors are allowed to enter the sacred precincts.''

Mr. Reid's description of the fire walking itself may not be out of place; it will show that the Japs had nothing

new to offer aside from the ritualistic ceremonials with which they camouflaged the hocuspocus of the

performance, which is merely a survival of the ordeal by fire of earlier religions.

``Shortly before 5 o'clock the priests filed from before the altar into some interior apartments, where they

were to change their beautiful robes for the coarser dress worn during the fire walking. In the meantime

coolies had been set to work in the courtyard to ignite the great bed of charcoal, which had already been laid.

The dimensions of this bed were about twelve feet by four, and, perhaps, a foot deep. On the top was a

quantity of straw and kindling wood, which was lighted, and soon burst into a roaring blaze. The charcoal

became more and more thoroughly ignited until the whole mass glowed in the uncertain gloom, like some

gigantic and demoniacal eye of a modern Prometheus. As soon as the mass of charcoal was thoroughly

ignited from top to bottom, a small gong in the temple gave notice that the wonderful spectacle of

``Soon two of the priests came out, said prayers of almost interminable length at a tiny shrine in the corner of

the enclosure, and turned their attention to the fire. Taking long poles and fans from the coolies, they poked

and encouraged the blaze till it could plainly be seen that the coal was ignited throughout. The whole bed was

a glowing mass, and the heat which rose from it was so intense that we found it uncomfortable to sit fifteen

feet away from it without screening our faces with fans. Then they began to pound it down more solidly

along the middle; as far as possible inequalities in its surface were beaten down, and the coals which

There follows a long and detailed description of further ceremonies, the receiving of gifts, etc., which need

``One of the priests held a pile of white powder on a small wooden stand. This was said to be saltwhich in

Japan is credited with great cleansing propertiesbut as far as could be ascertained by superficial

examination it was a mixture of alum and salt. He stood at one end of the firebed and poised the wooden

tray over his head, and then sprinkled a handful of it on the ground before the glowing bed of coals. At the

same time another priest who stood by him chanted a weird recitative of invocation and struck sparks from

flint and steel which he held in his hands. This same process was repeated by both the priests at the other end,

``Ten minutes, more or less, was spent in various movements and incantations about the bed of coals. At the

end of that time two small pieces of wet matting were brought out and placed at either end and a quantity of

the white mixture was placed upon them. At a signal from the head priest, who acted as master of ceremonies

during the curious succeeding function, the ascetics who were to perform the first exhibition of firewalking

gathered at one end of the bed of coals, which by this time was a fierce and glowing furnace.

``Having raised both his hands and prostrated himself to render thanks to the god who had taken out the `soul'

of the fire, the priest about to undergo the ordeal stood upon the wet matting, wiped his feet lightly in the

white mixture, and while we held our breaths, and our eyes almost leaped from their sockets in awestruck

astonishment, he walked over the glowing mass as unconcernedly as if treading on a carpet in a

drawingroom, his feet coming in contact with the white hot coals at every step. He did not hurry or take

long steps, but sauntered along with almost incredible sangfroid, and before he reached the opposite side he

turned around and sauntered as carelessly back to the mat from which he had started.''

The story goes on to tell how the performance was repeated by the other priests, and then by many of the

native audience; but none of the Europeans tried it, although invited to do so. Mr. Reid's closing statement is

that ``no solution of the mystery can be gleaned, even from high scientific authorities who have witnessed

and closely studied the physical features of these remarkable Shinto firewalking rites.'' Many who are

confronted with something that they cannot explain take refuge in the claim that it puzzles the scientists too.

As a matter of fact, at the time Mr. Reid wrote, such scientists as had given the subject serious study were

An article under the title The Fiery Ordeal of Fiji, by Maurice Delcasse, appeared in the Wide World

Magazine for May, 1898. From Mr. Delcasse's account it appears that the Fijian ordeal is practically the same

as that of the Japanese, as described by Mr. Reid, except that there is very little ceremony surrounding it. The

people of Fiji until a comparatively recent date were cannibals; but their islands are now British possessions,

most of the natives are Christians, and most of their ancient customs have become obsolete, from which I

deduce that the firewalking rites described in this article must have been performed by natives who had

The ordeal takes place on the Island of Benga, which is near Suva, the capital of Fiji, and which, Mr.

Delcasse says, ``was the supposed residence of some of the old gods of Fiji, and was, therefore, considered a

sacred land.'' Instead of walking on the live coals, as the Japanese priests do, the Fijians walk on stones that

The familiar claim is made that the performance puzzles scientists, and that no satisfactory solution has yet

been discovered. We are about to see that for two or three hundred years the same claims have been made by

The earliest mention I have found of a public fireeater in England is in the correspondence of Sir Henry

Watton, under date of June 3rd, 1633. He speaks of an Englishman ``like some swabber of a ship, come from

the Indies, where he has learned to eat fire as familiarly as ever I saw any eat cakes, even whole glowing

brands, which he will crush with his teeth and swallow.'' This was shown in London for two pence.

The first to attract the attention of the upper classes, however, was one Richardson, who appeared in France

in the year 1667 and enjoyed a vogue sufficient to justify the record of his promise in the Journal des Savants.

Later on he came to London, and John Evelyn, in his diary, mentions him under date of October 8th, 1672, as

I took leave of my Lady Sunderland, who was going to Paris to my Lord, now Ambassador there. She made

me stay dinner at Leicester House, and afterwards sent for Richardson, the famous fireeater. He devoured

brimstone on glowing coals before us, chewing and swallowing them; he melted a beereglass and eate it

quite up; then taking a live coale on his tongue he put on it a raw oyster; the coal was blown on with bellows

till it flamed and sparkled in his mouthe, and so remained until the oyster gaped and was quite boil'd.

Then he melted pitch and wax with sulphur, which he drank down as it flamed: I saw it flaming in his mouthe

a good while; he also took up a thick piece of iron, such as laundresses use to put in their smoothingboxes,

when it was fiery hot, held it between his teeth, then in his hand, and threw it about like a stone; but this I

observ'd he cared not to hold very long. Then he stoode on a small pot, and, bending his body, tooke a

glowing iron with his mouthe from betweene his feete, without touching the pot or ground with his hands,

The secret methods employed by Richardson were disclosed by his servant, and this publicity seems to have

brought his career to a sudden close; at least I have found no record of his subsequent movements.

About 1713 a fireeater named De Heiterkeit, a native of Annivi, in Savoy, flourished for a time in London.

He performed five times a day at the Duke of Marlborough's Head, in Fleet Street, the prices being

According to London TitBits, ``De Heiterkeit had the honor of exhibiting before Louis XIV., the Emperor

of Austria, the King of Sicily and the Doge of Venice, and his name having reached the Inquisition, that holy

office proposed experimenting on him to find out whether he was fireproof externally as well as internally.

He was preserved from this unwelcome ordeal, however, by the interference of the Duchess Royal, Regent of

His programme did not differ materially from that of his predecessor, Richardson, who had antedated him by

By far the most famous of the early fireeaters was Robert Powell, whose public career extended over a period

of nearly sixty years, and who was patronized by the English peerage. It was mainly through the

instrumentality of Sir Hans Sloane that, in 1751, the Royal Society presented Powell a purse of gold and a

Lounger's Commonplace Book says of Powell: ``Such is his passion for this terrible element, that if he were

to come hungry into your kitchen, while a sirloin was roasting, he would eat up the fire and leave the beef. It

is somewhat surprising that the friends of REAL MERIT have not yet promoted him, living as we do in an

age favorable to men of genius. Obliged to wander from place to place, instead of indulging himself in

private with his favorite dish, he is under the uncomfortable necessity of eating in public, and helping himself

His advertisements show that he was before the public from 1718 to 1780. One of his later advertisements

Please observe that there are two different performances the same evening, which will be performed by the

who has had the honor to exhibit, with universal applause, the most surprising performances that were ever

attempted by mankind, before His Royal Highness William, late Duke of Cumberland, at Windsor Lodge,

May 7th, 1752; before His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, at Gloucester House, January 30th, 1769;

before His Royal Highness the present Duke of Cumberland, at Windsor Lodge, September 25th, 1769;

before Sir Hans Sloane and several of the Royal Society, March 4th, 1751, who made Mr. Powell a

compliment of a purse of gold, and a fine large silver medal, which the curious may view by applying to him;

He intends to sup on the following articles: 1. He eats redhot coals out of the fire as natural as bread. 2. He

licks with his naked tongue redhot tobacco pipes, flaming with brimstone. 3. He takes a large bunch of deal

matches, lights them altogether; and holds them in his mouth till the flame is extinguished. 4. He takes a

redhot heater out of the fire, licks it with his naked tongue several times, and carries it around the room

between his teeth. 5. He fills his mouth with redhot charcoal, and broils a slice of beef or mutton upon his

tongue, and any person may blow the fire with a pair of bellows at the same time. 6. He takes a quantity of

resin, pitch, bees'wax, sealingwax, brimstone, alum, and lead, melts them all together over a chafingdish of

coals, and eats the same combustibles with a spoon, as if it were a porringer of broth (which he calls his dish

of soup), to the great and agreeable surprise of the spectators; with various other extraordinary performances

never attempted by any other person of this age, and there is scarce a possibility ever will; so that those who

neglect this opportunity of seeing the wonders performed by this artist, will lose the sight of the most

The doors to be opened by six and he sups precisely at seven o'clock, without any notice given by sound of

Prices of admission to ladies and gentlemen, one shilling. Back Seats for Children and Servants, six pence.

Ladies and children may have a private performance any hour of the day, by giving previous notice.

N. B.He displaces teeth or stumps so easily as to scarce be felt. He sells a chemical liquid which

discharges inflammation, scalds, and burns, in a short time, and is necessary to be kept in all families.

His stay in this place will be but short, not exceeding above two or three nights.

This shows how little advance had been made in the art in a century. Richardson had presented practically the

same programme a hundred years before. Perhaps the exposure of Richardson's method by his servant put an

end to fireeating as a form of amusement for a long time, or until the exposure had been forgotten by the

public. Powell himself, though not proof against exposure, seems to have been proof against its effects, for he

kept on the even tenor of his way for sixty years, and at the end of his life was still exhibiting.

Whatever the reason, the eighteenth century fireeaters, like too many magicians of the present day, kept to

the stereotyped programmes of their predecessors. A very few did, however, step out of the beaten track and,

by adding new tricks and giving a new dress to old ones, succeeded in securing a following that was

In this class a Frenchman by the name of Dufour deserves special mention, from the fact that he was the first

to introduce comedy into an act of this nature. He made his bow in Paris in 1783, and is said to have created

quite a sensation by his unusual performance. I am indebted to Martin's Naturliche Magie, 1792, for a very

Dufour made use of a portable building, which was specially adapted to his purposes, and his table was

spread as if for a banquet, except that the edibles were such as his performance demanded. He employed a

trumpeter and a tambour player to furnish music for his repastas well as to attract public attention. In

addition to fireeating, Dufour gave exhibitions of his ability to consume immense quantities of solid food,

and he displayed an appetite for live animals, reptiles, and insects that probably proved highly entertaining to

the not overrefined taste of the audiences of his day. He even advertised a banquet of which the public was

invited to partake at a small fee per plate, but since the menu consisted of the delicacies just described, his

The roast, when Dufour was really hungry, consisted of twenty pounds of beef or a whole calf. His hearth

was either the flat of his hand or his tongue. The butter in which the roast was served was melted brimstone

or burning wax. When the roast was cooked to suit him he ate coals and roast together.

As a dessert he would swallow the knives and forks, glasses, and the earthenware dishes.

He kept his audience in good humor by presenting all this in a spirit of crude comedy and, to increase the

comedy element, he introduced a number of trained cats. Although the thieving proclivities of cats are well

known, Dufour's pets showed no desire to share his repast, and he had them trained to obey his commands

during mealtime. At the close of the meal he would become violently angry with one of them, seize the

unlucky offender, tear it limb from limb and eat the carcass. One of his musicians would then beg him to

produce the cat, dead or alive. In order to do this he would go to a nearby horsetrough and drink it dry;

would eat a number of pounds of soap, or other nauseating substance, clowning it in a manner to provoke

amusement instead of disgust; and, further to mask the disagreeable featuresand also, no doubt, to conceal

the trickwould take the cloth from the table and cover his face; whereupon he would bring forth the

swallowed cat, or one that looked like it, which would howl piteously and seem to struggle wildly while

Dufour gave his best performances in the evening, as he could then show his hocuspocus to best advantage.

His last appearance in Paris was most remarkable. The dinner began with a soup of asps in simmering oil. On

each side was a dish of vegetables, one containing thistles and burdocks, and the other fuming acid. Other

side dishes, of turtles, rats, bats and moles, were garnished with live coals. For the fish course he ate a dish of

snakes in boiling tar and pitch. His roast was a screech owl in a sauce of glowing brimstone. The salad

proved to be spider webs full of small explosive squibs, a plate of butterfly wings and manna worms, a dish

of toads surrounded with flies, crickets, grasshoppers, church beetles, spiders, and caterpillars. He washed all

this down with flaming brandy, and for dessert ate the four large candles standing on the table, both of the

hanging side lamps with their contents, and finally the large center lamp, oil, wick and all. This leaving the

A dog had come in with a farmer, who was probably a confederate, and now began to bark. Since Dufour

could not quiet him, he seized him, bit off his head and swallowed it, throwing the body aside. Then ensued a

comic scene between Dufour and the farmer, the latter demanding that his dog be brought to life, which threw

the audience into paroxysms of laughter. Then suddenly candles reappeared and seemed to light themselves.

Dufour made a series of hocuspocus passes over the dog's body; then the head suddenly appeared in its

Notwithstanding the fact that Dufour must have been by all odds the best performer of his time, I do not find

reference to him in any other authority. But something of his originality appeared in the work of a much

We have seen that Richardson, Powell, Dufour, and generally the better class of fireeaters were able to secure

select audiences and even to attract the attention of scientists in England and on the Continent. But many of

their effects had been employed by mountebanks and street fakirs since the earliest days of the art, and this

In Naturliche Magie, in 1794, Vol. VI, page 111, I find an account of one Quackensalber, who gave a new

twist to the fireeating industry by making a ``High Pitch'' at the fairs and on street corners and exhibiting

feats of fireresistance, washing his hands and face in melted tar, pitch and brimstone, in order to attract a

crowd. He then strove to sell them a compoundcomposed of fish glue, alum and brandywhich he

claimed would cure burns in two or three hours. He demonstrated that this mixture was used by him in his

heat resistance: and then, doubtless, some ``capper'' started the ball rolling, and Herr Quackensalber (his

I have no doubt but that even today a clever performer with this ``High Pitch'' could do a thriving business

in that overgrown country village, New York. At any rate there is the socalled, ``King of Bees,'' a gentleman

from Pennsylvania, who exhibits himself in a cage of netting filled with bees, and then sells the admiring

throng a specific for beestings and the wounds of angry wasps. Unfortunately the only time I ever saw his

majesty, some of his bee actors must have forgotten their lines, for he was thoroughly stung.

In the nineteenth century by far the most distinguished heatresister was Chabert, who deserves and shall

have a chapter to himself. He commenced exhibiting about 1818, but even earlier in the century certain

obscurer performers had anticipated some of his best effects. Among my clippings, for instance, I find the

following. I regret that I cannot give the date, but it is evident from the long form of the letters that it was

quite early. This is the first mention I have found of the hotoven effect afterwards made famous by Chabert.

A correspondent in France writes as follows: ``Paris has, for some days, rung with relations of the wonderful

exploits of a Spaniard in that city, who is endowed with qualities by which he resists the action of very high

degrees of heat, as well as the influence of strong chemical reagents. Many histories of the trials to which he

has been submitted before a Commission of the Institute and Medical School, have appeared in the public

papers; but the public waits with impatience for the report to be made in the name of the Commission by

The subject of these trials is a young man, a native of Toledo, in Spain, 23 years of age, and free of any

apparent peculiarities which can announce anything remarkable in the organization of his skin; after

examination, one would be rather disposed to conclude a peculiar softness than that any hardness or thickness

of the cuticle existed, either naturally or from mechanical causes. Nor was there any circumstance to indicate

that the person had been previously rubbed with any matter capable of resisting the operation of the agents

This man bathed for the space of five minutes, and without any injury to his sensibility or the surface of the

skin, his legs in oil, heated at 97 degrees of Reaumur (250 degrees of Fahrenheit) and with the same oil, at the

same degree of heat, he washed his face and superior extremities. He held, for the same space of time, and

with as little inconvenience, his legs in a solution of muriate of soda, heated to 102 of the same scale, (261

1/2 degrees Fahr.) He stood on and rubbed the soles of his feet with a bar of hot iron heated to a white heat; in

He gargled his mouth with concentrated sulphuric and nitric acids, without the smallest injury or

discoloration; the nitric acid changed the cuticle to a yellow color; with the acids in this state he rubbed his

hands and arms. All these experiments were continued long enough to prove their inefficiency to produce any

impression. It is said, on unquestionable authority, that he remained a considerable time in an oven heated to

65 degrees or 70 degrees, (178189 degrees Fahr.) and from which he was with difficulty induced to retire,

It may be proper to remark, that this man seems totally uninfluenced by any motive to mislead, and, it is said,

he has refused flattering offers from some religious sectaries of turning to emolument his singular qualities;

yet on the whole it seems to be the opinion of most philosophical men, that this person must possess some

matter which counteracts the operation of these agents. To suppose that nature has organized him differently,

would be unphilosophic: by habit he might have blunted his sensibilities against those impressions that create

pain under ordinary circumstances; but how to explain the power by which he resists the action of those

agents which are known to have the strongest affinity for animal matter, is a circumstance difficult to

comprehend. It has not failed, however, to excite the wonder of the ignorant and the inquiry of the learned at

This ``Wonderful Phenomenon'' may have been ``the incombustible Spaniard, Senor Lionetto,'' whom the

London Mirror mentions as performing in Paris in 1803 ``where he attracted the particular attention of Dr.

Sementeni, Professor of Chemistry, and other scientific gentlemen of that city. It appears that a considerable

vapor and smell rose from parts of his body when the fire and heated substances were applied, and in this he

seems to differ from the person now in this country.'' The person here referred to was M. Chabert.

Dr. Sementeni became so interested in the subject that he made a series of experiments upon himself, and

these were finally crowned with success. His experiments will receive further attention in the chapter ``The

A veritable sensation was created in England in the year 1814 by Senora Josephine Girardelli, who was

heralded as having ``just arrived from the Continent, where she had the honor of appearing before most of the

crowned heads of Europe.'' She was first spoken of as German, but afterwards proved to be of Italian birth.

Entering a field of endeavor which had heretofore been exclusively occupied by the sterner sex, this lady

displayed a taste for hot meals that would seem to recommend her as a matrimonial venture. Like all the

earlier exploiters of the devouring element, she was proclaimed as ``The Great Phenomena of Nature''why

the plural form was used does not appear and, doubtless, her feminine instincts led her to impart a

daintiness to her performance which must have appealed to the better class of audience in that day.

The portrait that adorned her first English handbill, which I produce from the Picture Magazine, was

engraved by Page and published by Smeeton, St. Martins Lane, London. It is said to be a faithful

Richardson, of Bartholomew Fair fame, who was responsible for the introduction of many novelties, first

presented Girardelli to an English audience at Portsmouth, where her success was so pronounced that a

London appearance was arranged for the same year; and at Mr. Laston's rooms, 23 New Bond Street, her

performance attracted the most fashionable metropolitan audiences for a considerable time. Following this

engagement she appeared at Richardson's Theater, at Bartholomew Fair, and afterwards toured England in the

company of Signor Germondi, who exhibited a troupe of wonderful trained dogs. One of the canine actors

was billed as the ``Russian Moscow Fire Dog, an animal unknown in this country, (and never exhibited

before) who now delights in that element, having been trained for the last six months at very great expense

Whether Girardelli accumulated sufficient wealth to retire or became discouraged by the exposure of her

methods cannot now be determined, but after she had occupied a prominent position in the public eye and the

public prints for a few seasons she dropped out of sight, and I have been unable to find where or how she

I am even more at a loss concerning her contemporary, John Brooks, of whom I have no other record than the

following letter, which appears in the autobiography of the famous authoractormanager, Thomas Dibdin,

of the Theaters Royal, Covent Garden, Drury Lane, Haymarket and others. This one communication,

however, absolves of any obligation to dig up proofs of John Brooks' versatility: he admits it himself.

I have taken the Liberty of Riting those few lines to ask you the favour if a Greeable for me to Come to your

House, as i Can do a great many different things i Can Sing a good Song and i Can Eat Boiling hot Lead and

Rub my naked arms With a Red hot Poker and Stand on a Red hot sheet of iron, and do Diferent other

things.Sir i hope you Will Excuse me in Riting I do not Want any thing for my Performing for i have Got a

Business that will Sirport me I only want to pass a Way 2 or 3 Hours in the Evening. Sir i hope you Will

We shall let this versatile John Brooks close the preChabert record and turn our attention to the fireeaters

of Chabert's day. Imitation may be the sincerest flattery, but in most cases the victim of the imitation, it is

safe to say, will gladly dispense with that form of adulation. When Chabert first came to America and gave

fresh impetus to the fireeating art by the introduction of new and startling material, he was beset by many

imitators, or as they probably styled themselvesrivals, who immediately proceeded, so far as in them

One of the most prominent of these was a man named W. C. Houghton, who claimed to have challenged

Chabert at various times. In a newspaper advertisement in Philadelphia, where he was scheduled to give a

benefit performance on Saturday evening, February 4th, 1832, he practically promised to expose the method

of poison eating. Like that of all exposers, however, his vogue was of short duration, and very little can be

found about this superChabert except his advertisements. The following will serve as a sample of them:

A CARD.W. C. Houghton, has the honor to announce to the ladies and gentlemen of Philadelphia, that his

BENEFIT will take place at the ARCH STREET THEATRE, on Saturday evening next, 4th February, when

will be presented a variety of entertainments aided by the whole strength of the company.

Mr. H. in addition to his former experiments will exhibit several fiery feats, pronounced by Mons. Chabert an

IMPOSSIBILITY. He will give a COMPLETE explanation by illustrations of the PRINCIPLES of the

EUROPEAN and the AMERICAN CHESS PLAYERS. He will also (unless prevented by indisposition)

swallow a sufficient quantity of phosphorus, (presented by either chemist or druggist of this city) to destroy

THE LIFE OF ANY INDIVIDUAL. Should he not feel disposed to take the poison, he will satisfactorily

In our next chapter we shall see how it went with others who challenged Chabert.

A Polish athlete, J. A. B. Chylinski by name, toured Great Britain and Ireland in 1841, and presented a more

than usually diversified entertainment. Being gifted by nature with exceptional bodily strength, and trained in

gymnastics, he was enabled to present a mixed programme, combining his athletics with feats of strength,

In The Book of Wonderful Characters, published in 1869 by John Camden Hotten, London, I find an account

of Chamouni, the Russian Salamander: ``He was insensible, for a given time, to the effects of heat. He was

remarkable for the simplicity and singleness of his character, as well as for that idiosyncrasy in his

constitution, which enabled him for so many years, not merely to brave the effects of fire, but to take a

delight in an element where other men find destruction. He was above all artifice, and would often entreat his

visitors to melt their own lead, or boil their own mercury, that they might be perfectly satisfied of the

gratification he derived from drinking these preparations. He would also present his tongue in the most

obliging manner to all who wished, to pour melted lead upon it and stamp an impression of their seals.''

A fireproof billed as Professor Rel Maeub, was on the programme at the opening of the New National

Theater, in Philadelphia, Pa., in the spring of 1876. If I am not mistaken the date was April 25th. He called

himself ``The Great Inferno FireKing,'' and his novelty consisted in having a strip of wet carpeting running

parallel to the hot iron plates on which he walked barefoot, and stepping on it occasionally and back onto the

hot iron, when a loud hissing and a cloud of steam bore ample proof of the high temperature of the metal.

One of the more recent fireproofs was Eugene Rivalli, whose act included, besides the usual effects, a cage of

fire in which he stood completely surrounded by flames. Rivalli, whose right name was John Watkins, died in

1900, in England. He had appeared in Great Britain and Ireland as well as on the Continent during the later

The cage of fire has been used by a number of Rivalli's followers also, and the reader will find a full

explanation of the methods employed for it in the chapter devoted to the Arcana of the Fireeaters, to which

we shall come when we have recorded the work of the master Chabert, the history of some of the

heatresisters featured on magicians' programmes, particularly in our own day, and the interest taken in this

art by performers whose chief distinction was won in other fields, as notably Edwin Forrest and the elder

Ivan Ivanitz Chabert, the only Really Incombustible Phenomenon, as he was billed abroad, or J. Xavier

Chabert, A.M., M.D., etc., as he was afterwards known in this country, was probably the most notable, and

certainly the most interesting, character in the history of fireeating, fireresistance, and poison eating. He

was the last prominent figure in the long line of this type of artists to appeal to the better classes and to attract

the attention of scientists, who for a considerable period treated his achievements more or less seriously.

Henry Evanion gave me a valuable collection of Chabert clippings, handbills, etc., and related many

It seems quite impossible for me to write of any historical character in Magic or its allied arts without

recalling my dear old friend Evanion, who introduced me to a throng of fascinating characters, with each of

Subsequently I discovered an old engraving of Chabert, published in London in 1829, and later still another

which bore the change of name, as well as the titles enumerated above. The latter was published in New

York, September, 1836, and bore the inscription: ``One of the most celebrated Chemists, Philosophers, and

Physicians of the present day.'' These discoveries, together with a clue from Evanion, led to further

investigations, which resulted in the interesting discovery that this onetime Bartholomew Fair entertainer

spent the last years of his life in New York City. He resided here for twentyseven years and lies buried in

Nearby is the grave of good old Signor Blitz, and not far away is the plot that holds all that is mortal of my

beloved parents. When I finally break away from earthly chains and restraints, I hope to be placed beside

During my search for data regarding Chabert I looked in the telephone book for a possible descendant. By

accident I picked up the Suburban instead of the Metropolitan edition, and there I found a Victor E. Chabert

living at Allenhurst, N. J. I immediately got into communication with him and found that he was a grandson

of the Fire King, but he could give me no more information than I already possessed, which I now spread

M. Chabert was a son of Joseph and Therese Julienne Chabert. He was born on May 10th, 1792, at Avignon,

Chabert was a soldier in the Napoleonic wars, was exiled to Siberia and escaped to England. His grandson

has a bronze Napoleon medal which was presented to Chabert, presumably for valor on the field of battle.

Napoleon was exiled in 1815 and again three years later. Chabert first attracted public notice in Paris, at

which time his demonstrations of heatresistance were sufficiently astonishing to merit the attention of no

To the more familiar feats of his predecessors he added startling novelties in the art of heatresistance, the

most spectacular being that of entering a large iron cabinet, which resembled a common baker's oven, heated

to the usual temperature of such ovens. He carried in his hand a leg of mutton and remained until the meat

was thoroughly cooked. Another thriller involved standing in a flaming tarbarrel until it was entirely

In 1828, Chabert gave a series of performances at the Argyle Rooms in London, and created a veritable

sensation. A correspondent in the London Mirror has this to say of Chabert's work at that time: ``Of M.

Chabert's wonderful power of withstanding the operation of the fiery element, it is in the recollection of the

writer of witnessing, some few years back, this same individual (in connection with the noless fireproof

Signora Girardelli) exhibiting `extraordinary proofs of his supernatural power of resisting the most intense

heat of every kind.' Since which an IMPROVEMENT of a more formidable nature has to our astonished

fancy been just demonstrated. In the newspapers of the past week it is reported that he, in the first instance,

refreshed himself with a hearty meal of phosphorus, which was, at his own request, supplied to him very

liberally by several of his visitors, who were previously unacquainted with him. He washed down (they say)

this infernal fare with solutions of arsenic and oxalic acid; thus throwing into the background the

longestablished fame of Mithridates. He next swallowed with great gout, several spoonfuls of boiling oil;

and, as a dessert to this delicate repast, helped himself with his naked hands to a considerable quantity of

molten lead. The experiment, however, of entering into a hot oven, together with a quantity of meat,

sufficient, when cooked, to regale those of his friends who were specially invited to witness his performance,

was the chefd'oeuvre of the day. Having ordered three fagots of wood, which is the quantity generally used

by bakers, to be thrown into the oven, and they being set on fire, twelve more fagots of the same size were

subsequently added to them, which being all consumed by three o'clock, M. Chabert entered the oven with a

dish of raw meat, and when it was sufficiently done he handed it out, took in another, and remained therein

until the second quantity was also well cooked; he then came out of the oven, and sat down, continues the

report, to partake, with a respectable assembly of friends, of those viands he had so closely attended during

the culinary process. Publicly, on a subsequent day, and in an oven 6 feet by 7, and at a heat of about 220, he

remained till a steak was properly done, and again returned to his fiery den and continued for a period of

thirty minutes, in complete triumph over the power of an element so much dreaded by humankind, and so

destructive to animal nature. It has been properly observed, that there are preparations which so indurate the

cuticle, as to render it insensible to the heat of either boiling oil or melted lead; and the fatal qualities of

certain poisons may be destroyed, if the medium through which they are imbibed, as we suppose to be the

case here, is a strong alkali. Many experiments, as to the extent to which the human frame could bear heat,

without the destruction of the vital powers, have been tried from time to time; but so far as recollection

serves, Monsieur Chabert's fireresisting qualities are greater than those professed by individuals who, before

It was announced some time ago, in one of the French journals, that experiments had been tried with a

female, whose firestanding qualities had excited great astonishment. She, it appears, was placed in a heated

oven, into which live dogs, cats, and rabbits were conveyed. The poor animals died in a state of convulsion

almost immediately, while the Firequeen bore the heat without complaining. In that instance, however, the

Much of the power to resist greater degrees of heat than can other men may be a natural gift, much the result

of chemical applications, and much from having the parts indurated by long practice; probably all three are

At the Argyle Rooms, London, in 1829, Mons. Chabert, the FireKing, exhibited his powers of resisting

poisons, and withstanding extreme heat. He swallowed forty grains of phosphorus, sipped oil at 333 degrees

with impunity, and rubbed a redhot fireshovel over his tongue, hair, and face, unharmed.

On September 23d, on a challenge of L50, Chabert repeated these feats and won the wager; he next

swallowed a piece of burning torch; and then, dressed in coarse woolen, entered an oven heated to 380

Still, the performances were suspected, and in fact, proved to be a chemical juggle.

Another challenge in the same year is recorded under the heading, ``Sights of London,'' as follows:

We were tempted on Wednesday to the Argyle Rooms by the challenge of a person of the uncommon name

of J. Smith to M. Chabert, our old friend the Fire King, whom this individual dared to invite to a trial of

powers in swallowing poison and being baked! The audacity of such a step quite amazed us; and expecting to

see in the competitor at least a Vulcan, the God of all Smiths, was hastened to the scene of strife. Alas, our

disappointment was complete! Smith had not even the courage of a blacksmith for standing fire, and yielded

a stake of L50, as was stated, without a contest, to M. Chabert, on the latter coming out of his oven with his

own two steaks perfectly cooked. On this occasion Chabert took 20 grains of phosphorus, swallowed oil

heated to nearly 100 degrees above boiling water, took molten lead out of a ladle with his fingers and cooled

it on his tongue; and, besides performing other remarkable feats, remained five minutes in the oven at a

temperature of between 300 and 400 degrees by the thermometer. There was about 150 persons present,

many of them medical men; and being convinced that these things were fairly done, without trickery, much

The following detailed account of the latter challenge appeared in the Chronicle, London, September, 1829.

THE FIRE KING AND HIS CHALLENGER. An advertisement appeared lately in one of the papers, in

which a Mr. J. Smith after insinuating that M. Chabert practised some juggle when he appeared to enter an

oven heated to five hundred degrees, and to swallow twenty grains of phosphorus, challenged him to perform

the exploits which he professed to be performing daily. In consequence M. Chabert publicly accepted Mr. J.

Smith's challenge for L50, requesting him to provide the poison himself. A day was fixed upon which the

challenge was to be determined, and at two o'clock on that day, a number of gentlemen assembled in the

Argylerooms, where the exhibition was to take place. At a little before three the fireking made his

appearance near his oven, and as some impatience had been exhibited, owing to the nonarrival of Mr. J.

Smith, he offered to amuse the company with a few trifling experiments. He made a shovel redhot and

rubbed it over his tongue, a trick for which no credit, he said, was due, as the moisture of the tongue was

sufficient to prevent any injury arising from it. He next rubbed it over his hair and face, declaring that

anybody might perform the same feat by first washing themselves in a mixture of spirits of sulphur and alum,

He put his hand into some melted lead, took a small portion of it out, placed it in his mouth, and then gave it

in a solid state to some of the company. This performance, according to his account, was also very easy; for

he seized only a very small particle, which, by a tight compression between the forefinger and the thumb,

became cool before it reached the mouth. At this time Mr. Smith made his appearance, and M. Chabert

forthwith prepared himself for mightier undertakings. A cruse of oil was brought forward and poured into a

saucepan, which was previously turned upside down, to show that there was no water in it. The alleged

reason for this step was, that the vulgar conjurors, who profess to drink boiling oil, place the oil in water, and

drink it when the water boils, at which time the oil is not warmer than an ordinary cup of tea. He intended to

drink the oil when any person might see it bubbling in the saucepan, and when the thermometer would prove

that it was heated to three hundred and sixty degrees. The saucepan was accordingly placed on the fire, and as

it was acquiring the requisite heat, the fireking challenged any man living to drink a spoonful of the oil at

the same temperature as that at which he was going to drink it. In a few minutes afterwards, he sipped off a

spoonful with greatest apparent ease, although the spoon, from contact with the boiling fluid, had become too

``And now, Monsieur Smith,'' said the fireking, ``now for your challenge. Have you prepared yourself with

phosphorus, or will you take some of mine, which is laid on that table?'' Mr. Smith, walked up to the table,

Fireking``I ask you, on your honor as a gentleman, is this genuine unmixed poison?''

A person in the room requested that Dr. Gordon Smith, one of the medical professors in the London

University, would examine the vial, and decide whether it contained genuine phosphorus.

The professor went to the table, on which the formidable collection of poisons such as red and white

arsenic, hydrocyanic acid, morphine and phosphorus was placed, and, examining the vial, declared, that, to

M. Chabert asked Mr. Smith, how many grains he wished to commence his first draught with. Mr.

A medical gentleman then came forward and cut off two parcels of phosphorus, containing twenty grains

each. He was placing them in the water, when the fireking requested that his phosphorus might be cut into

small pieces, as he did not wish the pieces to stop on their way to his stomach. The poisons were now

prepared. A wineglass contained the portion set aside for the firekinga tumbler the portion reserved for

The Fireking``I suppose, gentlemen, I must begin, and to convince you that I do not juggle, I will first

take off my coat, and then I will trouble you, doctor (speaking to Dr. Gordon Smith), to tie my hands together

behind me. After he had been bandaged in this manner, he planted himself on one knee in the middle of the

room, and requested some gentleman to place the phosphorus on his tongue and pour the water down his

throat. This was accordingly done, and the water and phosphorus were swallowed together. He then opened

his mouth and requested the company to look whether any portion of the phosphorus remained in his mouth.

Several gentlemen examined his mouth, and declared that there was no phosphorus perceptible either upon or

under his tongue. He was then by his own desire unbandaged. The fireking forthwith turned to Mr. Smith

and offered him the other glass of phosphorus. Mr. Smith started back in infinite alarm`Not for worlds, Sir,

The Fireking``Then wherefore did you send me a challenge? You pledged your honor to drink it, if I did;

Here several voices exclaimed that the bet was lost. Some said there must be a confederacy between the

challenger and the challenged, and others asked whether any money had been deposited? The fireking called

a Mr. White forward, who deposed that he held the stakes, which had been regularly placed in his hands, by

The fireking here turned round with great exultation to the company, and pulling a bottle out of his pocket,

exclaimed, ``I did never see this gentleman before this morning, and I did not know but that he might be bold

enough to venture to take this quantity of poison. I was determined not to let him lose his life by his foolish

wager, and therefore I did bring an antidote in my pocket, which would have prevented him from suffering

any harm.'' Mr. Smith said his object was answered by seeing twenty grains of genuine phosphorus

swallowed. He had conceived it impossible, as three grains were quite sufficient to destroy life. The fireking

then withdrew into another room for the professed purpose of putting on his usual dress for entering the oven,

but in all probability for the purpose of getting the phosphorus out of his stomach.

After an absence of twenty minutes, he returned, dressed in a coarse woolen coat, to enter the heated oven.

Before he entered it, a medical gentleman ascertained that his pulse was vibrating ninetyeight times a

minute. He remained in the oven five minutes, during which time he sung Le Vaillant Troubadour, and

superintended the cooking of two dishes of beef steaks. At the end of that time he came out, perspiring

profusely, and with a pulse making one hundred and sixtyeight vibrations in a minute. The thermometer,

when brought out of the oven, stood at three hundred and eighty degrees; within the oven he said it was above

Although he was suspected of trickery by many, was often challenged, and had an army of rivals and

imitators, all available records show that Chabert was beyond a doubt the greatest fire and poison resister that

Seeking new laurels, he came to America in 1832, and although he was successful in New York, his

subsequent tour of the States was financially disastrous. He evidently saved enough from the wreck, however,

to start in business, and the declining years of his eventful life were passed in the comparative obscurity of a

As his biographer I regret to be obliged to chronicle the fact that he made and sold an alleged specific for the

White Plague, thus enabling his detractors to couple with his name the word Quack. The following article,

which appeared in the New York Herald of September 1st, 1859, three days after Chabert's death, gives

We published among the obituary notices in yesterday's Herald the death of Dr. Julian Xavier Chabert, the

``Fire King,'' aged 67 years, of pulmonary consumption. Dr. C. was a native of France, and came to this

country in 1832, and was first introduced to the public at the lecture room of the old Clinton Hall, in Nassau

Street, where he gave exhibitions by entering a hot oven of his own construction, and while there gave

evidence of his salamander qualities by cooking beef steaks, to the surprise and astonishment of his

It was a question to many whether the Doctor's oven was redhot or not, as he never allowed any person to

approach him during the exhibition or take part in the proceedings. He made a tour of the United States in

giving these exhibitions, which resulted in financial bankruptcy. At the breaking out of the cholera in 1832 he

turned Doctor, and appended M.D., to his name, and suddenly his newspaper advertisements claimed for him

the title of the celebrated Fire King, the curer of consumption, the maker of Chinese Lotion, etc.

While the Doctor was at the height of his popularity, some wag perpetrated the following joke in a newspaper

paragraph: ``During some experiments he was making in chemistry last week, an explosion took place which

entirely bewildered his faculties and left him in a condition bordering on the grave. He was blown into a

thousand atoms. It took place on Wednesday of last week and some accounts state that it grew out of an

experiment with phosphoric ether, others that it was by a too liberal indulgence in Prussic acid, an article

which, from its resemblance to the peach, he was remarkably fond of having about him.''

The Doctor was extensively accused of quackery, and on one occasion when the Herald touched on the same

subject, it brought him to our office and he exhibited diplomas, certificates and medical honors without

The Doctor was remarkable for his prolific display of jewelry and medals of honor, and by his extensive

display of beard. He found a rival in this city in the person of another French ``chemist,'' who gave the Doctor

The Doctor was famous, also, for his fourhorse turnouts in Broadway, alternating, when he saw proper, to a

change to the ``tandem'' style. He married an Irish lady whom he at first supposed to be immensely rich, but

after the nuptials it was discovered that she merely had a life interest in a large estate in common with several

The Doctor, it appears, was formerly a soldier in the French Army, and quite recently he received from

thence a medal of the order of St. Helena, an account of which appeared in the Herald. Prior to his death he

was engaged in writing his biography (in French) and had it nearly ready for publication.

Here follows a supposedly humorous speech in broken English, quoted from the London Lancet, in which the

``The Doctor was what was termed a `fast liver,' and at the time of his death he kept a drug store in Grand

Street, and had very little of this world's goods. He leaves three children to mourn his loss, one of them an

Dr. C. has `gone to that bourne whence no traveller returns,' and we fervently trust and hope that the

disembodied spirits of the tens of thousands whom he has treated in this sphere will treat him with the same

Many of our most noted magicians have considered it not beneath their dignity to introduce fireeating into

their programmes, either in their own work or by the employment of a ``Fire Artist.'' Although seldom

presenting it in his recent performances, Ching Ling Foo is a fireeater of the highest type, refining the effect

Of Foo's thousand imitators the only positively successful one was William E. Robinson, whose tragic death

while in the performance of the bulletcatching trick is the latest addition to the long list of casualties

chargeable to that illomened juggle. He carried the imitation even as far as the name, calling himself Chung

Ling Soo. Robinson was very successful in the classic trick of apparently eating large quantities of cotton and

blowing smoke and sparks from the mouth. His teeth were finally quite destroyed by the continued

The employment of fireeaters by magicians began a century ago; for in 1816 the magician Sieur Boaz, K.

C., featured a performer who was billed as the ``ManSalamander.'' The fact that Boaz gave him a place on

his programme is proof that this man was clever, but the effects there listed show nothing original.

In 1818 a Mr. Carlton, Professor of Chemistry, toured England in company with Rae, the Bartholomew Fair

magician. As will be seen by the handbill reproduced here, Carlton promised to explain the ``Deceptive Part''

In 1820 a Mr. Cassillis toured England with a juvenile company, one of the features of which was Miss

Cassillis, aged nine years, whose act was a complete reproduction of the programme of Boaz, concluding her

A Negro, Carlo Alberto, appeared in a benefit performance given by Herr Julian, who styled himself the

``Wizard of the South,'' in London, on November 28th, 1843. Alberto was billed as the ``Great African

Wonder, the Fire King'' and it was promised that he would ``go through part of his wonderful performance as

given by him in the principal theaters in America, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, etc.''

A later number on the same bill reads: ``The African Wonder, Carlo Alberto, will sing several new and

In more recent times there have been a number of Negro fireeaters, but none seems to have risen to

Ling Look, one of the best of contemporary fire performers, was with Dean Harry Kellar when the latter

made his famous trip around the world in 1877. Look combined fireeating and swordswallowing in a

rather startling manner. His best effect was the swallowing of a redhot sword.[1] Another thriller consisted

in fastening a long sword to the stock of a musket; when he had swallowed about half the length of the blade,

he discharged the gun and the recoil drove the sword suddenly down his throat to the very hilt. Although

Look always appeared in a Chinese makeup, Dean Kellar told me that he thought his right name was Dave

[1] I never saw Ling Look's work, but I know that some of the sword swallowers have made use of a sheath

which was swallowed before the performance, and the swords were simply pushed into it. A sheath of this

kind lined with asbestos might easily have served as a protection against the redhot blade.

Yamadeva, a brother of Ling Look, was also with the Kellar Company, doing cabinet manifestations and rope

escapes. Both brothers died in China during this engagement, and a strange incident occurred in connection

with their deaths. Just before they were to sail from Shanghai on the P. & O. steamer Khiva for Hong Kong,

Yamadeva and Kellar visited the bowling alley of The Hermitage, a pleasure resort on the Bubbling Well

Road. They were watching a husky sea captain, who was using a huge ball and making a ``double spare'' at

every roll, when Yamadeva suddenly remarked, ``I can handle one as heavy as that big loafer can.'' Suiting

the action to the word, he seized one of the largest balls and drove it down the alley with all his might; but he

had misjudged his own strength, and he paid for the foolhardy act with his life, for he had no sooner delivered

the ball than he grasped his side and moaned with pain. He had hardly sufficient strength to get back to the

ship, where he went immediately to bed and died shortly afterward. An examination showed that he had

Kellar and Ling Look had much difficulty in persuading the captain to take the body to Hong Kong, but he

finally consented. On the way down the Yang Tse Kiang River, Look was greatly depressed; but all at once

he became strangely excited, and said that his brother was not dead, for he had just heard the peculiar whistle

with which they had always called each other. The whistle was several times repeated, and was heard by all

on board. Finally the captain, convinced that something was wrong, had the lid removed from the coffin, but

the body of Yamadeva gave no indication of life, and all save Ling Look decided that they must have been

Poor Ling Look, however, sobbingly said to Kellar, ``I shall never leave Hong Kong alive. My brother has

called me to join him.'' This prediction was fulfilled, for shortly after their arrival in Hong Kong he

underwent an operation for a liver trouble, and died under the knife. The brothers were buried in Happy

All this was related to me at the MarlboroughBlenheim, Atlantic City, in June, 1908, by Kellar himself, and

portions of it were repeated in 1917 when Dean Kellar sat by me at the Society of American Magicians'

In 1879 there appeared in England a performer who claimed to be the original Ling Look. He wore his

makeup both on and off the stage, and copied, so far as he could, Ling's style of work. His fame reached this

country and the New York Clipper published, in its Letter Columns, an article stating that Ling Look was not

dead, but was alive and working in England. His imitator had the nerve to stick to his story even when

confronted by Kellar, but when the latter assured him that he had personally attended the burial of Ling, in

Hong Kong, he broke down and confessed that he was a younger brother of the original Ling Look.

Kellar later informed me that the resemblance was so strong that had he not seen the original Ling Look

consigned to the earth, he himself would have been duped into believing that this was the man who had been

The Salambos were among the first to use electrical effects in a fire act, combining these with the natural gas

and ``human volcano'' stunts of their predecessors, so that they were able to present an extremely spectacular

performance without having recourse to such unpleasant features as had marred the effect of earlier fire acts.

Bueno Core, too, deserves honorable mention for the cleanness and snap of his act; and Del Kano should also

One of the best known of the modern fireeaters was Barnello, who was a good business man as well, and kept

steadily employed at a better salary than the rank and file of his contemporaries. He did a thriving business in

the sale of the various concoctions used in his art, and published and sold a most complete book of formulas

and general instructions for those interested in the craft. He had, indeed, many irons in the fire, and he kept

It will perhaps surprise the present generation to learn that the wellknown circus man Jacob Showles was

once a fireeater, and that Del Fugo, wellknown in his day as a dancer in the music halls, began as a

fireresister, and did his dance on hot iron plates. But the reader has two keener surprises in store for him

before I close the long history of the heatresisters. The first concerns our great American tragedian Edwin

Forrest (18061872) who, according to James Rees (Colley Cibber), once essayed a fireresisting act. Forrest

was always fond of athletics and at one time made an engagement with the manager of a circus to appear as a

tumbler and rider. The engagement was not fulfilled, however, as his friend Sol Smith induced him to break it

and return to the legitimate stage. Smith afterwards admitted to Cibber that if Forrest had remained with the

circus he would have become one of the most daring riders and vaulters that ever appeared in the ring.

His adventure in fireresistance was on the occasion of the benefit to ``Charley Young,'' on which eventful

night, as the last of his acrobatic feats, he made a flying leap through a barrel of red fire, singeing his hair and

eyebrows terribly. This particular leap through fire was the big sensation of those days, and Forrest evidently

The second concerns an equally popular actor, a comedian this time, the elder Sothern (18261881). On

March 20, 1878, a writer in the Chicago InterOcean communicated to that paper the following curiously

This is the question that fifteen puzzled investigators are asking themselves this morning, after witnessing a

number of astounding manifestations at a private seance given by Mr. Sothern last night.

It lacked a few minutes of 12 when a number of Mr. Sothern's friends, who had been given to understand that

something remarkable was to be performed, assembled in the former's room at the Sherman House and took

seats around a marbletop table, which was placed in the center of the apartment. On the table were a number

of glasses, two very large bottles, and five lemons. A sprightly young gentleman attempted to crack a joke

about spirits being confined in bottles, but the company frowned him down, and for once Mr. Sothern had a

There was a good deal of curiosity regarding the object of the gathering, but no one was able to explain. Each

gentleman testified to the fact Mr. Sothern's agent had waited upon him, and solicited his presence at a little

Mr. Sothern himself soon after appeared, and, after shaking hands with the party, thus addressed them:

``Gentlemen, I have invited you here this evening to witness a few manifestations, demonstrations, tests, or

whatever you choose to call them, which I have accidentally discovered that I am able to perform.

``I used to DREAD the fire, having been scorched once when an innocent child. (A laugh.)

Mr. Sothern (severely)``I HOPE there will be no levity here, and I wish to say now that demonstrations of

any kind are liable to upset me, while demonstrations of a particular kind may upset the audience.''

``Thirteen weeks ago, while walking up Greenwich Street, in New York, I stepped into a store to buy a cigar.

To show you there is no trick about it, here are cigars out of the same box from which I selected the one I that

``Well, I stepped to the little hanging gasjet to light it, and, having done so, stood contemplatively holding

the gasjet and the cigar in either hand, thinking what a saving it would be to smoke a pipe, when, in my

absentmindedness, I dropped the cigar and put the gasjet into my mouth. Strange as it may appear, I felt no

pain, and stood there holding the thing in my mouth and puffing till the man in charge yelled out to me that I

was swallowing his gas. Then I looked up, and, sure enough, there I was pulling away at the slender flame

``I dropped it instantly, and felt of my mouth, but noticed no inconvenience or unpleasant sensation whatever.

``As I didn't know what I meant by it I couldn't answer, so I picked up my cigar and went home. Once there I

tried the experiment again, and in doing so I found that not only my mouth, but my hands and face, indeed,

all of my body, was proof against fire. I called on a physician, and he examined me, and reported nothing

wrong with my flesh, which appeared to be in normal condition. I said nothing about it publicly, but the fact

greatly surprised me, and I have invited you here tonight to witness a few experiments.''

Saying this, Mr. Sothern, who had lit a cigar while pausing in his speech, turned the fire end into his mouth

There was probably never a gathering more dumbfounded than that present in the room. A few questions

were asked, and then five gentlemen were appointed to examine Mr. Sothern's hands, etc., before he began

his experiments. Having thoroughly washed the parts that he proposed to subject to the flames, Mr. Sothern

began by burning his arm, and passing it through the gasjet very slowly, twice stopping the motion and

holding it still in the flames. He then picked up a poker with a sort of hook on the end, and proceeded to fish

a small coil of wire from the grate. The wire came out fairly white with the heat. Mr. Sothern took the coil in

his hands and cooly proceeded to wrap it round his left leg to the knee. Having done so, he stood on the table

in the center of the circle and requested the committee to examine the wrappings and the leg and report if

While this was going on, there was a smile, almost seraphic in its beauty, on Mr. Sothern's face.

After this an enormous hot iron, in the shape of a horseshoe, was placed on Mr. Sothern's body, where it

As a final test, a tailor's goose was put on the coals, and, after being thoroughly heated, was placed on Mr.

Sothern's chair. The latter lighted a fresh cigar, and then coolly took a seat on the goose without the least

seeming inconvenience. During the last experiment Mr. Sothern sang in an excellent tone and voice, ``I'm

The question now is, were the fifteen auditors of Mr. Sothern fooled and deceived, or was this a genuine

manifestation of extraordinary power? Sothern is such an inveterate joker that he may have put the thing upon

the boys for his own amusement; but if so, it was one of the nicest tricks ever witnessed by yours truly,

P. S.What is equally marvellous to me is that the fire didn't burn his clothes where it touched them, any

(There is nothing new in this. Mr. Sothern has long been known as one of the most expert jugglers in the

profession. Some years ago he gained the soubriquet of the ``Fire King!'' He frequently amuses his friends by

eating fire, though he long ago ceased to give public exhibitions. Probably the success of the experiments last

night were largely owing to the lemons present. There is a good deal of trickery in those same

which suggests that the editor of the InterOcean was either pretty well acquainted with the comedian's

addiction to spoofing, or else less susceptible to superstition than certain scientists of our generation.

The great day of the Fireeateror, should I say, the day of the great Fireeaterhas passed. No longer

does fashion flock to his doors, nor science study his wonders, and he must now seek a following in the

gaping loiterers of the circus sideshow, the pumpkinand prizepig country fair, or the tawdry booth at

Coney Island. The credulous, wonderloving scientist, however, still abides with us and, while his

seriousminded brothers are wringing from Nature her jealously guarded secrets, the knowledge of which

benefits all mankind, he gravely follows that perennial Willofthewisp, spiritism, and lays the flattering

unction to his soul that he is investigating ``psychic phenomena,'' when in reality he is merely gazing with

The yellow thread of exposure seems to be inextricably woven into all fabrics whose strength is secrecy, and

experience proves that it is much easier to become fireproof than to become exposure proof. It is still an open

question, however, as to what extent exposure really injures a performer. Exposure of the secrets of the

fireeaters, for instance, dates back almost to the beginning of the art itself. The priests were exposed,

Richardson was exposed, Powell was exposed and so on down the line; but the business continued to prosper,

the really clever performers drew quite fashionable audiences for a long time, and it was probably the

demand for a higher form of entertainment, resulting from a refinement of the public taste, rather than the

result of the many exposures, that finally relegated the Fireeaters to the haunts of the proletariat.

How the early priests came into possession of these secrets does not appear, and if there were ever any

records of this kind the Church would hardly allow them to become public. That they used practically the

same system which has been adopted by all their followers is amply proved by the fact that after trial by

ordeal had been abolished Albertus Magnus, in his work De Mirabilibus Mundi, at the end of his book De

Secretis Mulierum, Amstelod, 1702, made public the underlying principles of heatresistance; namely, the

use of certain compounds which render the exposed parts to a more or less extent impervious to heat. Many

different formulas have been discovered which accomplish the purpose, but the principle remains unchanged.

The formula set down by Albertus Magnus was probably the first ever made public: the following translation

Take juice of marshmallow, and white of egg, fleabane seeds, and lime; powder them and mix juice of

radish with the white of egg; mix all thoroughly and with this composition annoint your body or hand and

allow it to dry and afterwards annoint it again, and after this you may boldly take up hot iron without hurt.

``Such a paste,'' says the correspondent to the Mirror, ``would indeed be very visible.''

Another early formula is given in the 1763 edition of Hocus Pocus. Examination of the different editions of

this book in my library discloses the fact that there are no fire formulas in the second edition, 1635, which is

the earliest I have (first editions are very rare and there is only one record of a sale of that edition at auction).

From the fact that this formula was published during the time that Powell was appearing in England I gather

that that circumstance may account for its addition to the book. It does not appear in the German or Dutch

Take half an ounce of samphire, dissolve it in two ounces of aquaevitae, add to it one ounce of quicksilver,

one ounce of liquid storax, which is the droppings of Myrrh and hinders the camphire from firing; take also

two ounces of hematitus, a red stone to be had at the druggist's, and when you buy it let them beat it to

powder in their great mortar, for it is so very hard that it cannot be done in a small one; put this to the

aforementioned composition, and when you intend to walk on the bar you must annoint your feet well

therewith, and you may walk over without danger: by this you may wash your hands in boiling lead.

This was the secret modus operandi made use of by Richardson, the first notably successful fire artist to

[2] Such disloyalty in trusted servants is one of the most disheartening things that can happen to a public

performer. But it must not be thought that I say this out of personal experience: for in the many years that I

have been before the public my secret methods have been steadily shielded by the strict integrity of my

assistants, most of whom have been with me for years. Only one man ever betrayed my confidence, and that

only in a minor matter. But then, so far as I know, I am the only performer who ever pledged his assistants to

Hone's Table Book, London, 1827, page 315, gives Richardson's method as follows:

It consisted only in rubbing the hands and thoroughly washing the mouth, lips, tongue, teeth and other parts

which were to touch the fire, with pure spirits of sulphur. This burns and cauterizes the epidermis or upper

skin, till it becomes as hard and thick as leather, and each time the experiment is tried it becomes still easier.

But if, after it has been very often repeated the upper skin should grow so callous and hard as to become

troublesome, washing the parts affected with very warm water, or hot wine, will bring away all the shrivelled

or parched epidermis. The flesh, however, will continue tender and unfit for such business till it has been

This preparation may be rendered much stronger and more efficacious by mixing equal quantities of spirit of

sulphur, sal ammoniac, essence of rosemary and juice of onions. The bad effects which frequently

swallowing redhot coals, melted sealing wax, rosin, brimstone and other calcined and inflammable matter,

might have had upon his stomach were prevented by drinking plentifully of warm water and oil, as soon as he

This anecdote was communicated to the author of the Journal des Savants by Mr. Panthot, Doctor of Physics

and Member of the College at Lyons. It appeared at the time Powell was showing his fireeating stunts in

Whether Mr. Powell will take it kindly of me thus to have published his secret I cannot tell; but as he now

begins to drop into years, has no children that I know of and may die suddenly, or without making a will, I

think it a great pity so genteel an occupation should become one of the artes perditae, as possibly it may, if

proper care is not taken, and therefore hope, after this information, some truehearted ENGLISHMAN will

take it up again, for the honor of his country, when he reads in the newspapers, ``Yesterday, died, much

lamented, the famous Mr. Powell. He was the best, if not the only, fireeater in the world, and it is greatly to

After a couple of columns more in a similar strain, the correspondent signs himself Philopyraphagus

Ashburniensis. In his History of Inventions, Vol. III, page 272, 1817 edition, Beckmann thus describes the

The deception of breathing out flames, which at present excites, in a particular manner, the astonishment of

the ignorant, is very ancient. When the slaves in Sicily, about a century and a half before our era, made a

formidable insurrection, and avenged themselves in a cruel manner, for the severities which they had

suffered, there was amongst them a Syrian named Eunusa man of great craft and courage; who having

passed through many scenes of life, had become acquainted with a variety of arts. He pretended to have

immediate communication with the gods; was the oracle and leader of his fellowslaves; and, as is usual on

such occasions confirmed his divine mission by miracles. When heated by enthusiasm and desirous of

inspiring his followers with courage, he breathed flames or sparks among them from his mouth while he was

addressing them. We are told by historians that for this purpose he pierced a nut shell at both ends, and,

having filled it with some burning substance, put it into his mouth and breathed through it. This deception, at

present, is performed much better. The juggler rolls together some flax or hemp, so as to form a ball about the

size of a walnut; sets it on fire; and suffers it to burn until it is nearly consumed; he then rolls round it, while

burning, some more flax; and by these means the fire may be retained in it for a long time. When he wishes to

exhibit he slips the ball unperceived into his mouth, and breathes through it; which again revives the fire, so

that a number of weak sparks proceed from it; and the performer sustains no hurt, provided he inspire the air

not through the mouth, but the nostrils. By this art the Rabbi BarCocheba, in the reign of the Emperor

Hadrian, made the credulous Jews believe that he was the hopedfor Messiah; and two centuries after, the

Emperor Constantius was thrown into great terror when Valentinian informed him that he had seen one of the

Since Beckmann wrote, the method of producing smoke and sparks from the mouth has been still further

improved. The fire can now be produced in various ways. One way is by the use of a piece of thick cotton

string which has been soaked in a solution of nitre and then thoroughly dried. This string, when once lighted,

burns very slowly and a piece one inch long is sufficient for the purpose. Some performers prefer a small

piece of punk, as it requires no preparation. Still others use tinder made by burning linen rags, as our

forefathers used to do. This will not flame, but merely smoulders until the breath blows it into a glow. The

tinder is made by charring linen rags, that is, burning them to a crisp, but stopping the combustion before they

Flames from the lips may be produced by holding in the mouth a sponge saturated with the purest gasoline.

When the breath is exhaled sharply it can be lighted from a torch or a candle. Closing the lips firmly will

Natural gas is produced as simply. A Tshaped gas pipe has three or four gas tips on the crosspiece. The

long end is placed in the mouth, which already holds concealed a sponge, or preferably a ball of oakum,

saturated with pure gasoline. Blowing through the pipe will force the gas through the tips, where it can be

In a London periodical, The Terrific Record, appears a reprint from the Mercure de France, giving an account

of experiments in Naples which led to the discovery of the means by which jugglers have appeared to be

incombustible. They first gradually habituate the skin, the mouth, throat and stomach to great degrees of heat,

then they rub the skin with hard soap. The tongue is also covered with hard soap and over that a layer of

powdered sugar. By this means an investigating professor was enabled to reproduce the wonders which had

The investigating professor in all probability, was Professor Sementini, who experimented with Lionetto. I

find an account of Sementini's discoveries in an old newspaper clipping, the name and date of which have

Sementini's efforts, after performing several experiments upon himself, were finally crowned with success.

He found that by friction with sulphuric acid deluted with water, the skin might be made insensible to the

action of the heat of redhot iron; a solution of alum, evaporated till it became spongy, appeared to be more

effectual in these frictions. After having rubbed the parts which were thus rendered in some degree

insensible, with hard soap, he discovered, on the application of hot iron, that their insensibility was increased.

He then determined on again rubbing the parts with soap, and after that found that the hot iron not only

Being thus far satisfied, the Professor applied hard soap to his tongue until it became insensible to the heat of

the iron; and having placed an ointment composed of soap mixed with a solution of alum upon it, burning oil

did not burn it; while the oil remained on the tongue a slight hissing was heard, similar to that of hot iron

when thrust into water; the oil soon cooled and might then be swallowed without danger.

Several scientific men have since repeated the experiments of Professor Sementini, but we would not

Liquid storax is now used to anoint the tongue when redhot irons are to be placed in the mouth. It is claimed

Another formula is given by Griffin, as follows: 1 bar ivory soap, cut fine, 1 pound of brown sugar, 2 ounces

liquid storax (not the gum). Dissolve in hot water and add a wineglassful of carbolic acid. This is rubbed on

all parts liable to come in contact with the hot articles. After anointing the mouth with this solution rinse with

No performer should attempt to bite off redhot iron unless he has a good set of teeth. A piece of hoop iron

may be prepared by bending it back and forth at a point about one inch from the end, until the fragment is

nearly broken off, or by cutting nearly through it with a cold chisel. When the iron has been heated redhot,

the prepared end is taken between the teeth, a couple of bends will complete the break. The piece which drops

from the teeth into a dish of water will make a puff of steam and a hissing sound, which will demonstrate that

The mystery of the burning cage, in which the Fire King remains while a steak is thoroughly cooked, is

Have a large iron cage constructed about 4 x 6 feet, the bottom made of heavy sheet iron. The cage should

stand on iron legs or horses. Wrap each of the bars of the cage with cotton batting saturated with oil. Now

take a raw beefsteak in your hand and enter the cage, which is now set on fire. Remain in the cage until the

Explanation: On entering the cage the performer places the steak on a large iron hook which is fastened in

one of the upper corners. The dress worn is of asbestos cloth with a hood that completely covers the head and

As soon as the fire starts the smoke and flames completely hide the performer from the spectators, and he

immediately lies down on the bottom of the cage, placing the mouth over one of the small air holes in the

I deduce from the above that the performer arises and recovers the steak when the fire slackens but while

It is obvious that the above explanation covers the baker's oven mystery as well. In the case of the oven,

however, the inmate is concealed from start to finish, and this gives him much greater latitude for his actions.

M. Chabert made the oven the big feature of his programme and succeeded in puzzling many of the best

Eating coals of fire has always been one of the sensational feats of the Fire Kings, as it is quite generally

known that charcoal burns with an extremely intense heat. This fervent lunch, however, like many of the

feasts of the Fire Kings, is produced by trick methods. Mixed with the charcoal in the brazier are a few coals

of soft white pine, which when burnt look exactly like charcoal. These will not burn the mouth as charcoal

will. They should be picked up with a fork which will penetrate the pine coals, but not the charcoal, the latter

Another method of eating burning coals employs small balls of burned cotton in a dish of burning alcohol.

When lifted on the fork these have the appearance of charcoal, but are harmless if the mouth be immediately

In all feats of fireeating it should be noted that the head is thrown well back, so that the flame may pass out

of the open mouth instead of up into the roof, as it would if the head were held naturally.

To drink burning oil set fire to a small quantity of kerosene in a ladle. Into this dip an iron spoon and bring it

up to all appearance, filled with burning oil, though in reality the spoon is merely wet with the oil. It is

carried blazing to the mouth, where it is tipped, as if to pour the oil into the mouth, just as a puff of breath

blows out all the flame. The process is continued until all the oil in the ladle has been consumed; then the

ladle is turned bottom up, in order to show that all the oil has been drunk. A method of drinking what seems

to be molten lead is given in the Chambers' Book of Days, 1863, Vol. II, page 278:

The performer taking an iron spoon, holds it up to the spectators, to show that it is empty; then, dipping it into

a pot containing melted lead, he again shows it to the spectators full of the molten metal; then, after putting

the spoon in his mouth, he once more shows it to be empty; and after compressing his lips, with a look

expressive of pain, he, in a few moments, ejects from his mouth a piece of lead impressed with the exact form

of his teeth. Ask a spectator what he saw, and he will say that the performer took a spoonful of molten lead,

placed it in his mouth, and soon afterwards showed it in a solid state, bearing the exact form and impression

of his teeth. If deception be insinuated, the spectator will say. ``No! Having the evidence of my senses, I

cannot be deceived; if it had been a matter of opinion I might, but seeing, you know, is believing.'' Now the

piece of lead, cast from a plaster mould of the performer's teeth, has probably officiated in a thousand

previous performances, and is placed in the mouth between the gum and the cheek, just before the trick

commences. The spoon is made with a hollow handle containing quicksilver, which, by a simple motion, can

The spoon is first shown with the quicksilver concealed in the handle, the bowl is then dipped just within the

rim of the pot containing the molten lead, but not into the lead itself, and, at the same instant the quicksilver

is allowed to run into the bowl. The spoon is then shown with the quicksilver (which the audience takes to be

the melted lead) in the bowl, and when placed in the mouth, the quicksilver is again allowed to run into the

The performer, in fact, takes a spoonful of nothing, and soon after exhibits the lead bearing the impression of

Melt these together. When the metal has cooled, a piece the size of a silver quarter can be melted and taken

into the mouth and held there until it hardens. This alloy will melt in boiling water. RobertHoudin calls it

The eating of burning brimstone is an entirely fake performance. A number of small pieces of brimstone are

shown, and then wrapped in cotton which has been saturated with a halfandhalf mixture of kerosene and

gasoline, the surplus oil having been squeezed out so there shall be NO DRIP. When these are lighted they

may be held in the palm of any hand which has been anointed with one of the fire mixtures described in this

chapter. Then throw back the head, place the burning ball in the mouth, and a freshly extinguished candle can

be lighted from the flame. Close the lips firmly, which will extinguish the flame, then chew and pretend to

swallow the brimstone, which can afterwards be removed under cover of a handkerchief.

Observe that the brimstone has not been burned at all, and that the cotton protects the teeth. To add to the

effect, a small piece of brimstone may be dropped into the furnace, a very small piece will suffice to convince

To cause the face to appear in a mass of flame make use of the following: mix together thoroughly petroleum,

lard, mutton tallow and quick lime. Distill this over a charcoal fire, and the liquid which results can be burned

To set paper on fire by blowing upon it, small pieces of wet phosphorus are taken into the mouth, and a sheet

of tissue paper is held about a foot from the lips. While the paper is being blown upon the phosphorus is

ejected on it, although this passes unnoticed by the spectators, and as soon as the continued blowing has dried

Drinking boiling liquor is accomplished by using a cup with a false bottom, under which the liquor is

A solution of spermaceti in sulphuric ether tinged with alkanet root, which solidifies at 50 degrees F., and

melts and boils with the heat of the hand, is described in Beckmann's History of Inventions, Vol. II., page

Dennison's No. 2 sealing wax may be melted in the flame of a candle and, while still blazing, dropped upon

the tongue without causing a burn, as the moisture of the tongue instantly cools it. Care must be used,

however, that none touches the hands or lips. It can be chewed, and apparently swallowed, but removed in the

The above is the method practiced by all the FireEaters, and absolutely no preparation is necessary except

Barnello once said, ``A person wishing to become a FireEater must make up his or her mind to suffer a little

at first from burns, as there is no one who works at the business but that gets burns either from carelessness or

This is verified by the following, which I clip from the London Globe of August 11th, 1880:

Accident to a FireEater. A correspondent telegraphs: A terrible scene was witnessed in the market place,

Leighton Buzzard, yesterday. A travelling Negro fire eater was performing on a stand, licking redhot iron,

bending heated pokers with his naked foot, burning tow in his mouth, and the like. At last he filled his mouth

with benzolene, saying that he would burn it as he allowed it to escape. He had no sooner applied a lighted

match to his lips than the whole mouthful of spirit took fire and before it was consumed the man was burned

in a frightful manner, the blazing spirit running all over his face, neck and chest as he dashed from his stand

and raced about like a madman among the assembled crowd, tearing his clothing from him and howling in

most intense agony. A portion of the spirit was swallowed and the inside of his mouth was also terribly burnt.

He was taken into a chemist's shop and oils were administered and applied, but afterwards in agonizing

frenzy he escaped in a state almost of nudity from a lodging house and was captured by the police and taken

REMEMBER! Always have a large blanket at hand to smother flames in burning clothing also a bucket of

water and a quantity of sand. A siphon of carbonic water is an excellent fire extinguisher.

The gas of gasoline is heavier than air, so a container should never be held ABOVE a flame. Keep kerosene

Never inhale breath while performing with fire. FLAME DRAWN INTO THE LUNGS IS FATAL TO LIFE.

So much for the entertaining side of the art. There are, however, some further scientific principles so

The spheroidal condition of liquids was discovered by Leidenfrost, but M. Boutigny was the first to give this

singular subject careful investigation. From time out of mind the test of letting a drop of water fall on the face

of a hot flatiron has been employed to discover whether it may safely be used. Everybody knows that if it is

not too hot the water will spread over the surface and evaporate; but if it is too hot, the water will glance off

without wetting the iron, and if this drop be allowed to fall on the hand it will be found that it is still cool. The

fact is that the water never touches the hot iron at all, provided the heat is sufficiently intense, but assumes a

slightly elliptical shape and is supported by a cushion of vapor. If, instead of a flatiron, we use a concave

metal disk about the size and shape of a watch crystal, some very interesting results may be obtained. If the

temperature of the disk is at, or slightly above, the boiling point, water dropped on it from a medicine dropper

will boil; but if the disk is heated to 340 degrees F., the drop practically retains its roundnessbecoming

only slightly oblateand does not boil. In fact the temperature never rises above 206 degrees F., since the

vapor is so rapidly evaporated from the surface of the drop that it forms the cushion just mentioned. By a

careful manipulation of the dropper, the disk may be filled with water which, notwithstanding the intense

heat, never reaches the boiling point. On the other hand, if boiling water be dropped on the superheated disk

its temperature will immediately be REDUCED to six degrees below the boiling point; thus the hot metal

By taking advantage of the fact that different liquids assume a spheroidal form at widely different

temperatures, one may obtain some startling results. For example, liquid sulphurous acid is so volatile as to

have a temperature of only 13 degrees F. when in that state, or 19 degrees below the freezing point of water,

so that if a little water be dropped into the acid, it will immediately freeze and the pellet of ice may be

dropped into the hand from the still redhot disk. Even mercury can be frozen in this way by a combination

Through the action of this principle it is possible to dip the hand for a short time into melted lead, or even

into melted copper, the moisture of the skin supplying a vapor which prevents direct contact with the molten

metal; no more than an endurable degree of heat reaches the hand while the moisture lasts, although the

temperature of the fusing copper is 1996 degrees. The natural moisture of the hand is usually sufficient for

In David A. Wells' Things not Generally Known, New York, 1857, I find a translation of an article by M.

Boutigny in The Comptes Rendus, in which he notes that ``the portion of the hands which are not immersed

in the fused metal, but are exposed to the action of the heat radiated from its surface, experience a painful

sensation of heat.'' He adds that when the hand was dampened with ether ``there was no sensation of heat,

In the month of September, 1765, when I visited the copper works at Awested, one of the workmen, for a

little drink money, took some of the melted copper in his hand, and after showing it to us, threw it against the

wall. He then squeezed the fingers of his horny hand close together, put it for a few minutes under his armpit,

to make it sweat, as he said; and, taking it again out, drew it over a ladle filled with melted copper, some of

which he skimmed off, and moved his hand backwards and forwards, very quickly, by way of ostentation.

While I was viewing this performance, I remarked a smell like that of singed horn or leather, though his hand

The workmen at the Swedish meltinghouse showed the same thing to some travellers in the seventeenth

My friend Quincy Kilby, of Brookline, Mass., saw the same stunt performed by workmen at the Meridan

Brittania Company's plant. They told him that if the hand had been wet it would have been badly scalded.

Thus far our interest in heatresistance has uncovered secrets of no very great practical value, however

entertaining the uses to which we have seen them put. But not all the investigation of these principles has

been dictated by considerations of curiosity and entertainment. As long ago as 1829, for instance, an English

Proof against FireOn Tuesday week an experiment was made in presence of a Committee of the Academy

of Sciences at Paris, by M. Aldini, for the purpose of showing that he can secure the body against the action

of flames so as to enable firemen to carry on their operations with safety. His experiment is stated to have

given satisfaction. The pompiers were clothed in asbestos, over which was a network of iron. Some of them,

it was stated, who wore double gloves of amianthus, held a redhot bar during four minutes.

Sir David Brewster, in his Letters on Natural Magic, page 305, gives a more detailed account of Aldini, from

which the natural deduction is that the Chevalier was a showman with an intellect fully up to the demands of

In our own times the art of defending the hands and face, and indeed the whole body, from the action of

heated iron and intense fire, has been applied to the nobler purpose of saving human life, and rescuing

property from the flames. The revival and the improvement of this art we owe to the benevolence and the

ingenuity of the Chevalier Aldini of Milan, who has travelled through all Europe to present this valuable gift

to his species. Sir H. Davy had long ago shown that a safety lamp for illuminating mines, containing

inflammable air, might be constructed of wiregauze, alone, which prevented the flame within, however

large or intense, from setting fire to the inflammable air without. This valuable property, which has been long

in practical use, he ascribed to the conducting and radiating power of the wiregauze, which carried off the

heat of the flame, and deprived it of its power. The Chevalier Aldini conceived the idea of applying the same

material, in combination with other badly conducting substances, as a protection against fire. The

incombustible pieces of dress which he uses for the body, arms, and legs, are formed out of strong cloth,

which has been steeped in a solution of alum, while those for the head, hands, and feet, are made of cloth of

asbestos or amianthus. The head dress is a large cap which envelops the whole head down to the neck, having

suitable perforations for the eyes, nose, and mouth. The stockings and cap are single, but the gloves are made

of double amianthus cloth, to enable the fireman to take into his hand burning or redhot bodies. The piece of

ancient asbestos cloth preserved in the Vatican was formed, we believe, by mixing the asbestos with other

fibrous substances; but M. Aldini has executed a piece of nearly the same size, 9 feet 5 inches long, and 5 feet

3 inches wide, which is much stronger than the ancient piece, and possesses superior qualities, in

consequence of having been woven without the introduction of any foreign substance. In this manufacture the

fibers are prevented from breaking by action of steam, the cloth is made loose in its fabric, and the threads are

The metallic dress which is superadded to these means of defence consists of five principal pieces, viz., a

casque or cap, with a mask large enough to leave a proper space between it and the asbestos cap; a cuirass

with its brassets; a piece of armour for the trunk and thighs; a pair of boots of double wiregauze; and an oval

shield 5 feet long by 2 1/2 feet wide, made by stretching the wiregauze over a slender frame of iron. All

these pieces are made of iron wiregauze, having the interval between its threads the twentyfifth part of an

In order to prove the efficacy of this apparatus, and inspire the firemen with confidence in its protection, he

showed them that a finger first enveloped in asbestos, and then in a double case of wiregauze, might be held a

long time in the flame of a spiritlamp or candle before the heat became inconvenient. A fireman having his

hand within a double asbestos glove, and its palm protected by a piece of asbestos cloth, seized with impunity

a large piece of red hot iron, carried it deliberately to the distance of 150 feet, inflamed straw with it, and

brought it back again to the furnace. On other occasions the fireman handled blazing wood and burning

substances, and walked during five minutes upon an iron grating placed over flaming fagots.

In order to show how the head, eyes, and lungs are protected, the fireman put on the asbestos and wiregauze

cap, and the cuirass, and held the shield before his breast. A fire of shavings was then lighted, and kept

burning in a large raised chafingdish; the fireman plunged his head into the middle of the flames with his face

to the fuel, and in that position went several times round the chafingdish for a period longer than a minute.

In a subsequent trial, at Paris, a fireman placed his head in the middle of a large brazier filled with flaming

hay and wood, and resisted the action of the fire during five or six minutes and even ten minutes.

In the experiments which were made at Paris in the presence of a committee of the Academy of Sciences, two

parallel rows of straw and brushwood supported by iron wires, were formed at the distance of 3 feet from

each other, and extended 30 feet in length. When this combustible mass was set on fire, it was necessary to

stand at a distance of 8 or 10 yards to avoid the heat. The flames from both the rows seemed to fill up the

whole space between them, and rose to the height of 9 or 10 feet. At this moment six firemen, clothed in the

incombustible dresses, and marching at a slow pace behind each other, repeatedly passed through the whole

length between the two rows of flame, which were constantly fed with additional combustibles. One of the

firemen carried on his back a child eight years old, in a wickerbasket covered with metallic gauze, and the

In February, 1829, a still more striking experiment was made in the yard of the barracks of St. Gervais. Two

towers were erected two stories high, and were surrounded with heaps of inflamed materials consisting of

fagots and straw. The firemen braved the danger with impunity. In opposition to the advice of M. Aldini, one

of them, with the basket and child, rushed into a narrow place, where the flames were raging 8 yards high.

The violence of the fire was so great that he could not be seen, while a thick black smoke spread around,

throwing out a heat which was unsupportable by spectators. The fireman remained so long invisible that

serious doubts were entertained of his safety. He at length, however, issued from the fiery gulf uninjured, and

It is a remarkable result of these experiments, that the firemen are able to breathe without difficulty in the

middle of the flames. This effect is owing not only to the heat being intercepted by the wiregauze as it passes

to the lungs, in consequence of which its temperature becomes supportable, but also to the singular power

which the body possesses of resisting great heats, and of breathing air of high temperatures.

A series of curious experiments were made on this subject by M. Tillet, in France, and by Dr. Fordyce and Sir

Charles Blagden, in England. Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, and Sir Charles Blagden entered a room in

which the air had a temperature of 198 degrees Fahr., and remained ten minutes; but as the thermometer sunk

very rapidly, they resolved to enter the room singly. Dr. Solander went in alone and found the heat 210

degrees, and Sir Joseph entered when the heat was 211 degrees. Though exposed to such an elevated

temperature, their bodies preserved their natural degree of heat. Whenever they breathed upon a thermometer

it sunk several degrees; every expiration, particularly if strongly made, gave a pleasant impression of

coolness to their nostrils, and their cold breath cooled their fingers whenever it reached them. On touching his

side, Sir Charles Blagden found it cold like a corpse, and yet the heat of his body under his tongue was 98

degrees. Hence they concluded that the human body possesses the power of destroying a certain degree of

heat when communicated with a certain degree of quickness. This power, however, varies greatly in different

media. The same person who experienced no inconvenience from air heated to 211 degrees, could just bear

rectified spirits of wine at 130 degrees, cooling oil at 129 degrees, cooling water at 123 degrees, and cooling

quicksilver at 118 degrees. A familiar instance of this occurred in the heated room. All the pieces of metal

there, even their watchchains, felt so hot that they could scarcely bear to touch them for a moment, while the

air from which the metal had derived all its heat was only unpleasant. M. Duhamel and Tillet observed, at

Rochefoucault in France, that the girls who were accustomed to attend ovens in a bakehouse, were capable of

The same gentleman who performed the experiments above described ventured to expose themselves to still

higher temperatures. Sir Charles Blagden went into a room where the heat was 1 degree or 2 degrees above

260 degrees, and remained eight minutes in this situation, frequently walking about to all the different parts

of the room, but standing still most of the time in the coolest spot, where the heat was above 240 degrees. The

air, though very hot, gave no pain, and Sir Charles and all the other gentlemen were of opinion that they

could support a much greater heat. During seven minutes Sir C. Blagden's breathing continued perfectly

good, but after that time he felt an oppression in his lungs, with a sense of anxiety, which induced him to

leave the room. His pulse was then 144, double its ordinary quickness. In order to prove that there was no

mistake respecting the degree of heat indicated by the thermometer, and that the air which they breathed was

capable of producing all the wellknown effects of such a heat on inanimate matter, they placed some eggs and

a beefsteak upon a tin frame near the thermometer, but more distant from the furnace than from the wall of

the room. In the space of twenty minutes the eggs were roasted quite hard, and in fortyseven minutes the

steak was not only dressed, but almost dry. Another beefsteak, similarly placed, was rather overdone in

thirtythree minutes. In the evening, when the heat was still more elevated, a third beefsteak was laid in the

same place, and as they had noticed that the effect of the hot air was greatly increased by putting it in motion,

they blew upon the steak with a pair of bellows, and thus hastened the dressing of it to such a degree, that the

Our distinguished countryman, Sir F. Chantrey, has very recently exposed himself to a temperature still

higher than any which we have mentioned. The furnace which he employs for drying his moulds is about 14

feet long, 12 feet high, and 12 feet broad. When it is raised to its highest temperature, with the doors closed,

the thermometer stands at 350 degrees, and the iron floor is red hot. The workmen often enter it at a

temperature of 340 degrees, walking over the iron floor with wooden clogs, which are of course charred on

the surface. On one occasion Sir F. Chantrey, accompanied by five or six of his friends, entered the furnace,

and, after remaining two minutes, they brought out a thermometer which stood at 320 degrees. Some of the

party experienced sharp pains in the tips of their ears, and in the septum of the nose, while others felt a pain

It has sometimes been noted in the foregoing pages, that fireeaters, finding it difficult to invent new effects

in their own sphere, have strayed into other fields of endeavor in order to amplify their programmes. Thus we

find them resorting to the allied arts of poisoneating, swordswallowing and the stunts of the socalled

In this connection I consider it not out of place for me to include a description of a number of those who

have, either through unusual gifts of nature or through clever artifice, seemingly submitted to tests which we

have been taught to believe were far and away beyond the outposts of human endurance. By the introduction

of these thrills each notable newcomer has endeavored to go his predecessors one better, and the issue of

challenges to all comers to match these startling effects has been by no means infrequent, but I fail to

To accomplish the swordswallowing feat, it is only necessary to overcome the nausea that results from the

metal's touching the mucous membrane of the pharynx, for there is an unobstructed passage, large enough to

accommodate several of the thin blades used, from the mouth to the bottom of the stomach. This passage is

not straight, but the passing of the sword straightens it. Some throats are more sensitive than others, but

practice will soon accustom any throat to the passage of the blade. When a sword with a sharp point is used

the performer secretly slips a rubber cap over the point to guard against accident.

It is said that the medical fraternity first learned of the possibility of overcoming the sensitiveness of the

Cliquot, who was one of the most prominent swordswallowers of his time, finally ``reformed'' and is now a

music hall agent in England. The Strand Magazine (1896) has this to say of Cliquot and his art:

The Chevalier Cliquot (these fellows MUST have titles) in the act of swallowing the major part of a cavalry

Cliquot, whose name suggests the swallowing of something much more grateful and comforting than steel

swords, is a French Canadian by birth, and has been the admitted chief in his profession for more than 18

years. He ran away from his home in Quebec at an early age, and joined a travelling circus bound for South

America. On seeing an arrant old humbug swallow a small machete, in Buenos Ayres, the boy took a fancy to

the performance, and approached the old humbug aforesaid with the view of being taught the business. Not

having any money, however, wherewith to pay the necessary premium, the overtures of the wouldbe

apprentice were repulsed; whereupon he set about experimenting with his own aesophagus with a piece of

To say the preliminary training for this sort of thing is painful, is to state the fact most moderately; and even

when stern purpose has triumphed over the laws of anatomy, terrible danger still remains.

On one occasion having swallowed a sword, and then bent his body in different directions, as an adventurous

sensation, Cliquot found that the weapon also had bent to a sharp angle; and quick as thought, realizing his

own position as well as that of the sword, he whipped it out, tearing his throat in a dreadful manner. Plainly,

had the upper part of the weapon become detached, the sword swallower's career must infallibly have come

to an untimely end. Again, in New York, when swallowing 14 nineinch bayonet swords at once, Cliquot had

the misfortune to have a too sceptical audience, one of whom, a medical man who ought to have known

better, rushed forward and impulsively dragged out the whole bunch, inflicting such injuries upon this

In one of his acts Cliquot swallows a real bayonet sword, weighted with a crossbar, and two 18lb. dumb

bells. In order to vary this performance, the swordswallower allows only a part of the weapon to pass into

his body, the remainder being ``kicked'' down by the recoil of a rifle, which is fixed to a spike in the centre of

The last act in this extraordinary performance is the swallowing of a gold watch. As a rule, Cliquot borrows

one, but as no timepiece was forthcoming at the private exhibition where I saw him, he proceeded to lower

his own big chronometer into his aesophagus by a slender gold chain. Many of the most eminent physicians

and surgeons in this country immediately rushed forward with various instruments, and the privileged few

took turns in listening for the ticking of the watch inside the performer's body. ``Poor, outraged nature is

biding her time,'' remarked one physician, ``but mark me, she will have a terrible revenge sooner or later!''

Eaters of glass, tacks, pebbles, and like objects, actually swallow these seemingly impossible things, and

disgorge them after the performance is over. That the disgorging is not always successful is evidenced by the

hospital records of many surgical operations on performers of this class, when quantities of solid matter are

Delno Fritz was not only an excellent swordswallower, but a good showman as well. The last time I saw him

he was working the ``halls'' in England. I hope he saved his money, for he was a clean man with a clean

reputation, and, I can truly say, he was a master in his manner of indulging his appetite for the cold steel.

Deodota, an Italian Magician, was also a swordswallower of more than average ability. He succumbed to

the lure of commercialism finally, and is now in the jewelry business in the ``downtown district'' of New

Swordswallowing may be harmlessly imitated by the use of a fake sword with a telescopic blade, which

slides into the handle. Vosin, the Paris manufacturer of magical apparatus, made swords of this type, but they

scenes, and it is very doubtful if they were ever used by professional swallowers.

It is quite probable that the swords now most generally used by the profession, which are cut from one piece

of metalhandle and all were introduced to show that they were free from any telescoping device. Swords

of this type are quite thin, less than oneeighth of an inch thick, and four or five of them can be swallowed at

once. Slowly withdrawing them one at a time, and throwing them on the stage in different directions, makes

A small, but strong, electric light bulb attached to the end of a cane, is a very effective piece of apparatus for

sword swallowers, as, on a darkened stage, the passage of the light down the throat and into the stomach can

be plainly seen by the audience. The medical profession now make use of this idea.

By apparently swallowing sharp razors, a dimemuseum performer, whose name I do not recall, gave a

variation to the swordswallowing stunt. This was in the later days, and the act was partly fake and partly

genuine. That is to say, the swallowing was fair enough, but the sharp razors, after being tested by cutting

hairs, etc., were exchanged for dull duplicates, in a manner that, in better hands, might have been effective.

This chap belonged to the great army of unconscious exposers, and the ``switch'' was quite apparent to all

His apparatus consisted of a fancy rack on which three sharp razors were displayed, and a large bandanna

handkerchief, in which there were several pockets of the size to hold a razor, the three dull razors being

loaded in this. After testing the edge of the sharp razors, he pretended to wipe them, one by one, with the

handkerchief, and under cover of this he made the ``switch'' for the dull ones, which he proceeded to swallow

in the orthodox fashion. His work was crude, and the crowd was inclined to poke fun at him.

I have seen one of these performers on the street, in London, swallow a borrowed umbrella, after carefully

wiping the ferrule, and then return it to its owner only slightly dampened from its unusual journey. A

borrowed watch was swallowed by the same performer, and while one end of the chain hung from the lips,

the incredulous onlookers were invited to place their ears against his chest and listen to the ticking of the

The following anecdote from the Carlisle Journal, shows that playing with swordswallowing is about as

On Monday evening last, a man named William Dempster, a juggler of inferior dexterity while exhibiting his

tricks in a public house in Botchergate, kept by a person named Purdy, actually accomplished the sad reality

of one of those feats, with the semblance only of which he intended to amuse his audience. Having

introduced into his throat a common table knife which he was intending to swallow, he accidentally slipped

his hold, and the knife passed into his stomach. An alarm was immediately given, and surgical aid procured,

but the knife had passed beyond the reach of instruments, and now remains in his stomach. He has since been

attended by most of the medical gentlemen of this city; and we understand that no very alarming symptoms

have yet appeared, and that it is possible he may exist a considerable time, even in this awkward state. His

sufferings at first were very severe, but he is now, when not in motion, comparatively easy. The knife is 9 1/2

inches long, 1 inch broad in the blade, round pointed, and a handle of bone, and may generally be distinctly

felt by applying the finger to the unfortunate man's belly; but occasionally, however, from change of its

situation it is not perceptible. A brief notice of the analogous case of John Cumming, an American sailor,

may not be unacceptable to our readers. About the year 1799 he, in imitation of some jugglers whose

exhibition he had then witnessed, in an hour of intoxication, swallowed four clasp knives such as sailors

commonly use; all of which passed from him in a few days without much inconvenience. Six years afterward,

he swallowed FOURTEEN knives of different sizes; by these, however, he was much disordered, but

recovered; and again, in a paroxysm of intoxication, he actually swallowed SEVENTEEN, of the effects of

which he died in March, 1809. On dissection, fourteen knife blades were found remaining in his stomach, and

the back spring of one penetrating through the bowel, seemed the immediate cause of his death.

Several women have adopted the profession of swordswallowing, and some have won much more than a

passing fame. Notable among these is Mlle. Edith Clifford, who is, perhaps, the most generously endowed.

Possessed of more than ordinary personal charms, a refined taste for dressing both herself and her stage, and

an unswerving devotion to her art, she has perfected an act that has found favor even in the Royal Courts of

Mlle. Clifford was born in London in 1884 and began swallowing the blades when only 15 years of age.

During the foreign tour of the Barnum & Bailey show she joined that Organization in Vienna, 1901, and

remained with it for five years, and now, after eighteen years of service, she stands well up among the stars.

She has swallowed a 26inch blade, but the physicians advise her not to indulge her appetite for such

luxuries often, as it is quite dangerous. Blades of 18 or 20 inches give her no trouble whatever.

In the spring of 1919 I visited the Ringling Bros., and the Barnum & Bailey Show especially to witness Mlle.

Clifford's act. In addition to swallowing the customary swords and sabers she introduced such novelties as a

specially constructed razor, with a blade five or six times the usual length, a pair of scissors of unusual size, a

saw which is 2 1/2 inches wide at the broadest point, with ugly looking teeth, although somewhat rounded at

the points, and several other items quite unknown to the billof fare of ordinary mortals. A set of ten thin

The sensation of her act is reached when the point of a bayonet, 23 1/2 inches long, fastened to the breech of

a cannon, is placed in her mouth and the piece discharged; the recoil driving the bayonet suddenly down her

Mlle. Clifford's handsomely arranged stage occupied the place of honor in the section devoted to freaks and

Cliquot told me that Delno Fritz was his pupil, and Mlle. Clifford claims to be a pupil of Fritz.

Deserving of honorable mention also is a native of Berlin, who bills herself as Victorina. This lady is able to

swallow a dozen sharpbladed swords at once. Of Victorina, the Boston Herald of December 28th, 1902, said:

By long practice she has accustomed herself to swallow swords, daggers, bayonets, walking sticks, rods, and

Her throat and food passages have become so expansive that she can swallow three long swords almost up to

This woman is enabled to bend a blade after swallowing it. By moving her head back and forth she may even

twist instruments in her throat. To bend the body after one has swallowed a sword is a dangerous feat, even

for a professional swallower. There is a possibility of severing some of the ligaments of the throat or else

On one occasion, while swordswallowing before a Boston audience, a sword pierced a vein in her throat.

The blade was halfway down, but instead of immediately drawing it forth, she thrust it farther. She was laid

In Chicago she had a still narrower escape. One day while performing at a museum on Clark Street, Victorina

passed a long thin dagger down her throat. In withdrawing it, the blade snapped in two, leaving the pointed

portion some distance in the passage. The woman nearly fainted when she realized what had occurred, but, by

a masterful effort, controlled her feelings. Dropping the hilt of the dagger on the floor, she leaned forward,

and placing her finger and thumb down her throat, just succeeded in catching the end of the blade. Had it

That the genesis of stoneeating dates back hundreds of years farther than is generally supposed, is shown by

a statement in Wanley's Wonders of the Little World, London, 1906, Vol. II, page 58, which reads as follows:

Anno 1006, there was at Prague a certain Silesian, who, for a small reward in money, did (in the presence of

many persons) swallow down white stones to the number of thirtysix; they weighed very near three pounds;

the least of them was of the size of a pigeon's egg, so that I could scarce hold them all in my hand at four

times: this rash adventure he divers years made for gain, and was sensible of no injury to his health thereby.

The next man of this type of whom I find record lived over six hundred years later. This was an Italian named

Francois Battalia. The print shown here is from the Book of Wonderful Characters, and is a reproduction

Doctor Bulwer, in his Artificial Changeling, tells a preposterous story of Battalia's being born with two

pebbles in one hand and one in the other; that he refused both the breast and the pap offered him, but ate the

pebbles and continued to subsist on stones for the remainder of his life. Doctor Bulwer thus describes his

His manner is to put three or four stones into a spoon, and so putting them into his mouth together, he

swallows them all down, one after another; then (first spitting) he drinks a glass of beer after them. He

devours about half a peck of these stones every day, and when he clinks upon his stomach, or shakes his

body, you may hear the stones rattle as if they were in a sack, all of which in twentyfour hours are resolved.

Once in three weeks he voids a great quantity of sand, after which he has a fresh appetite for these stones, as

we have for our victuals, and by these, with a cup of beer, and a pipe of tobacco, he has his whole

Platerus speaks of a beggar boy, who for four farthings would suddenly swallow many stones which he met

with by chance in any place, though they were big as walnuts, so filling his belly that by the collision of them

while they were pressed, the sound was distinctly heard. Father Paulian says that a true lithophagus, or

stoneeater, was brought to Avignon in the beginning of May, 1760. He not only swallowed flints an inch

and a half long, a full inch broad, and half an inch thick, but such stones as he could reduce to powder, such

as marble, pebbles, etc., he made up into paste, which to him was a most agreeable and wholesome food.

Father Paulian examined this man with all the attention he possibly could, and found his gullet very large, his

teeth exceedingly strong, his saliva very corrosive, and his stomach lower than ordinary.

This stone eater was found on Good Friday, in 1757, in a northern inhabited island, by some of the crew of a

Dutch ship. He was made by his keeper to eat raw flesh with his stones; but he never could be got to swallow

bread. He would drink water, wine, and brandy, which last liquor gave him infinite pleasure. He slept at least

twelve hours a day, sitting on the ground with one knee over the other, and his chin resting on his right knee.

He smoked almost all the time he was not asleep or not eating. Some physicians at Paris got him blooded; the

blood had little or no serum, and in two hours time it became as fragile as coral.

He was unable to pronounce more than a few words, such as Oui, Non, Caillou, Bon. ``He has been taught,''

adds the pious father, evidently pleased with the docility of his interesting pupil, ``to make the sign of the

cross, and was baptized some months ago in the church of St. Come, at Paris. THE RESPECT HE SHOWS

opportunity of satisfying myself as to all these particulars; and I AM FULLY CONVINCED THAT HE IS

Has arrived, and means to perform this, and every day (Sunday excepted) at Mr. Hatch's, trunk maker, 404

The present is allowed to be the age of Wonders and Improvements in the Arts. The idea of Man's flying in

the Air, twenty years ago, before the discovery of the use of the balloon, would have been laughed at by the

most credulous! Nor does the History of Nature afford so extraordinary a relation as that of the man's eating

and subsisting on pebbles, flints, tobacco pipes and mineral excrescences; but so it is and the Ladies and

Gentlemen of this Metropolis and its vicinity have now an opportunity of witnessing this extraordinary Fact

by seeing the Most Wonderful Phenomenon of the Age, who Grinds and Swallows stones, etc., with as much

This Extraordinary Stoneeater appears not to suffer the least Inconvenience from so ponderous, and to all

other persons in the World, so indigestible a Meal, which he repeats from twelve at noon to seven.

Any Lady or Gentleman may bring Black Flints or Pebbles with them. N. B.His Merit is fully

demonstrated by Dr. Monroe, who in his Medical Commentary, 1772, and several other Gentlemen of the

Faculty. Likewise Dr. John Hunter and Sir Joseph Banks can witness the Surprising Performance of this most

A Spanish stoneeater exhibited at the Richmond Theater, on August 2nd, 1790, and another at a later date,

All of these phenomenal gentry claimed to subsist entirely on stones, but their modern followers hardly dare

A number of years ago, in London, I watched several performances of one of these chaps who swallowed half

a hatful of stones, nearly the size of hen's eggs, and then jumped up and down, to make them rattle in his

stomach. I could discover no fake in the performance, and I finally gave him two and six for his secret, which

was simple enough. He merely took a dose of powerful physic to clear himself of the stones, and was then

During my engagement in 1895 with Welsh Bros. Circus I became quite well acquainted with an aged Jap of

the San Kitchy Akimoto troupe and from him I learned the method of swallowing quite large objects and

bringing them up again at will. For practice very small potatoes are used at first, to guard against accident;

and after one has mastered the art of bringing these up, the size is increased gradually till objects as large as

In one number of the programme he sat down on the ring bank and balanced a bamboo pole, at the top of

which little Massay went through the regular routine of posturings. After years spent in this work, my aged

friend became so used to his job that he did it automatically, and scarcely gave a thought to the boy at the top.

One warm day, however, he carried his indifference a trifle too far, and dropped into a quiet nap, from which

he woke only to find that the pole was falling and had already gone too far to be recovered, but the agility of

the boy saved him from injury. As my knowledge of Japanese is limited to the more polite forms, I cannot

Until a comparatively recent date, incredible as it may seem, frogswallowers were far from uncommon on

the bills of the Continental theaters. The most prominent, Norton, a Frenchman, was billed as a leading

feature in the highclass houses of Europe. I saw him work at the Apollo Theater, Nuremberg, where I was to

follow him in; and during my engagement at the Circus Busch, Berlin, we were on the same programme,

One of his features was to drink thirty or forty large glasses of beer in slow succession. The filled glasses

were displayed on shelves at the back of the stage, and had handles so that he could bring forward two or

three in each hand. When he had finished these he would return for others and, while gathering another

handful, would bring up the beer and eject it into a receptacle arranged between the shelves, just below the

Norton could swallow a number of halfgrown frogs and bring them up alive. I remember his anxiety on one

occasion when returning to his dressingroom; it seems he had lost a frogat least he could not account for

the entire flockand he looked very much scared, probably at the uncertainty as to whether or not he had to

The Muenchen October Fest, is the annual fair at that city, and a most wonderful show it is. I have been there

twice; once as the big feature with Circus Carre, in 1901, and again in 1913, with the Circus Corty Althoff.

The Continental Circuses are not, like those of this country, under canvas, but show in wooden buildings. At

these October Fests I saw a number of frogswallowers, and to me they were very repulsive indeed. In fact,

Willie Hammerstein once had Norton booked to appear at the Victoria Theater, New York, but the Society

for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would not allow him to open; so he returned to Europe without

In my earlier days in the smaller theaters of America, before the advent of the B. F. Keith and E. F. Albee

theaters, I occasionally ran across a sailor calling himself English Jack, who could swallow live frogs and

I also witnessed the disgusting pit act of that degenerate, Bosco, who ate living snakes, and whose act gave

rise to the wellknown barkers' cry HE EATS 'EM ALIVE! If the reader wishes further description of this

creature's work, he must find it in my book, The Unmasking of Robert Houdin, for I cannot bring myself to

During an engagement in Bolton, Eng., I met Billington, the official hangman, who was convinced that I

could not escape from the restraint he used to secure those he was about to execute.

Much to his astonishment, I succeeded in releasing myself, but he said the time consumed was more than

sufficient to spring the trap and launch the doomed soul into eternity. Billington told me that he had hardened

During my engagement at the Winter Garten, Berlin, Captain Veitro, a performer that I had known for years

in America, where he worked in side shows and museums, came to Berlin and made quite a stir by eating

poisons. He appeared only a few times, however, as his act did not appeal to the public, presumably for the

reason that he had his stomach pumped out at each performance, to prove that it contained the poison. This

may have been instructive, but it possessed little appeal as entertainment, and I rarely heard of the

Years ago I saw a colored poisoneater at Worth's Museum, New York City, who told me that he escaped the

Another colored performer took an ordinary bottle, and, after breaking it, would bite off chunks, crunch them

with his teeth, and finally swallow them. I have every reason to believe that his performance was genuine.

The beerdrinking of Norton was a more refined version of the socalled waterspouting of previous

generations, in which the returning was done openly, a performance that could not fail to disgust a modern

audience. To be sure, in the days of the Dime Museum, a Negro who returned the water worked those houses;

but his performance met with little approval, and it is years since I have heard of such an exhibition.

The first waterspouter of whom I find a record was Blaise Manfrede or de Manfre, who toured Europe about

the middle of the seventeenth century. An interesting account of this man may be found in my book The

A pupil of Manfrede's, by the name of Floram Marchand, who seems to have been fully the equal of his

master, appeared in England in 1650. The following description of Marchand's performance is from The

In the summer of 1650, a Frenchman named Floram Marchand was brought over from Tours to London, who

professed to be able to ``turn water into wine,'' and at his vomit render not only the tincture, but the strength

and smell of several wines, and several waters. He learnt the rudiments of this art from Bloise, an Italian, who

not long before was questioned by Cardinal Mazarin, who threatened him with all the miseries that a tedious

imprisonment could bring upon him, unless he would discover to him by what art he did it. Bloise, startled at

the sentence, and fearing the event, made a full confession on these terms, that the Cardinal would

From this Bloise, Marchand received all his instruction; and finding his teacher the more sought after in

France, he came by the advice of two English friends to England, where the trick was new. Here the cause

of it being utterly unknown he seems for a time to have gulled and astonished the public to no small

Before long, however, the whole mystery was cleared up by his two friends, who had probably not received

the share of the profits to which they thought themselves entitled. Their somewhat circumstantial account

To prepare his body for so hardy a task, before he makes his appearance on the stage, he takes a pill about the

quantity of a hazel nut, confected with the gall of an heifer, and wheat flour baked. After which he drinks

privately in his chamber four or five pints of lukewarm water, to take all the foulness and slime from his

stomach, and to avoid that loathsome spectacle which otherwise would make thick the water, and offend the

In the first place, he presents you with a pail of lukewarm water, and sixteen glasses in a basket, but you are

to understand that every morning he boils two ounces of Brazil thinsliced in three pints of running water, so

long till the whole strength and color of the Brazil is exhausted: of this he drinks half a pint in his private

chamber before he comes on the stage: you are also to understand that he neither eats nor drinks in the

morning on those days when he comes on the stage, the cleansing pill and water only excepted; but in the

evening will make a very good supper, and eat as much as two or three other men who have not their

Before he presents himself to the spectators, he washes all his glasses in the best whitewine vinegar he can

procure. Coming on the stage, he always washes his first glass, and rinses it two or three times, to take away

the strength of the vinegar, that it may in no wise discolour the complexion of what is represented to be wine.

At his first entrance, he drinks four and twenty glasses of lukewarm water, the first vomit he makes the

water seems to be a full deep claret: you are to observe that his gallpill in the morning, and so many glasses

of lukewarm water afterwards, will force him into a sudden capacity to vomit, which vomit upon so much

warm water, is for the most part so violent on him, that he cannot forbear if he would.

You are again to understand that all that comes from him is red of itself, or has a tincture of it from the first

Brazil water; but by degrees, the more water he drinks, as on every new trial he drinks as many glasses of

water as his stomach will contain, the water that comes from him will grow paler and paler. Having then

made his essay on claret, and proved it to be of the same complexion, he again drinks four or five glasses of

lukewarm water, and brings forth claret and beer at once into two several glasses: now you are to observe

that the glass which appears to be claret is rinsed as before, but the beer glass not rinsed at all, but is still

moist with the whitewine vinegar, and the first strength of the Brazil water being lost, it makes the water

He then brings his rouse again, and drinks up fifteen or sixteen glasses of lukewarm water, which the pail

will plentifully afford him: he will not bring you up the pale Burgundian wine, which, though more faint of

complexion than the claret, he will tell you is the purest wine in Christendom. The strength of the Brazil

water, which he took immediately before his appearance on the stage, grows fainter and fainter. This glass,

like the first glass in which he brings forth his claret, is washed, the better to represent the colour of the wine

The next he drinks comes forth sack from him, or according to that complexion. Here he does not wash his

glass at all; for the strength of the vinegar must alter what is left of the complexion of the Brazil water, which

You are always to remember, that in the interim, he will commonly drink up four or five glasses of the

lukewarm water, the better to provoke his stomach to a disgorgement, if the first rouse will not serve turn.

He will now (for on every disgorge he will bring you forth a new colour), he will now present you with white

wine. Here also he will not wash his glass, which (according to the vinegar in which it was washed) will give

it a colour like it. You are to understand, that when he gives you the colour of so many wines, he never

washes the glass, but at his first evacuation, the strength of the vinegar being no wise compatible with the

Having performed this task, he will then give you a show of rosewater; and this indeed, he does so

cunningly, that it is not the show of rosewater, but rosewater itself. If you observe him, you will find that

either behind the pail where his lukewarm water is, or behind the basket in which his glasses are, he will

have on purpose a glass of rosewater prepared for him. After he has taken it, he will make the spectators

believe that he drank nothing but the lukewarm water out of the pail; but he saves the rosewater in the

glass, and holding his hand in an indirect way, the people believe, observing the water dropping from his

fingers, that it is nothing but the water out of the pail. After this he will drink four or five glasses more out of

the pail, and then comes up the rosewater, to the admiration of the beholders. You are to understand, that the

heat of his body working with his rosewater gives a full and fragrant smell to all the water that comes from

The spectators, confused at the novelty of the sight, and looking and smelling on the water, immediately he

takes the opportunity to convey into his hand another glass; and this is a glass of Angelica water, which stood

prepared for him behind the pail or basket, which having drunk off, and it being furthered with four or five

glasses of lukewarm water, out comes the evacuation, and brings with it a perfect smell of the Angelica, as

To conclude all, and to show you what a man of might he is, he has an instrument made of tin, which he puts

between his lips and teeth; this instrument has three several pipes, out of which, his arms akimbo, a putting

forth himself, he will throw forth water from him in three pipes, the distance of four or five yards. This is all

clear water, which he does with so much port and such a flowing grace, as if it were his masterpiece.

He has been invited by divers gentlemen and personages of honour to make the like evacuation in milk, as he

made a semblance in wine. You are to understand that when he goes into another room, and drinks two or

three pints of milk. On his return, which is always speedy, he goes first to his pail, and afterwards to his

vomit. The milk which comes from him looks curdled, and shows like curdled milk and drink. If there be no

milk ready to be had, he will excuse himself to his spectators, and make a large promise of what he will

perform the next day, at which time being sure to have milk enough to serve his turn, he will perform his

His milk he always drinks in a withdrawing room, that it may not be discovered, for that would be too

apparent, nor has he any other shift to evade the discerning eye of the observers.

It is also to be considered that he never comes on the stage (as he does sometimes three or four times in a

day) but he first drinks the Brazil water, without which he can do nothing at all, for all that comes from him

has a tincture of the red, and it only varies and alters according to the abundance of water which he takes, and

About twentytwo years ago, during one of my many engagements at Kohl and Middleton's, Chicago, there

appeared at the same house a marvelous ``rattlesnake poison defier'' named Thardo. I watched her act with

deep interest for a number of weeks, never missing a single performance. For the simple reason that I worked

within twelve feet from her, my statement that there was absolutely no fake attached to her startling

performance can be taken in all seriousness, as the details are still fresh in my mind.

Thardo was a woman of exceptional beauty, both of form and feature, a fluent speaker and a fearless

enthusiast in her devotion to her art. She would allow herself to be repeatedly bitten by rattlesnakes and

received no harm excepting the ordinary pain of the wound. After years of investigation I have come to the

belief that this immunity was the result of an absolutely empty stomach, into which a large quantity of milk

was taken shortly after the wound was inflicted, the theory being that the virus acts directly on the contents of

It was Thardo's custom to give weekly demonstrations of this power, to which the medical profession were

invited, and on these occasions she was invariably greeted with a packed house. When the moment of the

supreme test came, an awed silence obtained; for the thrill of seeing the serpent flash up and strike possessed

a positive fascination for her audiences. Her bare arms and shoulders presented a tempting target for the

deathdealing reptile whose anger she had aroused. As soon as he had buried his fangs in her expectant flesh,

she would coolly tear him from the wound and allow one of the physicians present to extract a portion of the

venom and immediately inject it into a rabbit, with the result that the poor creature would almost instantly go

Another rattlesnake defier is a resident of San Antonio, Texas. Her name is Learn, and she once told me that

she was the preceptor of Thardo. This lady deals in live rattlesnakes and their byproductsrattlesnake

skin, which is used for fancy bags and purses; rattlesnake oil, which is highly esteemed in some quarters as

She employs a number of men as snake trappers. Their usual technique is to pin the rattler to the ground by

means of a forked stick thrust dexterously over his neck, after which he is conveyed into a bag made for the

purpose. Probably the cleverest of her trappers is a Mexican who has a faculty of catching these dangerous

creatures with his bare hands. The story goes that this chap has been bitten so many times that the virus no

longer has any effect on him. Even that most poisonous of all reptiles, the Gila monster, has no terrors for

him. He swims along the shore where venomous reptiles most abound, and fearlessly attacks any and all that

In a very rare book by General Sir Arthur Thurlow Cunynghame, entitled, My Command in South Africa,

Liquid ammonia is, par excellence, the best antidote. It must be administered immediately after the bite, both

The ``Eau de luce'' and other nostrums sold for this purpose have ammonia for their main ingredient. But it

generally happens in the case of a snake bite that the remedy is not at hand, and hours may elapse before it

can be obtained. In this case the following treatment will work well. Tie a ligature tightly ABOVE the bite,

scarify the wound deeply with a knife, and allow it to bleed freely. After having drawn an ounce of blood,

remove the ligature and ignite three times successively about two drams of gunpowder right on the wound.

If gunpowder be not at hand, an ordinary fusee will answer the purpose: or, in default of this, the glowing end

of a piece of wood from the fire. Having done this, proceed to administer as much brandy as the patient will

take. Intoxicate him as rapidly as possible, and, once intoxicated, he is safe. If, however, through delay in

treatment, the poison has once got into circulation no amount of brandy will either intoxicate him or save his

An odd character, rejoicing in the nickname of Jack the Viper, is mentioned on page 763 of Hone's Table

Jack has traveled, seen the world, and profited by his travels; for he has learned to be contented.

He is not entirely idle, nor wholly industrious. If he can get a crust sufficient for the day, he leaves the evil of

it should visit him. The first time I saw him was in the high noon of a scorching day, at an inn in Laytonstone.

He came in while a sudden storm descended, and a rainbow of exquisite majesty vaulted the earth. Sitting

down at a table, he beckoned the hostess for his beer, and conversed freely with his acquaintance. By his arch

replies I found that I was in company with an original a man that might stretch forth his arms in the

wilderness without fear, and like Paul, grasp an adder without harm. He playfully entwined his fingers with

their coils and curled crests, and played with their forked tongues. He had unbuttoned his waistcoat, and as

cleverly as a fishwoman handles her eels, let out several snakes and adders, warmed by his breast, and spread

them on the table. He took off his hat, and others of different sizes and lengths twisted before me; some of

them, when he unbosomed his shirt, returned to the genial temperature of his skin; and some curled around

the legs of the table, and others rose in a defensive attitude. He irritated and humored them, to express either

pleasure or pain at his will. Some were purchased by individuals, and Jack pocketed his gains, observing, ``A

The Naturalist's Cabinet says, that ``In presence of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, while the philosophers were

making elaborate dissertations on the danger of the poison of vipers, taken inwardly, a viper catcher, who

happened to be present, requested that a quantity of it might be put into a vessel; and then, with the utmost

confidence, and to the astonishment of the whole company, he drank it off. Everyone expected the man

instantly to drop down dead; but they soon perceived their mistake, and found that, taken inwardly, the

William Oliver, a viper catcher at Bath, was the first who discovered that, by the application of olive oil, the

bite of the viper is effectually cured. On the first of June, 1735, he suffered himself to be bitten by an old

black viper; and after enduring the agonizing symptoms of approaching death, by using olive oil he perfectly

Vipers' flesh was formerly esteemed for its medicinal virtues, and its salt was thought to exceed every other

According to Cornelius Heinrich Agrippa (called Agrippa of Nettesheim), a German philosopher, and student

of alchemy and magic, who was born in 1486, and died in 1535, ``if you would handle adders and snakes

without harm, wash your hands in the juice of radishes, and you may do so without harm.''

Even though it may seem a digression, I yield to the temptation to include here an extraordinary ``snake

I will here relate the story of a sad deathI might feel inclined to call it suicidewhich occurred in

Melbourne shortly before my arrival in the colonies. About a year previous to the time of which I am now

writing, a gentleman of birth and education, a Cambridge B. A., a barrister by profession and a literary man

by choice, with his wife and three children emigrated to Victoria. He arrived in Melbourne with one hundred

Poor man! He, like many another man, quickly discovered that muscles in Australia are more marketable than

brains. His little store of money began to melt under the necessities of his wife and family. To make matters

worse he was visited by a severe illness. He was confined to his bed for some weeks, and during his

convalescence his wife presented him with another of those ``blessings to the poor man,'' a son.

It was Christmas time, his health was thoroughly restored, he naturally possessed a vigorous constitution; but

At last one day, returning from a long and solitary walk, he sat down with pen and paper and made a

calculation by which he found he had sufficient money left to pay the insurance upon his life for one year,

which, in the case of his death occurring within that time, would bring to his widow the sum of three

thousand pounds. He went to the insurance office, and made his applicationwas examined by the

doctorthe policy was made out, his life was insured. From that day he grew moody and morose, despair

At this time a snakecharmer came to Melbourne, who advertised a wonderful cure for snakebites. This

charmer took one of the halls in the town, and there displayed his live stock, which consisted of a great

number of the most deadly and venomous snakes which were to be found in India and Australia.

This man had certainly some most wonderful antidote to the poison of a snake's fangs. In his exhibitions he

would allow a cobra to bite a dog or a rabbit, and, in a short time after he had applied his nostrum the animal

would thoroughly revive; he advertised his desire to perform upon humanity, but, of course, he could find no

The advertisement caught the eye of the unfortunate emigrant, who at once proceeded to the hall where the

snake charmer was holding his exhibition. He offered himself to be experimented upon; the fanatic

snakecharmer was delighted, and an appointment was made for the same evening as soon as the ``show''

The evening came; the unfortunate man kept his appointment, and, in the presence of several witnesses, who

tried to dissuade him from the trial, bared his arm and placed it in the cage of an enraged cobra and was

quickly bitten. The nostrum was applied apparently in the same manner as it had been to the lower animals

which had that evening been experimented upon, but whether it was that the poor fellow wilfully did

something to prevent its taking effector whatever the reasonhe soon became insensible, and in a couple

of hours he was taken home to his wife and familya corpse. The next morning the snakecharmer had

The insurance company at first refused payment of the policy, asserting that the death was suicide; the case

was tried and the company lost it, and the widow received the three thousand pounds. The snakecharmer

was sought in vain; he had the good fortune and good sense to be seen no more in the Australian colonies.

As several methods of combating the effects of poisons have been mentioned in the foregoing pages, I feel in

duty bound to carry the subject a little farther and present a list of antidotes. I shall not attempt to educate my

readers in the art of medicine, but simply to give a list of such ordinary materials as are to be found in

practically every household, materials cited as antidotes for the more common poisons. I have taken them

from the best authorities obtainable and they are offered in the way of first aid, to keep the patient alive till

The first great rule to be adopted is SEND FOR THE DOCTOR AT ONCE and give him all possible

information about the case without delay. Use every possible means to keep the patient at a normal

temperature. When artificial respiration is necessary, always get hold of the tongue and pull it well forward in

order to keep the throat clear, then turn the patient over on his face and press the abdomen to force out the air,

then turn him over on the back so that the lungs may fill again, repeating this again and again till the doctor

arrives. The best stimulants are strong tea or coffee; but when these are not sufficient, a tablespoon of brandy,

Vegetable and mineral poisons, with few exceptions, act as efficiently in the blood as in the stomach. Animal

poisons act only through the blood, and are inert when introduced into the stomach. Therefore there is

absolutely no danger in sucking the virus from a snake bite, except that the virus should not be allowed to

The following list of antidotes is taken largely from Appleton's Medical Dictionary, and Sollmann's A

Manual of Pharmacology, Philadelphia, 1917, pages 56 and 57, and has been verified by comparison with

various other authorities at the library of the Medical Society of the County of New York:

Bodily strength has won the admiration I might almost say, the worshipof mankind from the days of

Hercules and his ten mythical labors, to the days of Sandow with his scores of actual achievements. Each

generation has produced its quota of strongmen, but almost all of them have resorted to some sort of artifice

or subterfuge in order to appear superhumanly strong. That is to say, they added brain to their brawn, and it is

a difficult question whether their efforts deserve to be called trickery or good showmanship.

Many of the tricks of the profession were laid bare by Dr. Desaguliers over a hundred and fifty years ago and

have been generally discarded by athletes, only to be taken up and vastly improved by women of the type of

The Georgia Magnet, who gave the world of science a decided start about a generation ago. I shall have more

The jiu jitsu of the Japanese is, in part, a development of the same principles, but here again much new

The following, from Dr. Desaguliers' Experimental Philosophy, London, 1763, Vol. 1, page 289, contrasts

Thomas Topham, born in London, and now about thirtyone years of age, five feet ten inches high, with

muscles very hard and prominent, was brought up a carpenter, which trade he practiced till within these six or

seven years that he has shewed feats of strength; but he is entirely ignorant of any art to make his strength

appear more surprising; Nay, sometimes he does things which become more difficult by his disadvantageous

situation; attempting and often doing, what he hears other strong men have done, without making use of the

About six years ago he pulled against a horse, sitting on the ground with his feet against two stumps driven

into the ground, but without the advantage represented by the first figure, Plate 19; for the horse pulling

against him drew upwards at a considerable angle, such as is represented in the second figure in that plate,

when hN is the line of traction, which makes the angle of traction to be NhL: and in this case his strength was

no farther employed than to keep his legs and thighs straight, so as to make them act like the long arm of a

bended lever, represented by Lh, on whose end h the trunk of his body rested as a weight, against which the

horse drew, applying his power at right angles to the end l of the short arm of said lever, the center of the

motion being a L at the bottom of the stumps l, o (for to draw obliquely by a rope fastened at h is the same as

to draw by an arm of a lever at l L, because l L is a line drawn perpendicularly from the center of motion to

the line of direction hN) and the horse not being strong enough to raise the man's weight with such

disadvantage, he thought he was in the right posture for drawing against a horse; but when in the same

posture he attempted to draw against two horses, he was pulled out of his place by being lifted up, and had

one of his knees struck against the stumps, which shattered it so, that even to this day, the patella or kneepan

is so loose, that the ligaments of it seem either to be broken or quite relaxed, which has taken away most of

But if he had sat upon such a frame as is represented in the first figure, (Plate 19) he might (considering his

strength) have kept his situation against the pulling of four strong horses without the least inconvenience.

By the strength of his fingers (only rubbed in coalashes to keep them from slipping) he rolled up a

He broke seven or eight short and strong pieces of tobaccopipe with the force of his middle finger,

Having thrust under his garter the bowl of a strong tobaccopipe, his legs being bent, he broke it to

He broke such another bowl between his first and second finger, by pressing his fingers together

He lifted a table six feet long, which had half a hundred weight hanging to the end of it, with his

teeth, and held it in a horizontal position for a considerable time. IT IS TRUE THE FEET OF THE

He took an iron kitchenpoker, about a yard long, and three inches in circumference, and holding it

in his right hand, he struck upon his bare left arm, between the elbow and the wrist till he bent the

He took such another poker, and holding the ends in his hands, and the middle against the back of his

neck, he brought both ends of it together before him; and, what was yet more difficult, he pulled it

almost straight again: because the muscles which separate the arms horizontally from each other, are

He broke a rope of about two inches in circumference which was in part wound about a cylinder of

four inches diameter, having fastened the other end of it to straps that went over his shoulders; but he

exerted more force to do this than any other of his feats, from his awkwardness in going about it: as

the rope yielded and stretched as he stood upon the cylinder, so that when the extensors of his legs

and thighs had done their office in bringing the legs and thighs straight, he was forced to raise his

heels from their bearings, and use other muscles that are weaker. But if the rope had been so fixed,

that the part to be broken had been short, it would have been broken with four times less difficulty.

I have seen him lift a rolling stone of about 800 lib. with his hand only, standing in a frame above it,

and taking hold of a chain that was fastened to it. By this I reckon that he may be almost as strong

again as those who are generally reckoned as the strongest men, they generally lifting no more than

400 lib. in that manner. The weakest men who are in health and not too fat, lift about 125 lib. having

about half the strength of the strongest. (N.B. This sort of comparison is chiefly in relation to the

muscles of the loins; because in doing this one must stoop forward a little. We must also add the

weight of the body to the weight lifted. So that if the weakest man's body weighs 150 lib. that added

to 125 lib. makes the whole weight lifted by him 275 lib. Then if the stronger man's body weighs also

150 lib. the whole weight lifted by him will be 550 lib. that is, 400 lib. and the 150 lib. which his

body weighs. Topham weighs about 200 lib. which added to the 800 lib. that he lifts, makes 1000 lib.

But he ought to lift 900 lib. besides the weight of his body, to be as strong again as a man of 150

Now as all men are not proportionably strong in every part, but some are stronger in the arms, some in the

legs, and others in the back, according to the work and exercise which they use, we can't judge of a man's

strength by lifting only; but a method may be found to compare together the strength of different men in the

Topham was not endowed with a strength of mind equal to the strength of his body. He was married to a

wanton who rendered existence so insupportable that he committed suicide before he was forty years of age,

[4] Interesting accounts of Topham's career may be found in Wonders of Bodily Strength, New York, 1873, a

translation from the French of Depping, by Charles Russell; Sir David Brewster's, Letters on Natural Magic;

London, 1838; Wanley's Wonders of the Little World, London, 1806; Wilson's Wonderful Characters,

About the year 1703 there appeared in London a native of Kent, by the name of Joyce, who won the name of

a second Samson by a series of feats of strength that to the people of that day seemed little short of

superhuman. Dr. Desaguliers, in his Experimental Philosophy, gives the following account of Joyce and his

About thirty years ago one Joyce,[5] a Kentish man, famous for his great strength (tho' not quite so strong as

the King of Poland, by the accounts we have of that Prince) shewed several feats in London and the country,

which so much surprised the spectators, that he was by most people called the second Sampson.[6] But tho'

the postures which he had learned to put his body into, and found out by practice without any mechanical

theory, were such as would make a man of common strength do such feats as would appear surprising to

everybody that did not know the advantages of those positions of the body; yet nobody then attempted to

draw against horses, or raise great weights, or to do anything in imitation of him; because, as he was very

strong in the arms, and grasped those that try'd his strength that way so hard, that they were obliged

immediately to desire him to desist, his other feats (wherein his manner of acting was chiefly owing to the

mechanical advantages gained by the position of his body) were entirely attributed to his extraordinary

[5] Or William Joy. [6] This is the spelling used by Joyce, Eckenberg and others, for the Samson of the Bible.

But when he had gone out of England, or had ceased to shew his performances, for eight or ten years; men of

ordinary strength found out the way of making such advantage of the same postures as Joyce had put himself

into, as to pass for men of more than common strength, by drawing against horses, breaking ropes, lifting vast

weights, &c. (tho' they cou'd in none of the postures really perform so much as Joyce; yet they did enough to

amaze and amuse, and get a great deal of money) so that every two or three years we have a new SECOND

Some fifteen years subsequent to Joyce's advent, another socalled Samson, this time a German named John

Charles Van Eckenberg, toured Europe with a remarkable performance along the same lines as Joyce's. Dr.

After having seen him once, I guessed at his manner of imposing on the multitude; and being resolved to be

fully satisfied in the matter, I took four very curious persons with me to see him again, viz. the Lord Marquis

of Tullibardine, Dr. Alexander Stuart, Dr. Pringle, and a mechanical workman, who used to assist me in my

courses of experiments. We placed ourselves in such a manner round the operator, as to be able to observe

nicely all that he did, and found it so practicable that we performed several of his feats that evening by

ourselves, and afterwards I did most of the rest as soon as I had a frame made to fit in to draw, and another to

Dr. Desaguliers illustrates Van Eckenberg's methods in a very exhaustive set of notes and plates, which are

too technical and voluminous to repeat here, but I will quote sufficiently from them to make the modus

In breaking the rope one thing is to be observ'd, which will much facilitate the performance; and that is to

place the iron eye L, (Fig. 3) thro' which the rope goes, in such a situation, that a plane going thro' its ring

shall be parallel to the two parts of the rope; because then the rope will in a manner be jamm'd in it, and not

slipping thro' it, the whole force of the man's action will be exerted on that part of the rope which is in the

eye, which will make it break more easily than if more parts of the rope were acted upon. So the eye, tho'

made round and smooth, may be said in some measure to CUT THE ROPE. And it is after this manner that

one may break a whip cord, nay, a small jackline with one's hand without hurting it; only by bringing one

part of the rope to cut the other; that is, placing it so round one's left hand, that by a sudden jerk, the whole

The posture of Fig. 4 Plate 19 (where the strong man having an anvil on his breast or belly, suffers another

man to strike with a sledge hammer and forge a piece of iron, or cut a bar cold with chizzels) tho' it seems

surprising to some people, has nothing in it to be really wondered at; for sustaining the anvil is the whole

matter, and the heavier the anvil is, the less the blows are felt: And if the anvil was but two or three times

heavier than the hammer, the strong man would be killed by a few blows; for the more matter the anvil has,

the more INERTIA and the less liable it is to be struck out of its place; because when it has by the blow

receiv'd the whole MOMENTUM of the hammer, its velocity will be so much less than that of the hammer as

it has more matter than the hammer. Neither are we to attribute to the anvil a velocity less than the hammer in

a reciprocal proportion of their masses or quantities of matter; for that would happen only if the anvil was to

hang freely in the air (for example) by a rope, and it was struck horizontally by the hammer. Thus is the

velocity given by the hammer distributed to all parts of a great stone, when it is laid on a man's breast to be

broken; but when the blow is given, the man feels less of the weight of the stone than he did before, because

in the reaction of the stone, all the parts of it round about the hammer rise towards the blow; and if the

tenacity of the parts of the stone, is not stronger than the force with which it moves towards the hammer, the

stone must break; which it does when the blow is strong, and struck upon the centre of gravity of the stone.

In the 6th Fig. of Plate 19, the man IHL (the chairs IL, being made fast) makes so strong an arch with his

backbone and the bones of his legs and thighs, as to be able not only to sustain one man, but three or four, if

they had room to stand; or, in their stead, a great stone to be broken with one blow.

In the 6th and 7th Fig. of the same plate, a man or two are raised in the direction CM, by the knees of the

strong man IHL lying upon his back. A trial will suffice to show that this is not a difficult feat for a man of

Wanley [7] enumerates thirty men of might, each of whom was famous in his time. Notable among them was

Barsabas, who first made a reputation in Flanders, where he lifted the coach of Louis XIV, which had sunk to

the nave in the mud, all the oxen and horses yoked to it having exerted their strength in vain. For this service

the king granted him a pension, and being soon promoted, he at length rose to be townmajor of

[7] Wonders of the little World, by Nathaniel Wanley, London, 1806. Vol. I., page 76.

Barsabas entering one day a farrier's shop in a country village, asked for horse shoes, the farrier showed him

some, which Barsabas snapped in pieces as if they had been rotten wood, telling the farrier at the same time

that they were too brittle, and good for nothing. The farrier wanted to forge some more, but Barsabas took up

the anvil and hid it under his cloak. The farrier, when the iron was hot, could not conceive what had become

of his anvil, but his astonishment was still increased when he saw Barsabas deposit it in its place with the

utmost ease. Imagining that he had got the devil in his shop, he ran out as fast as he could, and did not

Barsabas had a sister as strong as himself, but as he quitted his home very young, and before his sister was

born, he had never seen her. He met with her in a small town of Flanders, where she carried on a rope

manufactury. The modern Sampson bought some of her largest ropes which he broke like packthread,

telling her they were very bad.``I will give some better,'' replied she, ``but will you pay a good price for

them?''``Whatever you choose,'' returned Barsabas, showing her some crown pieces. His sister took them,

and breaking two or three of them said, ``Your crowns are as little worth as my ropes, give me better money.''

Barsabas, astonished at the strength exhibited by this female, then questioned her respecting her country and

The dauphin being desirous to see Barsabas exhibit some of his feats, the latter said, ``My horse has carried

me so long that I will carry him in my turn.'' He then placed himself below the animal and raising him up,

carried him more than fifty paces, and then placed him on the ground without being the least hurt.

Barsabas' sister was not unique in her century. I quote from a magazine called The Parlor Portfolio or

To be seen, at Mr. John Syme's, Peruke maker, opposite the Mews, Charing Cross, the surprising and famous

Italian Female Sampson, who has been seen in several courts of Europe with great applause. She will

absolutely walk, barefoot, on a redhot bar of iron: a large block of marble of between two and three

thousand weight she will permit to lie on her for some time, after which she will throw it off at about six feet

distance, without using her hands, and exhibit several other curious performances, equally astonishing, which

were never before seen in England. She performs exactly at twelve o'clock, and four, and six in the afternoon.

From the spelling, I judge that the person who selected this lady's title must have been more familiar with the

At the new theatre in the Haymarket, this day, will be performed a concert of musick, in two acts. Boxes 3s.,

pit 2s., gallery 1s. Between the acts of the concert will be given, gratis, several exercises of ropedancing and

tumbling. There is also arrived the little woman from Geneva, who, by her extraordinary strength, performs

several curious things, viz. 1st. She beats a redhot iron that is made crooked straight with her naked feet.

2ndly. She puts her head on one chair, and her feet on another, in an equilibrium, and suffers five or six men

to stand on her body, which after some time she flings off. 3rdly. An anvil is put on her body, on which two

men strike with large hammers. 4thly. A stone of a hundred pounds weight is put on her body, and beat to

pieces with a hammer. 5thly. She lies down on the ground, and suffers a stone of 1500 pounds weight to be

laid on her breasts, in which position she speaks to the audience, and drinks a glass of wine, then throws the

stone off her body by mere strength, without any assistance. Lastly, she lifts an anvil of 200 pound weight

At present the stunt with the two chairs and the six men is being exhibited as a hypnotic test.

Giovanni Battista Belzoni, the famous Egyptian archeologist, who was a man of gigantic stature, began his

public career as a strongman at the Bartholomew Fair, under the management of Gyngell, the conjuror, who

dubbed him The Young Hercules. Shortly afterward he appeared at Sadler's Wells Theater, where he created

a profound sensation, under the name of The Patagonian Samson. The feature of his act was carrying a

pyramid of from seven to ten men in a manner never before attempted. He wore a sort of harness with

footholds for the men, and when all were in position he moved about the stage with perfect ease, soliciting

``kind applause'' by waving a flag. He afterwards became a magician, and after various other ventures he

finally landed in Egypt, where his discoveries were of such a nature as to secure for him an enviable position

Feats of strength have always interested me greatly, so that in my travels around the world I have made it a

point to come in contact with the most powerful human beings of my generation. The one among these who

deserves first mention is Charles Jefferson, with whose achievements I became quite familiar while we were

working in the same museum many years ago. I am convinced that he must have been the strongest man of

his time at lifting with the bare hands alone. He had two feats that he challenged any mortal to duplicate. One

was picking up a heavy blacksmith's anvil by the horn and placing it on a kitchen table; for the other he had a

block of steel, which, as near as I can remember, must have been about 14 inches long, 12 inches wide, and 7

inches thick. This block lay on the floor, and his challenge was for anyone to pick it up with bare hands. I

noticed that it required unusually long fingers to grasp it, since one could get only the thumb on one side.

Though thousands tried, I never saw, or heard, of anyone else who could juggle his anvil or pick up the

weight. True, I saw him surreptitiously rub his fingers with resin, to assist in the gripping, but that could have

It is generally conceded that Louis Cyr was, in his best days, the strongest man in the known world at

allround straight lifting. Cyr did not give the impression of being an athlete, nor of a man in training, for he

appeared to be overfat and not particularly muscular; but he made records in lifting which, to the best of my

John Grun Marx, a Luxemberger, must have been among the strongest men in the world at the time I knew

him. We worked on the same bill several times; but it was at the Olympia, in Paris, that he shone supreme as

a strongmanand at the same time as a weak one. For, in spite of his sovereign strength, Mars was no match

for a pair of bright eyes; all a pretty woman had to do was to smile and John would wilt. AndParis was

Marx's strength was prodigious, and he juggled hundreds, and toyed with thousands, of pounds as a child

plays with a rattle. He must have weighed in the neighborhood of three hundred pounds, and he walked like a

Always goodnatured, he made a host of friends both in the profession and out of it. After years of

professional work he settled down as landlord of a public house in England, where, finally, he was prostrated

by a mortal illness. Wishing to die in his native city, he returned to Luxemberg. He did not realize that he was

bereft of his enormous strength, and those about him humored him: the doctor and the nurses would pretend

that he hurt them when he grasped their hands. He died almost forgotten except by his brother artists, but they

(myself among them) built a monument to this goodnatured Hercules, whose only care was to entertain.

Among the strongmen that I met during my days with the museums, one whom I found most interesting was

William Le Roy, known as The Nail King and The Human ClawHammer, whose act appealed to me for its

Le Roy was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, October 3rd, 1873. He was about 5 feet 10 inches in height, and well

set up. The inordinate strength of his jaws, teeth, and neck, enabled him to push a nail, held between his teeth,

through a oneinch board; or to nail together, with his teeth, two 3/4inch boards. He could draw with his

teeth a large nail that had been driven completely through a twoinch plank. Then he would screw an

ordinary twoinch screw into a hardwood plank with his teeth, pull it out with his teeth, and then screw it into

the plank again and offer $100 to any man who could pull it out with a large pair of pincers which he

proffered for the purpose. When he had performed these stunts in various positions, he would bend his body

backward till his head pointed toward the floor, and in that position push a nail through a oneinch board

held perpendicularly in a metal frame. I saw no chance for trickery in Le Roy's act.

Another nail act was that of Alexander Weyer, who, either by superior strength or by a peculiar knack, could

hold a nail between the middle fingers of his right hand with the head against the palm, and drive it through a

oneinch board. But since this act did not get him very far either on the road to fame, or toward the big

moneyhe turned to magic and finally became one of the leading Continental magicians, boasting that he

I met Weyer at Liege, Belgium, where we had an allnight match with playing cards. He admitted that there

were some tricks he did not know, but he claimed that after once seeing any magician work he could

duplicate the tricks. On this occasion, however, he was unable to make the boast good.

Another clever performer of those days was Mexican Billy Wells, who worked on the Curio platform. His act

was the old stonebreaking stunt, already explained, except that he had the stones broken on his head instead

of on his body. He protected his head with a small blanket, which he passed for examination, and this

protection seemed excusable, considering that he had to do at least seven shows a day. A strong man from the

audience did the real work of the act by swinging the heavy sledgehammer on the stone, as shown in the

accompanying illustration. Usually the stone would be riven by a single blow; but if it was not, Wells would

The last I saw of Billy was during one of my engagements at the Palace Theater, New York. He was then

soliciting orders for some photograph firm, the halcyon days of his big money having faded to a memory. But

he had been a good showman and his was one of the best liked working acts in the Curio, as the

Of all the acts of this nature that I have ever seen I think the most foolhardy was that of an undersized

Italian who lay on his back on the floor and let fall from his hands, extended upward at arm's length heavy

weights upon his chestthe silly fool! I said as much to himand some other things too. His act had little

entertainment to show as compared with the pain and danger involved. I do not know what became of him,

Among the museum attractions of those years was a man named Wilson who had the incredible chest

expansion of twentyone inches. This man would allow a strong leather strap, about the size of a trunkstrap,

to be buckled round his chest; and then, inflating his lungs, would break it with very little apparent exertion.

An imitator, named Herman, worked the side shows for a long time with a similar act, and was fairly

successful, although his expansion was only about sixteen inches. The last time I heard of Wilson, he was

Another ``Samson,'' a German, among other sensational feats, such as breaking coins with his fingers, used to

flex his muscles and break a dogchain that had been fastened round the biceps of his right arm. While he

was performing at the Aquarium, in London, he issued a challenge. Sandow, then a youth without reputation,

accepted the challenge, went upon the stage, defeated him, and, since Samson's act had been the talk of the

town, thus brought himself into instant notice, the beginning of a career in which he rose to the top of his

profession. After several successful years on the stage, Sandow settled down in London, where I last heard of

In the tradition of the ``Female Sampsons'' noted in Chapter Eleven, I recall two strongwomen who were

notably good; Yucca, who lifted a horse by means of a harness over the shoulders; and La Blanche, who

toyed with heavy articles in a most entertaining way. I remember these ladies particularly because both were

remarkably good talkersand I am referring to conversational quality, not to volume.

Lulu Hurstknown variously as The Georgia Magnet, The Electric Girl, The Georgia Wonder,

etc.created a veritable sensation a generation ago by a series of feats which seemed to set the law of

gravitation at defiance. Her methods consisted in utilizing the principles of the lever and fulcrum in a manner

so cleverly disguised that it appeared to the audience that some supernatural power must be at work.

Although she was exposed many times, her success was so marked that several other muscular ladies entered

her province with acts that were, in several instances, superior to the original.

One of the cleverest of these was Annie Abbott, who, if I remember rightly, also called herself The Georgia

Magnet. She took the act to England and her opening performance at the Alhambra is recorded as one of the

three big sensations of the London vaudeville stage of those days. The second sensation was credited to the

BulletProof Man. This chap wore a jacket that rifle bullets, fired pointblank, failed to penetrate. The

composition of this jacket was a secret, but after the owner's death the garment was ripped open and found to

containground glass! The third sensation I must, with all due modesty, (business of bowing) claim for

The Magnet failed to attract after about fortyeight hours, for a keenwitted reporter discovered her methods

and promptly published them. The bullet detainer also lasted only a short time only. When my opening added

a third sensational surprise, one of the London dailies asked, ``Is this going to be another Georgia Magnet

That they were gunning for me is proved by the fact that the same newspaper investigator who exposed the

Magnet, came upon the stage of the Alhambra at my press performancethe same stage where the unhappy

Dixie lodestone had collapsedand though he brought along an antique slave iron, which he seemed to

think would put an end to my public career on the spot, I managed to escape in less than three minutes. When

I passed back his irons, he grinned at me and said, ``I don't know how you did it, but you did!'' and he shook

Some twentysix years ago I was on the bill with Mattie Lee Price, who, though less well known, was in

many ways superior to either Miss Hurst or Miss Abbott. For a time she was a sensation of the highest order,

for which thanks were largely due to the management of her husband, a wonderful lecturer and a thorough

showman. I think his name was White. He ``sold'' the act as no other man has sold an act before or since.

We worked together at Kohl and Middleton's, Chicago, and the following week at Burton's Museum,

Milwaukee; but when we made the next jump I found that White was not along. They had had a family

squabble, the other apex of the triangle being a circus grafter who ``shibbolethed'' at some of the ``brace

games,'' which at that time had police protection, so far as that could be given. He had interfered between the

couple, and was, I am sorry to say, quite successful as an interferer; but he was a diabolical failure when he

attempted to duplicate White's work as lecturer, and the act, after playing a date or two, sank out of sight and

I have heard nothing more of her professionally. Lately I have learned that she died in London in 1900 and is

This was one of the most positive demonstrations I have ever seen of the fact that showmanship is the largest

factor in putting an act over. Miss Price was a marvelous performer, but without her husbandlecturer she

was no longer a drawing card, and dropped to the level of an ordinary entertainer even lower, for her act was

In Chapter Eleven we read Dr. Desaguliers' analysis of the mechanics of what may be called strongmanship.

For instance, reviewing one of Lulu Hurst's performances, the New York Times, of July 13th, 1884, said:

The ``Phenomenon of the Nineteenth Century,'' which may be seen nightly at Wallack's, is not so much the

famous Georgia girl, with her mysterious muscle, as is the audience which gathers to wonder at her

performance. It is a phenomenon of stupidity, and it only goes to show how willingly people will be fooled,

Then follows a description of her performance, which was far from successful, thanks to the efforts of one of

the committee, a man described as ``Mr. Thomas Johnson, a powerfullybuilt engraver connected with the

Century magazine.'' Mr. Johnson had evidently caught her secret, and he got the better of her in all the tests in

A disclosure of the methods employed in a few of her ``tests'' will serve to convince the reader of the fact that

she possessed no supernormal power, the same general principles shown here being used throughout her

These explanations are taken from the French periodical La Nature, in which Mr. Nelson W. Perry thus sums

up the attitude of the public in regard to this class of performance: ``Electricity is a mysterious agent;

therefore everything mysterious is electric.'' Of the performance of the Electric Girl this magazine says:

It is a question of a simple application of the elementary principles of the laws of mechanics, chapter of

We propose to point out here a certain number of such artifices and to describe a few of the experiments,

utilizing for this purpose the data furnished by Mr. Perry, as well as those resulting from our own

One of the experiments consists in having a man or several men hold a cane or a billiard cue horizontally

above the head, as shown in Fig. 1. On pushing with one hand, the girl forces back two or three men, who, in

unstable equilibrium and under the oblique action of the thrust exerted, are obliged to fall back. This first

experiment is so elementary and infantile that it is not necessary to dwell upon it. In order to show the relative

sizes of the persons, the artist has supposed the little girl to be standing on a platform in the first experiment,

but in the experiment that we witnessed this platform was rendered useless by the fact that the girl who

performed them was of sufficient height to reach the cue by extending her arms and standing on tiptoes.

Next we have a second and more complex experiment, less easily explained at first sight.

Two men (Fig. 2) take a stick about three feet in length, and are asked to hold it firmly in a vertical position.

The girl places her hand against the lower end of the stick, in the position shown, and the two men are invited

to make the latter slide vertically in the girl's hand, which they are unable to do, in spite of their conscientious

Mr. Perry explains this exercise as follows: The men are requested to place themselves parallel to each other,

and the girl, who stands opposite them, places the palm of her hand against the stick and turned toward her.

She takes care to place her hand as far as possible from the hands of the two men, so as to give herself a

certain leverage. She then begins to slide her hand along the stick, gently at first, and then with an increasing

pressure, as if she wished to better the contact between the stick and her hand. She thus moves it from the

This they do under very disadvantageous conditions, seeing the difference in the length of the arms of the

lever. The stress exerted by the girl is very feeble, because, on the one hand, she has the lever arm to herself,

and, on the other, the action upon her lever arm is a simple traction. When she feels that the pressure exerted

is great enough, she directs the two men to exert a vertical stress strong enough to cause the stick to descend.

They then imagine that they are exerting a VERTICAL stress, while in reality their stresses are

HORIZONTAL and tend to keep the stick in a vertical position in order to react against the pressure exerted

There is evidently a certain vertical component that tends to cause the stick to descend, but the lateral

pressure produces a sufficient friction between the hand and the stick to support this vertical force without

difficulty. Mr. Perry performed the experiment by placing himself upon a spring balance and assuming the

role of the girl, with two very strong men as adversaries. All the efforts made to cause the stick to slide in the

open hand failed, and the excess of weight due to the vertical force always remained less than twentyfive

pounds, despite the very determined and sincere stresses of the two men, who, unbeknown to themselves,

In the experiment represented in Fig. 3, which recalls to mind the first one (Fig. 1), the two men are requested

to hold the stick firmly and immovable, but the slightest pressure upon the extremity suffices to move the

arms and body of the subject. Such pressure in the first place is exerted but slightly, and the stresses are

gradually increased. Then, all at once, when the force exerted horizontally is as great as possible, and the men

are exerting their strength in the opposite direction in order to resist it, the girl abruptly ceases the pressure

WITHOUT WARNING and exerts it in the OPPOSITE DIRECTION. Unprepared for this change, the

victims lose their equilibrium and find themselves at the mercy of the girl, and so much the more so in

proportion as they are stronger and their efforts are greater. The experiment succeeds still better with three

The experiment represented in Fig. 4, where it concerns the easy lifting of a very heavy person, the trick is no

less simple. Out of a hundred persons submitted to the experiment, ninetynine, knowing that the

experimenter wishes to lift them and cause them to fall forward, grasp the seat or arms of the chair, and, in

endeavoring to resist, make the whole weight of their body bear upon their feet. If they do not do so at the

first instant, they do so when they are conscious of the attempts of the girl to raise the seat, and they help

therein unconsciously. The experimenter, therefore, needs only to exert a horizontal thrust, without doing any

lifting, and such horizontal thrust is facilitated by taking the knees as points of support for her elbows. As

soon as a slight movement is effected, the hardest part of the work is over, for it is only necessary for the girl

to cease to exert her stresses in order to have the chair fall back or move laterally in one direction or the other.

At all events, the equilibrium is destroyed, and, before it is established again, it requires but little dexterity to

move the subject about in all directions without a great expenditure of energy. The difficulty is not increased

on seating two men, or three men, upon each other's knees (as shown in Fig. 4), since, in the latter case, the

third acts as a true counterpoise to the first, and the whole pretty well resembles an apparatus of unstable

equilibrium, whose centre of gravity is very high and, consequently, so much more easily displaced.

All these experiments require some little skill and practice, but are attended with no difficulty, and, upon the

whole, do not merit the enthusiastic articles that have given the ``electric'' or ``magnetic'' girl her European

Strong people, whether tricksters or genuine athletes, or both, we shall probably have always with us. But

with the gradual refinement of the public taste, the demand for such exhibitions as fireeating,

swordswallowing, glasschewing, and the whole repertoire of the socalled Human Ostrich, steadily

declined, and I recall only one engagement of a performer of this type at a firstclass theater in this country

There was still a considerable demand for these people in the dime museums, until the enormous increase in

the number of such houses created a demand for freaks that was far in excess of the supply, and many houses

were obliged to close because no freaks were obtainable, even at the enormous increase in salaries then in

vogue. The small price of admission, and the fact that feature curios like Laloo or the Tocci Twins drew

down seven or eight hundred dollars a week, show that these houses catered to a multitude of people; and not

a few of the leading managers of today's vaudeville, owe their start in life to the dime museum.

Among the museums that were veritable gold mines, I might mention Epstein's of Chicago; Brandenberg's of

Philadelphia; Moore's of Detroit and Rochester; The Sackett and Wiggins Tour; Kohl and Middleton's;

Austin and Stone's of Boston; Robinson of Buffalo; Ans Huber's, Globe, Harlem, Worth's, and the Gayety of

The dime museum is but a memory now, and in three generations it will, in all probability, be utterly

forgotten. A few of the acts had sufficient intrinsic worth to follow the managers into vaudeville, but these

have no part in this chronicle, which has been written rather to commemorate some forms of entertainment