Releasing myself from fastenings of all sorts, from ropes to straightjackets, has been my profession for over thirty-five years, therefore I am in a position to positively contradict Houdin’s first statement. I have met thousands of persons who claimed that the rope trick as well as the handcuff trick was accomplished by folding the hand together or by making the wrist larger than the hand, but I have never met the man or woman who could make the hand smaller than the wrist. I have even gone so far as to have iron bands made to press my hands together, hoping to make them smaller than my wrists eventually, but it was no use. Even if the thumbs were cut away I believe it would be impossible to slip a rope that is properly bound around the wrist. Furthermore I know that Houdin was wrong in regard to the Davenports because of what Ira Erastus Davenport himself told me.
Equally preposterous is the gift of seeing in the dark with which Houdin endowed the Davenports. Professor Hoffmann defends Houdin by citing instances of prisoners who had been confined in a dungeon for an indefinite period and had learned to see in the dark. Ira Erastus Davenport laughed at the idea and Morelle, who was confined in a dungeon for a number of years, told me that all the years he had spent in darkness did not accustom his eyesight at all and that to have seen an article plainly he would have been forced to hold it close to his eyes and even then would have had to stretch his imagination.
Baggally, an investigator, a member of the Society for Psychical Research, London, England, emphatically records that he believes the Zancigs are genuine telepathists, and my friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, though he says that Zancig has given proof numerous times that he works with a code, nevertheless has stated in writing that he believed the Zancigs to be genuine. I want to go on record that the Zancigs never impressed me as being anything but clever, silent and signal codists. Zancig has admitted freely to members of the Society of American Magicians, of which he is a member, that they were not telepathists but, as we term it, “second sight artists.” They simply have a wonderful code which the public cannot detect. It is interesting to know that after Mrs. Zancig’s death, Zancig took a street-car conductor from Philadelphia and broke him in to do the act. This young man soon quit his teacher, married, and began presenting the act with his wife. Then Zancig took young David Bamberg, an intelligent son of Theodore Bamberg, one of our well-known magicians. The boy proved exceptionally clever but on account of unexpected circumstances he left and went abroad. Zancig came to me for an assistant and I introduced him to an actress. He said he would guarantee to teach her the code inside of a month, but they never came to an agreement on financial matters. Zancig has now married again, this time a school teacher, and they are doing a very clever performance. In passing I would note that in 1906 or 1907 I engaged Zancig to go with my show. I had ample opportunity to watch his system and codes. They are swift, sure, and silent, and I must give him credit for being expertly adept in his chosen line of mystery, but I have his personal word, given before a witness, that telepathy does not enter into it.
Charles Morritt has a code for second sight which is very simple and can be taught to anyone in thirty minutes. He has given me the secret. He gave this code to a banker who performed it with his sister, and Morritt, although he had taught the signals, could not follow or detect them once they began to work smoothly. Of course he knew what they were doing but simply could not follow them.
Regarding the possibility of using codes and cues before others without being detected I can say positively that it is not only possible but simple and practical. I had a fox terrier by the name of “Bobby” that I trained to pick up cards by a cue. On May 31, 1918, I performed with this dog before the Society of American Magicians and I do not believe that there was one in the audience who detected my silent cue. I spoke about this to a number of expert professionals who thought, to all intents and purposes, that Bobby was listening to my speech, whereas I was silently cueing him all the time. I do not wish to expose the silent cue as I know that the great dog trainers of the world use it and it would not be fair to them to make it public. I was able to give Bobby his silent cue in any room or even a newspaper office and the spectators could watch me closely all the time because I never made a move they could see or a sound they could hear.
It is common to train other animals in a similar way. During one of my tours in Germany I saw a horse called “Kluge Hans” that was able to spell, add, subtract, pick out cards, and with his feet make one tap for yes and two taps for no. Kluge Hans fooled the professors for a long time but finally it came out that he got his cues from the trainer’s assistant. It is not generally known that, owing to the position of his eyes, a horse can look backwards to a certain degree and the investigators did not notice the assistant who stood just back of the horse’s head.
At one time William Eglinton, an English medium, was undoubtedly considered by Spiritualists the most powerful professional psychic not only in England but throughout a greater part of Europe. In 1876 he held the palm as a successor to Slade in slate writing tricks. He was a strong card for the cause and was extolled and lauded to the skies by the Spiritualistic press. He produced varied phenomena in addition to his slate writing effects, such as the movement of articles, production of Spirit lights, and materialization. The Spiritualists have told that “he was so skillful that several practised conjurors as well as many investigators” were at a loss to detect or account for his methods. That may have been so. Half a century ago conjurors were not up on Spiritualism as they are to-day, and besides, it must be conceded that even conjurors are not immune to being deceived. Nevertheless there were conjurors and lay investigators fully qualified to discover and expose his frauds.
In 1876, while in his prime as a medium, he was exposed in the materialization of an Arab. This Arab’s flowing beard and draperies were very familiar to English Spiritualists and as proof of the actual materialization sitters were permitted to cut fragments from the beard and robes. Archdeacon Colley, an interested member of a circle of sitters, suspecting fraud, secured some clippings and a few days later when opportunity offered “he found in Eglinton’s portmanteau a false beard and a quantity of muslin to which the detached relics perfectly corresponded.” He was also exposed several other times but this did not prevent the Spiritualist paper, Light, from publishing in October, 1886, a mass of testimony given by more than a hundred observers, including persons of high culture and social standing, to show that the phenomena at his seances were not due to any deliberate action on the part of the medium but to “conclusively establish the existence of some objective, intelligent force, capable of acting externally to the medium and in contravention of the recognized laws of matter.”
The publication of such statements inspired Professor H. Carvill Lewis[131] to visit Eglinton for the purpose of investigation and arrangements were made for him to have a first sitting in November just a month after the extravagant statement in Light. Aware of the frailty of memory Professor Lewis made notes during the seance and wrote out his deductions and conclusions immediately after. He discovered at an early stage that close scrutiny did not produce an atmosphere sufficiently wholesome for desired results. While his attention was concentrated on the medium the “objective intelligent force” seemed totally inoperative, but whenever he turned his attention from the medium and apparently became absorbed in making notes the “intelligent force” became active instanter. Under the observation of Professor Lewis, Eglinton failed utterly at times and at others simply declined to work when conditions were against him. Professor Lewis quotes him as claiming that he had converted Kellar to Spiritualism but refutes such a claim in the following words:
“So far is this from being the case that Mr. Kellar, whom I know personally, is nightly offering in America twenty pounds to anyone who will produce Spiritualistic phenomena that he cannot imitate by conjuring.”