mit the ‘‘wizard of the north’’ and contested magical mentalities

Remaking MagicThe ‘‘Wizard of the North’’ and Contested Magical Mentalities

in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Magic Show

K A R L B E L LUniversity of Portsmouth

Following a performance by John Henry Anderson, the ‘‘Wizard of theNorth,’’ Sir Walter Scott supposedly declared ‘‘you are as much a Necroman-cer as any that have existed during the darker ages; you are superior to them;they managed their delusions for sinister purposes, and led the multitude tobelieve they were aided by the powers of darkness, you inculcate no suchbelief.’’1 Scott’s statement encapsulates the focus of this article, the way inwhich the mid-nineteenth-century stage served as the crucible in which tra-ditional magical beliefs were co-opted and remade into something new. Thiswill be considered as part of an ongoing process from the eighteenth centurywhen ‘‘the demonic and magical did not so much disappear . . . as changetheir face and place,’’ gradually being ‘‘sanitized and culturally revamped inthe flourishing domains of entertainment and print culture.’’2

This article will explore two related ideas. First, via the nature of quasi-scientific magic shows, it will consider the social elites’ (re)engagement with

I would like to thank Professor Andy Wood for his constructive criticism of anearlier draft of this article, and the anonymous reviewer for Magic, Ritual, and Witch-craft, whose comments and suggestions were most helpful.

1. Promotional poster for the ‘‘Wizard of the North’’ in Balloon Ascents: PublicGardens—Monster Fete—Theatres, Norfolk Heritage Centre (hereafter NHC) ref. Col-man Collection 60A [XL]. The title ‘‘Wizard of the North,’’ adopted by Anderson,had previously been applied to Sir Walter Scott, but also to the eighteenth-centuryphilosopher Johann Georg Hamann. I am indebted to Brian Copenhaver for thispiece of information. Scott’s accolade was probably fabricated by Anderson, since hewas still an itinerant actor in Scotland in the late 1820s, not taking up magic untillater, and yet Scott died in 1832. For Scott’s views on magic, see his Letters on Demon-ology and Witchcraft (London: John Murray, 1830).

2. Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London:Penguin, 2000), 224.

Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (Summer 2009)Copyright � 2009 University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.

27Bell � Remaking Magic

this refashioned ‘‘magic.’’ It will examine how these increasingly democra-tized forms of entertainment helped contribute to promoting bourgeois con-ceptions of a technological modernity by reshaping popular magical beliefs.These entertainments will therefore be read as another ‘‘front’’ in the middleclasses’ multifarious attack on popular culture in this period, using emergingforms of mass culture with which to discredit or eclipse older supernaturalworldviews.

Second, it will explore the ways in which this consensus around a techno-logical modernity was arguably undermined by the persistent appeal of thosebeliefs, with stage shows helping to maintain faith in genuine magical thoughtand concepts even if expressed through their debased use as entertainment.It will argue that, given the theatrical nature of these entertainments, theability to either manipulate or reinforce magical beliefs was largely dependenton the way the audiences interpreted visual illusions.

These approaches will be read as a demonstration of hegemonic strugglein mid-nineteenth-century English society. Rather than just interpreting thisas the manufacturing of consent for a dominant ideology (a conceptualisationrecently criticized as ‘‘Hegemony Lite’’), this article perceives hegemony inGramscian terms as ‘‘a way of marking out ever-shifting, highly protean rela-tionships of power,’’ relationships rooted in ‘‘practical activity’’ as much asideology and forming a field of continual contestation between dominantand subaltern groups.3 As such, while magical entertainments can be read asa way of encouraging consent for the ‘‘progressive’’ ideological worldviewof the bourgeoisie, their ambiguous relationship with genuine magical beliefswill be considered as a potential locale for counterhegemonic interpretationsof reality, albeit one that was implicit rather than ‘‘an explicit, consciouscritique.’’4

This article therefore seeks to complicate the rather easily accepted dividebetween ‘‘real’’ magic and what Simon During refers to as ‘‘secular magic’’or the ‘‘magical assemblage’’ of stage entertainment.5 Historians of modernpopular magical beliefs and historians of magical entertainments tend to pur-sue their research in parallel, failing to acknowledge the value of one anoth-er’s work. The former tend to dismiss magic shows as mere legerdemain anddeem them to have little or no relevance to continuing genuine ethnographic

3. Kate Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology (London: Pluto, 2002), 101 and174; see also 172–76.

4. Ibid, 108.5. Simon During, Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic (Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 1.

28 Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft �Summer 2009

beliefs. The latter seem to accept the older historiographical view that magicalbeliefs had largely died out by the end of the eighteenth century and that‘‘magical’’ entertainments represented a purely ‘‘secular’’ diversion that de-veloped as part of an emerging consumer culture.6 This article will reconsiderthe interrelation between these two magical cultures, demonstrating the fre-quent symbiotic links between them.

With a predominant focus on the ‘‘Wizard of the North,’’ one of Britain’skey practitioners of stage magic in this period, it will take issue with During’sview that Anderson ‘‘merely alluded ironically to old associations [with] themagical,’’ that the wizard supposedly distanced himself from claims that ‘‘an-cient or ethnic magics were being called on,’’ or that he was a ‘‘quasi-scientist.’’7 While demonstrating examples of Anderson inferring both, themore important issue will be how audiences perceived what he was doingand how the ambiguity of magic and theatricality potentially unsettled anyclear distinctions the performer chose to make. As a result it aims to take upMichael D. Bailey and Brian P. Copenhaver’s call to ‘‘challenge the prevail-ing assumption that the terms ‘magic’ . . . and ‘science’ represent readilydistinguishable historical and cultural phenomena.’’8

THE MAGICAL ENTERTAINMENT NEXUS

If the eighteenth century had marked a period when the social elites publiclydistanced themselves from popular beliefs in witchcraft and magic, the rein-terpretation of magic as theatrical entertainment allowed them to reconnectto such ideas in the mid-nineteenth century.9 Of course, there were long-established traditions that fused the magical, the commercial, and the enter-taining, and the developments explored here briefly need to be set in thatbroader context.

6. These stances tend to be more implicit than explicit, represented by their re-spective absence in key works relating to the two fields. For example, compare OwenDavies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture 1736–1951 (Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress, 1999) with During, Modern Enchantments. The latter’s chapter on the history of‘‘real’’ magic argues for its gradual marginalization and makes reductive statementssuch as, from the perspective of an enlightened modernity ‘‘there is no differencebetween the truth-content of secular and supernatural magics’’ (p. 2).

7. During, Modern Enchantments, 114–15.8. Michael D. Bailey and Brian P. Copenhaver, ‘‘From the Editors,’’ Magic, Ritual,

and Witchcraft 1 (2006): vii.9. Of course, private beliefs in magic may have been maintained despite public

displays of rejection. See Malcolm Gaskill, Crimes and Mentalities in Early Modern En-gland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 79–119.


Eighteenth-century inns and fairs had promoted custom by exhibiting‘‘magical’’ beasts. ‘‘Educated animals were a perennial attraction’’ and ‘‘a suc-cession of intelligent horses and pigs . . . amazed audiences.’’10 Magic hadlong been a consumer commodity too, the guidance and charms provided bycunning folk being the ‘‘product’’ in a service industry accessed by a broadsocial spectrum of willing, sometimes desperate consumers.11 Consultationswith ‘‘wizards’’ or wise women could often involve a fair degree of theatri-cality (nineteenth-century commentators often made associations betweenthe feats performed by stage magicians and the likelihood that some similarsleight of hand had been conducted by supposedly ‘‘real’’ wizards), and Mau-reen Perkins has gone so far as to suggest that these consultations ‘‘were oftenundertaken in groups, and might end in laughter,’’ effectively making themanother form of entertainment.12 While this was certainly not the norm, it isnot wholly without evidence.13 And of course the stage had long been alocation for conjurers, theatrical witches, and ghosts, a tradition that datedback to at least Elizabethan (in the case of conjurers) and Jacobean England(in the case of Shakespeare’s witches and ghosts).14 The popular appeal ofLondon’s Cock Lane Ghost in 1762 and the Hammersmith Ghost in 1804had also sensationally fused the supernatural to the entertaining in the publicsphere, albeit one that possessed a frisson of reality in not being confined tothe theater.15

The early nineteenth century witnessed a gradual change in the locationof ‘‘magical’’ entertainments. This seems to have derived from two paralleldevelopments. First, the traditional home of much fantastical entertainment(and the place where Anderson initially developed his craft), public fairs and

10. J. M. Golby and A. W. Purdue, The Civilisation of the Crowd: Popular Culturein England 1750–1900 (Stroud: Sutton, 1999), 38.

11. See Owen Davies, Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History (London:Hambleton Continuum, 2007).

12. Maureen Perkins, The Reform of Time: Magic and Modernity (London: Pluto,2001), 43.

13. For example, see Samuel Bamford, Passages in the Life of a Radical, Vol.1: EarlyDays (London: Unwin, 1893), 171–73.

14. For the history of magic shows and conjuration see Michael Mangan, Perform-ing Dark Arts: A Cultural History of Conjuring (Bristol: Intellect Books, 2007), andDuring, Modern Enchantments, chap. 3. For theatrical portrayals of magical prac-titioners, especially witches, see Diane Purkiss, The Witch in History: Early Modern andTwentieth Century Representations (London: Routledge, 1996), 179–249.

15. See Paul Chambers, The Cock Lane Ghost: Murder, Sex and Haunting in Dr.Johnson’s London (Stroud: Sutton, 2006). For the Hammersmith Ghost, see PeterHaining, Ghosts: The Illustrated History (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1979), 62–65.


fetes, were increasingly targeted by the authorities and social reformers asundesirable aspects of popular culture.16 Associated in their minds with un-ruly behavior, drunkenness, and sexual licentiousness, they came under attackand found themselves fighting a rearguard action against the tyranny of bour-geois moral self-righteousness. At the same time the late eighteenth and earlynineteenth centuries had seen the growth of minor theaters in opposition tothe two patent metropolitan theaters at Covent Garden and Drury Lane, andwith them came an associated ‘‘decline in the social status of the audience.’’17

The popularity of melodrama from the early nineteenth century has oftenbeen seen as appealing to a predominantly working-class theater audienceand it has been argued that the behavior of the rowdy lower classes in thegallery caused the respectable to withdraw from the theater in the 1820s,in both London and the provinces.18 Although it is difficult to recreate theconstitution of theatrical audiences with any accuracy, these developmentssuggest that the minor theaters at least were becoming increasingly domi-nated by the lower classes. By midcentury ‘‘the upper- and middle-classes’reclamation of the theater began to meet with some success . . . prices—which had fallen in the first half of the century—began to rise again, andtheaters were remodelled, with stalls replacing the formerly rowdy pit.’’19

One could therefore interpret early Victorian magic shows as further evi-dence of appealing to a working-class audience. However, this falls too com-fortably into the socially dichotomous views promoted by journalists,folklorists, and other agents of ‘‘progress’’ in the nineteenth century, thatmagical belief was something indigenous to the ignorant, superstitious lowerclasses, not the educated elites. In truth, quasi-scientific magic shows had alonger history rooted in self-improving entertainment that can be located inPeter Borsay’s idea of an eighteenth-century cultural ‘‘urban renaissance.’’20

16. See Douglas Reid, ‘‘Interpreting the Festival Calendar: Wakes and Fairs asCarnivals,’’ in Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth-Century England, ed. RobertStorch (London: Croom Helm, 1982), 125–53; Bob Bushaway, By Rite: Custom,Ceremony and Community in England, 1700–1880 (London: Junction, 1982); andEmma Griffin, England’s Revelry: A History of Popular Sports and Pastimes, 1660–1830(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

17. Hugh Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution c. 1780–1880 (London:Croom Helm, 1980), 28.

18. Ibid, 30.19. Ibid, 135.20. See Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Pro-

vincial Town 1660–1770 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991). See also Barbara Maria Stafford,Artful Science: Enlightenment Entertainment and the Eclipse of Visual Education (Cam-bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1999).


MAGIC SHOWS

Given these various genealogies arising from magical and self-improving be-liefs, from the early-nineteenth-century theater as a contested space, and fromthe fact that the popularity of fantastical entertainments seemed to transcendclass divides, quasi-scientific magic shows can be viewed as a site where‘‘high’’ and ‘‘low’’ cultures converged. This was largely dependent on one’sjustification for attendance. Being particularly modern affairs that blendedillusion and science, heavily reliant on technological apparatus, attendancecould be justified by a desire to ‘‘convey to the mind important instructionand improvement’’; equally it could be for the sensational thrill of witnessingsupposedly ‘‘magical’’ feats.21 Anderson catered for both, being described asa ‘‘prestidigitator, illusionist [and] physicist’’ in 1863.22

Anderson’s being allowed to perform in London’s large patent theatersfrom the 1840s marked a distinct change from the past, representing theacquisition of respectability for secular magic shows. In September 1855 TheTimes recorded that he was ‘‘the first among the present generation whopractised legerdemain in grand and brilliant style. There were conjurors whoengaged tavern rooms . . . but Professor Anderson at once created a sensationby engaging a whole theater.’’23 A pioneer in shaping secular magic into masscultural entertainment, by the 1860s Anderson was playing in the developingmusic halls around England.24 The change in location was accompanied by achange in the constitution of the audience. Anderson ensured his respectabil-ity by invoked long lists of aristocratic and even royal attendees who hadapprovingly witnessed his shows. Promotional posters emphasised how thosewho had witnessed his ‘‘mighty miracles’’ comprised of ‘‘the Elite, theLearned, and all the Scientific of the Great Metropolis.’’25 He even performedbefore Queen Victoria at Balmoral Castle in August 1849, an event he madegreat use of in subsequent press publicity.26 This, then, was ‘‘safe’’ magic,confined to the stage and condoned by the elite.

Anderson’s act continually evolved throughout his career, driven by the

21. Chetham’s Library, Manchester, ref. Cambrics, 10.22. Caledonian Mercury, February 18, 1863, 1.23. Quoted in Liverpool Mercury, October 1, 1855, 1.24. See for example The Aberdeen Journal, April 22, 1863, 4, and The Leeds Mercury,

November 21, 1863, 1.25. NHC ref. Colman Collection 60A [XL].26. For Anderson’s royal performance see The Aberdeen Journal, September 5,

1849, 4. For its subsequent use in publicity see The Preston Guardian, September 14,1850, 1.


search for novelty. Early on he had strung tricks and illusions together toform narratives such as his drama, Night in Wonder World, at the LyceumTheater in 1846. By the mid-1850s his performance had taken on a fairlystructured routine, ‘‘divided into two parts, and arranged so that the interestshall dramatically accumulate to its final denouement in the twelfth act . . .‘The Mystery of the Charmed Ghost.’ ’’27 With an astute sense for fashionabletrends in the supernatural, in the 1850s he introduced an element of ghost-summoning that appealed to the contemporary interest in spiritualism. In the1860s he brought one of his daughters into the act (one of his four childrenwho contributed to the shows) as a clairvoyant at a time when mind readingand telepathy were becoming popular topics of conversation.28 By 1868 hisrepertoire had grown to the extent that The Era recorded ‘‘there are no lessthan 330 incidents, in fifteen acts,’’ a performance that ‘‘fix the attention ofthe audience for three whole hours without any flagging.’’29

The blending of ‘‘magic’’ and science evident in Anderson’s shows wasarguably made more respectable to educated elites by the fact that it had anearlier pedigree. Among the various types of ‘‘elite’’ magic that had existedprior to the development of the commercialized stage show, the fusion of themagical and the scientific had long been bedfellows in ‘‘natural magic’’ thatsought ‘‘to exploit the occult properties of the elemental world.’’30 KeithThomas argues that ‘‘the investigation of such phenomena was the primarytask of the natural philosopher, and their employment for his own purposeswas the distinguishing mark of the magician.’’31 From this union modernchemistry had emerged from the experimentation of the alchemists, astron-omy from astrology.

‘‘Natural magic’’ had been stimulated by ‘‘the tide of Neoplatonism whichswept through Renaissance Europe,’’ and the emphasis in Neoplatonistthought on ‘‘invisible effluvia . . . vital influences and invisible spirits’’ foundechoes in some of the fundamental ideas behind mesmerism and spiritualistseances in the 1840s and 1850s.32 This suggests that, to a degree, one can seethe perpetuation of an animistic worldview in an age traditionally associatedwith stolid belief in a mechanistic universe. It also serves as a reminder that

27. See During, Modern Enchantments, 116; and The Morning Chronicle, September4, 1855, 4.

28. See The Era, April 19, 1868, 10.29. Ibid.30. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 2nd ed. (London: Weidenfeld

and Nicolson, 1997), 223.31. Ibid.32. Ibid, 223–24; also 223–31.


the early Victorians were not the first to witness the confluence of the scien-tific and the magical. Unlike the taint of sorcery and interaction with ‘‘foulspirits,’’ ‘‘natural magic’’ was described as ‘‘nothing else but the survey of thewhole course of Nature’’ and there was nothing ‘‘more highly esteemed,or better thought of, by men of learning.’’33 Natural magic therefore had arespectable lineage that was wholly lacking in educated perceptions of popu-lar magic. The idea of natural magic as a form of science conducted in supportof religion was promoted in this period by David Brewster’s Letters on NaturalMagic (1832), and the natural (as opposed to supernatural) wonders that thisform of magic could take included many of those subsequently employed byAnderson, namely the laws of optics and the manipulation of electricity andmagnetism.34

Anderson became a metropolitan sensation following his 1846 debut inCovent Garden. Presented in posters as ‘‘mighty wonders of natural magicand experimental philosophy,’’ his performance blended the scientific andthe illusory.35 This was best illustrated by his display of a fortunetelling au-tomaton. Fusing elements of popular magic and modern mechanics, it wasaccepted ‘‘by the scientific to be the most perfect Automaton in the world,’’while it appealed to older traditions in ‘‘its extraordinary power of divination,its seeming knowledge of your very thoughts’’ that had ‘‘stricken thousandswith wonder.’’36 Displays of chemistry, electricity, magnetism, pneumatics,and hydraulics were interlaced with thrilling demonstrations of clairvoyance,and the alchemical transformation of water into port, milk, champagne, andfinally into birds. Queen Victoria was said to have admired his magic scrap-book trick whereby from a book placed on a pair of trestles he drew ‘‘hats,bonnets, plates, and birdcages . . . a large fat goose . . . then several large vasesof Gold-fish’’ and finally ‘‘his beautiful little son.’’37

33. During, Modern Enchantments, 18. For the interrelationship between science,magic, and intellectual thought in the early modern period, see Michael Hunter,Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth Century Britain(Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 1995); and Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration En-gland, 2nd ed. (Aldershot: Gregg Revivals, 1992).

34. See also Francis Barrett, The Magus, or Celestial Intelligencer (1801; reprintStroud: Nonsuch Publishing, 2007), 19–55.

35. NHC ref. Colman Collection 60A [XL]. By 1867 Anderson, never the mostreliable of sources regarding his own achievements, claimed to have performed hisact 3,121 times in England, Scotland, and Ireland, 1,076 times in the ‘‘United Stateson the Atlantic,’’ and 205 times in California. See Liverpool Mercury, April 10, 1867, 1.

36. NHC ref. Colman Collection 60A [XL].37. Liverpool Mercury, November 1, 1850, 1.


A great self-publicist, ‘‘Anderson’s hype was not dissimilar in kind to thatsuspension of disbelief demanded by magic itself.’’38 While this associationmay be used facetiously, there does seem to be some worth in the observa-tion. In new forms, such as stage production and promotional marketing,people of the mid-nineteenth century were being kept in touch with thesense of enchantment and mystique that had surrounded traditional magic.As Chamber’s Journal noted in 1882, ‘‘in olden days, devotees of the black artincurred the risk of being burned as wizards or ducked as witches. . . . In ourown times, its professors make a very good thing out of it; and the public, sofar from wreaking vengeance on them in life or limb, will rush to a ‘magicalentertainment’ with greater eagerness than to almost any other . . . form ofamusement.’’39

Increasingly the people being appealed to were the urban lower classes,and as the densely worded printed posters promoting Anderson’s shows indi-cate, this audience was an increasingly literate one. His act was promotedthrough posters, the press, street parades, and publicity stunts that includedcompetitions and well advertised charity donations.40 He even managed toturn an 1844 court case into a way of promoting his magical abilities.41 Awily entrepreneur, Anderson toured Britain, using the kudos of his metropol-itan success to further bedazzle provincial audiences. The regional press wereinstrumental in promoting his fame, referencing his previous successes andan ever-growing list of royal patrons following his European tours. Somepapers, particularly The Liverpool Mercury, continued to chart his progress evenfurther afield, providing readers with updates of his tour of the United Statesin 1852.42

Newspaper advertisements commonly show that Anderson catered to arange of purses, ensuring a socially diverse audience. In a performance inNorwich in 1846 the dress box cost two shillings sixpence, the pit one shil-ling, and the gallery sixpence. This suggests a democratization of such shows,a trend best demonstrated when compared to Herman Boaz, who had pro-vided ‘‘thaumaturgic exhibitions’’ at the Bull’s Head Great Room in Man-

38. During, Modern Enchantments, 117. For a summary of Anderson’s career see114–18. Anderson also kept his name in the press through his endorsement of prod-ucts such as hair-restorer. See Liverpool Mercury, May 4, 1857, 4.

39. Chamber’s Journal, December 16, 1882.40. See During, Modern Enchantments, 115.41. See ‘‘The Wizard of the North in the Court of Requests,’’ Glasgow Herald,

April 29, 1844.42. See, for example, The Liverpool Mercury, February 10, 1852, 8; April 30, 1852,

2; and October 12, 1852, 4.


chester in 1798. Boaz’s performance had targeted the ‘‘ladies, gentlemen,and principal inhabitants’’ of the city; the two shilling admittance excludedManchester’s poorer citizens.43 There had also been a conscious attempt toassociate his act with an elite magical tradition, his promotional handbillsreferring to Cornelius Agrippa and Roger Bacon.

Therefore magical shows that started as an improving yet thrilling ‘‘highculture’’ entertainment for the better-off in the late eighteenth century grad-ually disseminated down through the social order, becoming a form ofemerging mid-nineteenth-century mass culture.44 This became more markedduring Anderson’s own career. While his shows of the 1840s were oftendirected toward ‘‘the Nobility, Gentry and Public,’’ by the end of his careerin 1867 he had dropped the elitist appeal, his ‘‘World of Magic’’ show being‘‘ecumenical, not appealing to one nation or one class.’’45 As a result, whileAnderson’s earliest performances may have coincided with the elites’ with-drawal from the theater from the 1820s to the 1840s, it would be wrong toread such entertainment simply as a nexus for disreputable ‘‘low culture’’trends, linking plebeian theater audiences to magical beliefs. As will be exam-ined below, these entertainments arguably served as a vehicle for promotingand reinforcing the ‘‘progressive’’ bourgeoisie’s ideological worldview in thisperiod.

HEGEMONIC ASSERTIONS

‘‘Magic’’ shows can be viewed as contributing to the middle classes’ raft ofattacks on superstitious ‘‘low’’ culture. This assault was most obvious in thehostile and mocking tone of the contemporary press, frequently expressingtheir dismay at the persistence of credulity, superstition, and ignorance in themodern age.46 Journalists’ efforts were supported by a second front in theform of publications produced by folklorists, a trend that solidified after the

43. Cambrics, 10.44. This democratization of magical conjuration was reflected in the glut of con-

juration books that appeared in the mid-nineteenth century. See, for example, Anon-ymous, The Whole Art of Legerdemain; or The Conjuror Unmasked (Derby: ThomasRichardson, no date); and Ingelby’s New London Conjurer; or Whole Art of Legerdemain(Otley: William Walker, no date). While such explanatory works arguably detractedfrom the conjuration’s ‘‘magical’’ allure, the intended readership appears to have beenthose interested in learning (and thus perpetuating) the illusions described.

45. Compare The Examiner, April 4, 1846, 22, with Liverpool Mercury, April 10,1867, 1.

46. See Owen Davies, ‘‘Newspapers and the Popular Belief in Witchcraft andMagic in the Modern Period,’’ Journal of British Studies 37 (1998): 139–65.


formation of the Folklore Society in 1878. Rather than the press’s directcondemnation, they tended to posit genuine beliefs back into the past, safelycontaining any contemporary manifestations through the use of controllingadjectives such as ‘‘quaint,’’ ‘‘nostalgic,’’ and ‘‘residual.’’ The clergy formeda third line of attack. Lambasting the popular appeal of astrology as ‘‘eatinginto [his parish] community like a canker,’’ in a sermon of 1849 ReverendRichard Phayre declared ‘‘I stand bound by my vows as a priest . . . to beready with all faithful diligence to banish and drive away all erroneous andstrange doctrines contrary to God’s Word.’’47 This multipronged attack at-tempted to promote a common consensus that magical beliefs had no placein mid-Victorian English society. Critics’ focus differed; folklorists mademagical mentalities the preserve of backward rural dwellers, the press pre-sented them as indicators of poor education, the clergy as examples of un-godly belief.48 Yet all united in using the perceived persistence of genuinemagical beliefs as a way for the educated elites to disassociate themselves fromthe lower classes via public condemnation of popular superstitions.

It is within this broader cultural context that we can locate the hegemonicdiscourse of early- to mid-Victorian ‘‘magical’’ entertainments. Rather thanthe coerciveness of direct, negative condemnations or the persuasive pursuitof ‘‘useful knowledge,’’ they were able to foster consent in a more subtlefashion, reworking magical mentalities as scientific demonstration and enter-taining spectacle, making it ‘‘a source of amusement, as well as of instruc-tion.’’49 Peter Bailey argues that ‘‘popular recreations were to be improved,not through repression, but through the operation of superior counter-attractions.’’50 One can see the scientific marvels of magic shows as a way ofsugaring the pill of useful instruction, an engaging and genuinely demotic wayof constructing willing consensus for perceptions of modernity located in sci-entific and technological applications, an appealing alternative to the bullyingof journalists and teachers. Despite the magical elements, publicity for Ander-son’s shows equally emphasized the scientific content of his performance. InJanuary 1864 The Hull Packet reported that his act was ‘‘derived from thesciences of Chemistry, Dynamics, Hydraulics, Acoustics, Optics, Electricity,

47. Reverend Richard Phayre, A Sermon Preached in the Parish Church of RaynhamSt. Mary on the Sinfulness of Astrology (Norwich: Muskett, 1849), 18.

48. For the rural bias of English folklorists see Gillian Bennett, ‘‘Folklore Studiesand the English Rural Myth,’’ Rural History 4 (1993): 77–91.

49. Manchester Times, May 2, 1857, 150. Peter Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the

Contest for Control 1830–1885 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 170.


Galvanism, Electro-Magnetism . . . combined in such a manner as to astonish. . . stimulate to thought . . . and amuse.’’51 Similarly at St. James Hall, RegentStreet, London in August 1864 advertisements promoted his ‘‘scientific pro-gramme.’’52

More explicitly, Anderson was active in debunking the contemporarytrend for spiritualism. In the 1840s he had made reference to ‘‘modern necro-mancy’’ in his act, but it was little more than an emotive phrase.53 Thischanged following the arrival in Britain of the spiritualist craze from theUnited States in the 1850s. By 1855 Anderson was devoting two parts of histwelve-part act to ghosts and spirit-rapping. While undoubtedly informed byan awareness of the contemporary appeal of this supernatural trend, his publi-cized aim was to illustrate the ‘‘iniquities of Spirit-rapping and spiritualism,’’intending to ‘‘fully explain the absurdities of this delusion.’’54 In September1864 The Examiner indicated Anderson’s desire to ‘‘expose . . . so-calledSpiritualism,’’ the ‘‘wizard’’ issuing a challenge to spiritualists to ‘‘test yourpowers.’’55 His instructive book A Shillings’ Worth of Magic not only explainedthe mechanics behind a hundred of his tricks but likewise pursued the ‘‘expo-sures of spirit-rapping.’’56

Concurrent with Anderson’s debunking of spiritualism was the develop-ment and perfecting of ghost projectors in the early 1860s. Like magic showsthese had a longer cultural heritage, originating in the phantasmagorias thatarrived in England from France in 1801.57 Henry Dircks, a civil engineer, haddeveloped the idea of projecting a ‘‘ghost’’ onto a stage in 1858, but it wasonly after it had been redesigned and improved by John Henry Pepper thatthe ghost projector was exhibited at London’s Royal Polytechnic Institutionin December 1862.58 ‘‘Pepper’s Ghost’’ worked by means of a magic lantern

51. The Hull Packet and East Riding Times, January 8, 1864, 4.52. Daily News, August 31, 1864, 153. The Examiner, April 4, 1846, 22.54. The Derby Mercury, May 2, 1855, 1.55. The Examiner, September 3, 1864, 575. For more on the contemporary con-

text in which Anderson was making such statements, see Peter Lamont, ‘‘Spiritualismand a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence,’’ Historical Journal 47 (2004): 897–920.

56. The Era, November 25, 1855, 8. This book was in its 106th edition by thisdate.

57. For the early phantasmagoria displays, see Mervyn Heard and Stephen Her-bert, Phantasmagoria: The Secret Life of the Magic Lantern (Hastings: Projection Box,2006); Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1978);and Thomas Frost, The Lives of the Conjurors (London: Tinsley, 1876), 164–67.

58. There was a running argument between Dircks and Pepper as to who hadinvented the ‘‘Ghost.’’ See The Times, December 30, 1871, 3; The Mechanics Maga-


hidden under the stage. It projected the image of a ghost by reflecting itthrough an angled sheet of glass that was placed between the audience andthe stage, enabling the ‘‘ghost’’ to appear to walk through solid objects, in-cluding other actors.59 It saw its first use in a dramatic production written forthe purpose, The Widow and the Orphan, at the Britannia Theater, Hoxton, inApril 1863. In 1864 Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper acknowledged that ‘‘sci-ence is the spell,’’ the ‘‘ghosts’’ being summoned by ‘‘the scientific wand ofMessrs. Dircks and Pepper.’’60 Retrospectively applying such technologies toexplain past necromantic acts, the paper added ‘‘the necromancers of old maypossibly have availed themselves of some similar method.’’ As with Ander-son’s shows, what had become an acceptable form of entertainment was usedto undermine, reinterpret, and explain away the magical practices of the past.Rendered as ‘‘nothing more than the simple application of a law of optics,’’the supernatural was weakened, even vanquished through technological ex-planations and demonstrations.61

Perkins has emphasised that ‘‘the nineteenth-century struggle against su-perstition serves as an example of the fact that hegemony’s first step is simplythe placing of limits on what counts as knowledge.’’62 In this struggle, viamodern technology, the stage show disconnected itself from the magic of thepast, encouraging the view that ghosts and magic had become detached fromtheir ethnographic roots. As a promotional vehicle for the ‘‘progressive’’bourgeoisie’s view of a materialistic, science-based future, it promoted theidea that such tropes could be presented and applauded from a position ofsecurity in their developing sense of technological mastery over both thenatural and supernatural worlds. Julian Wolfreys has made similar claims forthe mid-Victorians’ engagement with the supernatural based on a sense ofsecurity rather than anxiety, arguing that since they were temporarily free ofexternal threat, they needed ‘‘to scare themselves . . . for their own delightand terror,’’ pretending ‘‘to be a little spooky in one’s own back yard.’’63 Intheir altered context and presentation, and approached from a position ofconfidence in their own comprehension of the world, educated elites could

zine, October 25, 1867; and Henry Dircks, The Ghost! As Produced in the SpectreDrama, Popularly Illustrating the Marvellous Optical Illusions Obtained by the Apparatuscalled The Dirksian Phantasmagoria (London: E. and F. N. Spon, 1863).

59. See During, Modern Enchantments, 143.60. Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper, January 2, 1864, 94.61. Ibid.62. Perkins, Reform of Time, 5.63. Julian Wolfreys, Victorian Haunting: Spectrality, Gothic, the Uncanny and Litera-

ture (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 30–31.


retain the sense of liberation that (public) rejection of such beliefs had pro-moted in the eighteenth century, ‘‘magical’’ entertainments representing atoying with the corpse of a supposedly redundant mode of popular thought.

Therefore what was being encouraged on stage was a new interpretationof the magical, one rooted in technology rather than folkloric belief, one thatactually dispelled belief (but not awe) by being available on demand. Regard-ing Anderson’s performances, in 1855, The Preston Chronicle noted that ‘‘thewitchcraft, diablerie, etc. which prevailed in former ages, and was accountedof diabolical or supernatural origin, was all infinitely less than what the sci-ence of magic is now capable . . . of producing. By demonstrating this, [An-derson] has done much to forever dissipate the notion that evil spirits performmagic tricks to deceive the simple, delude the superstitious, or confound themore intelligent.’’64 As such this was not just the imposition of ideologicaldomination but hegemony as a ‘‘practical activity’’ in which ideology ‘‘iscontained as an implicit theoretical ‘premise.’ ’’65 Via the demonstrative useof science, ‘‘ghosts’’ could now be mechanically ‘‘raised’’ and, more impor-tantly, turned on and off. What better evidence of mid-nineteenth-centurysociety’s triumph over past ‘‘superstition’’?

While ‘‘magic’’ shows encouraged popular consent for bourgeois percep-tions of modernity, the co-opting of magical mentalities into the world ofsensationalist entertainment also helped knap the sense of their inherentthreat to the ‘‘progressive’’ values of the bourgeoisie. The reduction to theat-rical sensationalism sapped supernatural tropes of their intrinsic power.Rather than being something to fear, people from across the social spectrumwilling sought confrontation with ‘‘magic’’ and ghosts in pursuit of pleasure.E. J. Clery argues that the ‘‘[theater] audience’s laughter seems to mark atransition, a displacement of the old opposition of belief and scepticism . . .the wresting of the invisible world from the sphere of religious doctrine’’ and

64. The Preston Chronicle, March 24, 1855, 7. Anderson’s use of science and illu-sion to challenge magical beliefs had precedents in the early modern period. In thelate sixteenth century Reginald Scot had produced guides containing ‘‘spells’’ thatwere revealed as mere legerdemain, while Thomas Ady had attempted somethingsimilar in A Candle in the Dark (1656). See Davies, Popular Magic, 34 and 47. In the1640s Athanasius Kircher had employed science to challenge magical beliefs aboutdowsing rods and later pioneered the magic lantern. See Edward Bever, The Realitiesof Witchcraft and Popular Magic in Early Modern Europe: Culture, Cognition and EverydayLife (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), 224; and Owen Davies, The Haunted: A SocialHistory of Ghosts (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), 189–92.

65. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. QuintinHoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1971), 328.


its ‘‘embrace by the fashion system of the city.’’66 Mass cultural entertainmentstransformed the supernatural, rendering both the real and fictional into merespectacle.

When Anderson performed at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, in May1857, the Manchester Times attempted to further conflate magic and moder-nity by co-opting magic itself as a force for progress. It argued that it had arole in ‘‘aiding the . . . progress of the human race’’ since it ‘‘aroused andawakened the intellect by stimulating curiosity, and by inducing experimentsto ascertain the source of power and theories to account for its manifestations. . . the magic art has evoked science out of the studies of the sorcerer [and]the alchemist.’’67 While Anderson claimed to ‘‘use the appliances and agen-cies resorted to by the Egyptian Magi, the Greek Thaumaturgist . . . [and]the Alchemists of the Middle Ages,’’ such feats were achieved through ‘‘theassistance of the greatest mechanicians and the most scientific men of theage.’’68 Tamed by its transformation in intention from a potentially alternativeworldview to a shared source of entertainment, magic was shorn of its sub-versive element and remade in the service of a progressive modernity.

In a self-consciously modern age, magical beliefs were always going to be acontested field, not a site where different social classes could meet on neutralterrain.69 The educated elites determined the dominant mode of thought;they engaged with magical ideas because they were presented as mere enter-tainment, and they expected the lower classes to abandon any ‘‘residual’’genuine beliefs by adopting a similar view. As such, the emergence of masscultural expressions of the ‘‘spectacular supernatural’’ were not simply a con-tinuation of popular cultural ideas and beliefs, but something manufactured(in more ways than one).70 While often clothed in the garb of popular super-natural tropes and the aura of the magical, these familiar outward associationsconcealed the fact that their new manifestations were intended to promote awholly different worldview. As one journalist stated, ‘‘without any meddlingwith the dark art . . . ghosts are now being raised all over . . . the country.’’71

This reflects Gramsci’s conception of folklore as a potential site for counter-

66. E. J. Clery, The Rise of Supernatural Fiction 1760–1800 (Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press, 1995), 17.

67. Manchester Times, May 2, 1857, 1.68. Ibid.69. For the idea of self-conscious modernity in this period, see Marshall Berman,

All That is Solid Melts into Air, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1988), 17.70. For distinctions between the ‘‘real’’ and the ‘‘spectacular’’ supernatural, see

Clery, Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 17–18.71. Cassell’s Illustrated Family Paper, January 2, 1864, 93.


hegemonic worldviews. The adaptation of ‘‘traditional’’ magical beliefs intostage entertainments can be seen as an attempt to ‘‘uproot them and replacethem with conceptions which are deemed to be superior,’’ while also repre-senting ‘‘the birth of a new culture among the broad popular masses, so thatthe separation between modern culture and [a] popular culture of folklorewill disappear.’’72 In achieving this fusion, magic’s counterhegemonic poten-tial could be negated. Having lost its distinction as a genuine reality, themagical had apparently become tied to the perilously changeable whims oftheater audiences ever hungry for new entertainment, for the next sensation.

COUNTERHEGEMONIC MAGICAL MENTALITIES?

Despite the ways in which the theater captured, dispelled, or curbed magicalmentalities, there are a number of problems with concluding that genuinebeliefs had somehow been contained and superseded on the mid-nineteenth-century stage. Again these arise from Gramsci’s conception of folklore. Whileviewing it as an ‘‘adulterated and mutilated’’ survival of subaltern conceptionsof life (and magic’s shift into entertainment can be read as further adulteratingand mutilating such views), he also recognized its tenacious and implicitlyoppositional nature. Like folklore, the readiness of magical mentalities ‘‘toabsorb elements from the dominant culture are important in that they give[them] a potentially progressive quality’’ that enabled their perpetuation inaltered form.73 In this they were aided by the nature of the shows themselvesand contemporary developments in the broader cultural context beyond thetheater.

In attempting to shape perceptions of magical beliefs to a progressiveagenda, educated elites repeatedly risked scuttling their own intentions. An-derson’s ambiguous fusion of scientific debunking and thrills, and his deliber-ate blurring of the boundaries between reality and representation, meant therational critique was always threatened with being undermined by the allureof the supernatural. His promotional posters declared ‘‘countless thousandshave come . . . to be convinced of the truth of the extraordinary nature . . .[of] his doings, which to be believed must be seen.’’74 In March 1863 theCaledonian Mercury highlighted that, rather than seeking intellectual edifica-tion, it was the displays of ‘‘second sight, the transmigration and marvellousdisappearance and reappearance of watches, banknotes, and handkerchiefs

72. Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 109.73. Ibid, 108.74. NHC ref. Colman Collection 60A [XL]


[that] nightly excite loud applause.’’75 Audiences were not necessarily lookingfor scientific clarity. While press reports and advertisements frequently re-ferred to his experimental apparatus, emphasis was usually on its ‘‘superb andcostly’’ appearance as much as its scientific merit.76 Nor did they attend withthe aim of passively receiving instruction. The experience was very muchcreated from Anderson’s direct interaction with their scepticism and awe,using it to generate both comedy and melodrama, allowing ‘‘2000 of thepublic every night to appear as auxiliaries’’ in ‘‘an extravaganza in which allthat seems to be is entirely beyond the bounds of probability.’’77 Many, itseems, wanted to be enchanted, not enlightened.

There are parallels here with Owen Davies’ research on the reception ofanti-superstition messages promoted by the press in the mid-nineteenth cen-tury. Despite newspapers’ blatant condemnation of continuing superstition,he clearly illustrates how readers could fail to interpret the intended message,helped in part by a rather contradictory editorial agenda that blurred rationaldismissal with the desire for sensational story items. Accounts of magic andwitchcraft printed in the press as a means of deriding the credulity of thosewho still believed sometimes served to ‘‘reinforce those same patterns of be-lief, even when the reading matter in question was written with the intentof overthrowing them.’’78 Davies clearly indicates how some cunning folkidentified in news stories may have actually received a boost in trade due tothe publicity.79 Members of the public (and Anderson’s audience) who re-tained a receptivity toward magical beliefs seemingly had a great capacity totake what they wanted from such items and tune out the criticism that at-tended it. As the Liverpool Mercury observed, Anderson’s displays of magic‘‘alarmed the credulous.’’80

Furthermore, the language of newspaper reports tended to deliberatelyblur associations between magical entertainment and genuine ethnographicbeliefs. In December 1854 The Era reported that since Birmingham’s townhall had ‘‘never been let to a necromancer before . . . a rumour got abroad

75. Caledonian Mercury, March 7, 1863, 2.76. See During, Modern Enchantments, 115–16; and The Preston Chronicle, March

17, 1855, 1.77. The Morning Chronicle, October 16, 1855, 4. For more on the interaction and

collusion between magical performers and audiences, see Dan North, ‘‘Illusory Bod-ies: Magical Performance on Stage and Screen,’’ Early Popular Visual Culture 5 (2007):175–88.

78. Davies, ‘‘Newspapers and the Popular Belief in Witchcraft,’’ 165.79. Ibid., 152–53.80. Liverpool Mercury, October 17, 1856, 8.


that the Mayor has been bewitched’’ by Anderson and ‘‘had succumbed tothe spell of the magician.’’ While the tone may have been rather tongue-in-cheek, the article indicates that there had been complaints that Anderson hadbeen able to secure the use of this civic building for his show. While notingthat his performance depended on the ‘‘application of practical science,’’ thenewspaper went on to refer to ‘‘the witchery he has used to draw so manythousands to the Town Hall night after night.’’81 Similarly, The MorningChronicle advised readers to visit ‘‘the ‘Wizard’s Temple’ or the ‘Necroman-cer’s Cave,’ ’’ the heightened imagery actually referring to Anderson’s 1855season at the Lyceum Theater, London.82

Magical and scientific associations were blended in press promotion forAnderson’s show in St. George Hall, Liverpool, in 1863, referring to his‘‘unique scientific, supernatural . . . bewitching . . . moral . . . electrifying,galvanising, mystifying, delusive . . . demoniacal . . . popular entertainment.’’83

The press, it seems, could not resist tapping into the powerful ambienceof ‘‘traditional’’ magical beliefs when describing Anderson’s performances.Anderson deliberately cultivated this. When writing a letter to the editor ofThe Era he spoke of ‘‘my powers of clairvoyance to divine the thoughts ofsome half-dozen blushing beauties’’ and his ability to cause ‘‘a disagreeableperson to disappear instantaneously at my bidding.’’84 Even as mere pufferysuch comments played to the perception of genuine magical ability, sustain-ing the aura of magicality woven around him by the press.

Nor was it just Anderson. In 1863 The Times used ‘‘the ‘‘terrific spectralillusions called up every night to order on the metropolitan stage’’ and thetheatricality of spirit mediums as a starting point for an analysis of contempo-rary witchcraft. It warned, ‘‘there is an actual and potent reality aboutWitches and Witchcraft which it will not do to overlook.’’85 Ambiguity be-tween real and secular magic was further encouraged by the way the theatri-cal supernatural chimed with mid-Victorian spiritualism. This genuine,modernized expression of necromancy and spirit-summoning often con-tained a strong element of theatrical suspense, even when performed in thedrawing rooms of the respectable bourgeoisie.86 It is little surprise that ‘‘Pep-

81. The Era, December 17, 1854. It was claimed 20,091 visitors attended this ten-night run at Birmingham Town Hall. See The Derby Mercury, May 2, 1855, 1.

82. The Morning Chronicle, September 4, 1855, 4.83. Liverpool Mercury, February 9, 1863, 1.84. The Era, March 4, 1855, 12.85. The Times, September 24, 1863, 6.86. See Alex Owen, The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late

Victorian England (London: Virago, 1989); and Janet Oppenheim, The Other World:


per’s Ghost’’ made its appearance as a commercial form of entertainment inthe decade following the arrival of spiritualism in Britain, and Janet Oppen-heim has even suggested ‘‘that the success of magic shows in Britain beforethe mid-century helped prepare the ground for spiritualism after 1850.’’87

As with stage shows, when the bourgeoisie engaged in such new manifes-tations of ‘‘magical’’ belief as mesmerism, clairvoyance, and spiritualism, theytended to make them more palatable by enveloping them in (conflicting)pseudoscientific explanations or naturalised justifications.88 Accommodatingrational attitudes with a longing for communion beyond the grave, suchpractices were deemed acceptable because they could be explained away asuntapped mental abilities, underdeveloped perceptions, or hidden ‘‘natural’’forces, rather than manifestations of the supernatural. The belief in spirits wasmade respectable by a strong emphasis on empirical proofs. The ‘‘strikingfeature of Victorian Spiritualism . . . was, paradoxically, its materialism. Thespirits were pressed to prove their existence in tangible ways and they obligedwith . . . table-turning . . . [leaving] imprints of their hands and faces on hotwax’’ or by ‘‘[materialising] themselves via the ectoplasm that flowed from. . . the entranced medium.’’89

The boundaries between entertainment and ‘‘real’’ mid-nineteenth-century magical and supernatural beliefs easily blurred when, as During indi-cates, ‘‘spiritualism and conjuring shared techniques, theaters, and sometimeseven personnel.’’90 Despite the overt theatricality of Anderson’s acts of clair-voyance there was little to distinguish its stated intention from consultationswith fortune-tellers or spirit mediums. Nor did his presence in a stage per-formance seem to diminish his authority as a genuine mind reader or prog-nosticator, though receptivity to his claims would obviously depend a greatdeal on the attitudes and expectations with which individual members of theaudience approached such a demonstration.

Anderson’s demonstrations of the falsity of spiritualists were also under-

Spiritualism and Psychic Research in England 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, 1985). For the theatrical element of spiritualist seances see Ronald Pear-sall, The Table-Rappers: The Victorians and the Occult (Stroud: Sutton, 2004), esp. chaps.4 and 7.

87. Oppenheim, The Other World, 17.88. See Richard Noakes, ‘‘Spiritualism, Science and the Supernatural in mid-

Victorian Britain,’’ in Victorian Supernatural, ed. Nicola Brown, Carolyn Burdett, andPamela Thurschwell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 23–43.

89. Patrick Harpur, The Philosophers’ Secret Fire (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2003), 56.90. During, Modern Enchantments, 152.


mined by his desire to exploit the appealing frisson of spiritualism. In Septem-ber 1855 The Morning Chronicle recorded that Anderson’s spirits ‘‘pervadeevery part of the theatre, and reply to every question from any person’’ evenwhile he told the audience ‘‘frankly the spirits had nothing to do with it.’’The journalist had to concede that ‘‘we can’t make out how it was done,’’the ‘‘spirits’’ answering questions ‘‘audibly and intelligibly, and with an entirefreedom from external interference.’’91 Anderson’s declared debunking stancewas scuppered by his unwillingness to reveal exactly how such a feat wasperformed. Earlier phantasmagoria projectionists had similarly claimed to usetechnology to debunk belief in ghosts and necromancy, but had not revealedhow they produced their own apparitions. As Terry Castle observes, ‘‘even asit supposedly explained apparitions away . . . the phantasmagoria mysteriouslyrecreated the emotional aura of the supernatural. One knew ghosts did notexist, yet one saw them anyway, without knowing precisely how.’’92 What-ever declarations were made on promotional posters, Anderson, as performerand entrepreneur, sided with the crowd-pleasing elements of mystery andawe, not with scientific elucidation. While some audience members mayhave been drawn by the progressive scientific gloss, ultimately what Ander-son was offering them was ‘‘thoroughly-astounding [but] not-to-be-unrid-dled experiments’’ that allowed and even encouraged the perpetuation ofgenuine belief in supernatural forces.93

Anderson was therefore engaged in a more general illusion. While alloyingscience and magic, promoting ancient thaumaturgy and modern physics, theentertainment value of such a union rested not in revelation but spectacle, inshowing but not telling. While advertisements highlighted his application ofvarious scientific resources and principles they were simultaneously inclinedto obfuscate and conceal. One such means was the use of French to describehis sets, referring to demonstrations of ‘‘La Caraffe de Cagliostro’’ and ‘‘LaClocke de Fantomes.’’94 Even when he used English, the true content of hisact was not clear. His 1857 Manchester show promised demonstrations of‘‘the Casket of the Alchemists,’’ ‘‘Bewitched Flowers,’’ ‘‘The Electric Box,’’

91. The Morning Chronicle, September 25, 1855, 4.92. Terry Castle, The Female Thermometer: 18th Century Culture and the Invention of

the Uncanny (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 144. For the changing andoften ambiguous motives behind phantasmagorias and ghost projectors, and for theirinfluence on nineteenth-century popular beliefs in ghosts, see Davies, The Haunted,194–98, 204–9, and 237–40.

93. The Derby Mercury, May 2, 1855, 1.94. Ibid.


‘‘Lavatory of Necromancy,’’ a ‘‘Magneto-Electric Vase,’’ ‘‘Magic-made Ca-naries,’’ ‘‘The Mechanical Magician,’’ and ‘‘The Clock of the Thoughts.’’95

‘‘Real’’ magic had traditionally been defined by its invisibility, witchcraftbeing the classic example of an invisible crime. It had been the inability tomake a clear connection between the casting of malevolent magic by theaccused and misfortune suffered by the victim that had been one of the centralreasons for the decline in witchcraft trials in the early modern period.96 Ande-rson manipulated this. Via performances in the public sphere, he suggestedthat ‘‘magic’’ had been made both visible and demonstrable. Yet the centralallure of his shows lay not so much it the theatrics that diverted the eye as innot being able to fathom what was going on elsewhere. Even in the glare ofgaslight, magic shows retained an emphasis on secret knowledge, the invisible,the incomprehensible nature of cause and effect even when it was supposedlydemonstrated before the watchful eye of the audience.97

While the more overt ‘‘magical’’ elements of Anderson’s shows may havebeen prone to bolstering rather than dispelling magical beliefs, one shouldnot overlook the scientific aspects either. Although denuded of an occultelement, these shows promoted a (highly theatricalized) scientific view ofthe world that encouraged belief in invisible forces and energies that, likephantasmagorias, could be seen in operation without necessarily being under-stood. Press promotion for a show in 1855 emphasized that ‘‘advantage hasbeen taken of the recent discoveries in Physics in such a manner as fully toillustrate the magic of natural science. The entertainment is now one whichawakens thought and enquiry in the mind of the spectator, while, at the sametime, it provides exhaustless amusement by the perplexing . . . character ofthe experiment.’’98 Earlier shows had seen the stage transformed into his‘‘mystic laboratory,’’ wherein he used apparatus ‘‘which had been constructedupon the most scientific principles, for the performance of mysteries of . . .science.’’99 As with his spiritualist debunking, Anderson’s audiences witnessed

95. Manchester Times, May 2, 1857, 1.96. See James Sharpe, Instruments of Darkness: Witchcraft in Early Modern England

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), chap. 9.97. For more on the relationship between illusion, performance, and the supernat-

ural, see Steven Connor, Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism (Oxford: Ox-ford University Press, 2000); and Leigh Eric Schmidt, Hearing Things: Religion,Illusion, and the American Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,2000).

98. The Preston Chronicle, March 17, 1855, 1.99. The Examiner, April 4, 1846, 22.


the ‘‘magical’’ effects of magnetic or galvanic displays without necessarilybeing told how they worked. At the same time he seamlessly blended anarray of credible scientific forces with pseudoscientific ones such as the un-seen ‘‘universal fluids’’ that were supposedly tapped through mesmerism.100

Even though science may have appeared to triumph in the mid-nineteenth-century’s faith in rationalism, progress, and an understanding of reality basedon repeatable, deductive experimentation, and empirical proofs, it was ex-pected to both end magic and also replace it as a system of explanation.Within that was the implication that science would account for (and perhapseven continue to provide) inexplicable wonders. Rather than spells, its featswould be achieved through technological apparatus such as mirrors, lenses,and projectors that blurred the occult into materialist explanations; no longerconjurations but the manipulation of the laws of physics. While there is atendency to view such entertainment as the scientification of magic (and thusthe replacement and eradication of a supernatural worldview with a scientificmaterial one), we should not underestimate the extent to which these dem-onstrations represented the mystification and re-enchantment of science.

This is best seen in the way contemporary supernatural mentalities infusedemerging communication technologies. The daguerreotype and telegraphfound parallels with spirit mediums’ contact with the dead via their (re)cre-ation of past images and disembodied communication, while electricity andmesmerism were equally mysterious powers that ‘‘made the world seem as ifit were full of invisible, occult forces.’’101 Anderson played directly to this,deliberately blurring distinctions between science and magic in such demon-strations as ‘‘Electricity made into Magic’’ and ‘‘Magnetism made into Nec-romancy.’’102 Within this alternative frame of reference, people still soughtthe sense of ‘‘beyondness’’ that came with supernatural interpretations of the

100. Witnessing a popular revival in the 1840s, mesmerism introduced the seanceand other ideas used by the spiritualists in the 1850s. See Alex Owen, The Place ofEnchantment: British Occultism and the Culture of the Modern (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 2004), 18. See also Alison Winter, Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victo-rian Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Harriet Martineau, Letterson Mesmerism (London: Edward Moxton, 1845); and William Holt Yates’s criticismof mid-nineteenth-century expressions of ‘‘magical’’ thought (Wellcome Library,manuscript ref. MS5100).

101. Brown et al., Victorian Supernatural, 1. See also Pamela Thurschwell, Litera-ture, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2001).

102. Daily News, August 31, 1864, 1.


world. As Michael Saler notes, ‘‘rather than disenchanting the world, modernscience has become a central focus of modern enchantment.’’103

Beyond the blurred magical-scientific nature of these performances, thecommercial aspect also has to be considered. While the Royal PolytechnicInstitution may have aimed to enlighten inquirers about technological opticalillusions, any noble debunking intentions were undermined by the fact thatit was a private company that needed to make money.104 The provision ofuseful knowledge was forced to come second to its need to capture the eye,imagination, and wallets of an audience. Given the lucrative popularity of‘‘Pepper’s Ghost,’’ this seems to have been best achieved by appealing to theaura of the supernatural.105 Ultimately it was commercially unwise to pullaside the curtain and reveal the wizard at work. An act directed toward scien-tific revelation would entertain once. An act that mystified could be endlesslyrepeated. While the mechanics of the illusion remained unknown, audiencesremained enchanted. Once its technological ‘‘secret’’ was known, there wereincidences of audience members throwing balled pieces of paper at the mirrorthrough which ‘‘Pepper’s Ghost’’ was projected onto the stage. While ‘‘en-chantment stems from the feeling of wonder that arises when we cannot fullyexplain an occurrence[,] once a satisfactory explanation is present, disen-chantment sets in.’’106 Whether from mockery, mischievousness, or resent-ment, the inherent respect for inexplicable wonder had apparently been lost.

Finally, there is also the issue of how consciously the ‘‘progressive’’ ele-ments of the middle class used, desired to use, or were able to use the enter-tainment industry to co-opt and manipulate magical beliefs. In the moreassertive campaigns conducted by the press or public educators indicatedabove we can see deliberate and obvious intention. It may be that in thetheater the outcome was more hoped for than planned, relying on long-term persuasion rather than abrupt coercion. While promoters of rationalrecreation may have wished to use it to challenge ‘‘superstitious’’ beliefs, theywere at odds with theater owners who sought to exploit the thrill of themagical for commercial purposes and with performers who wanted to em-ploy such marvels for the influence they could have on their audiences.

103. Michael Saler, ‘‘Modernity and Enchantment: A Historiographical Review,’’American Historical Review 111 (2006): 714.

104. For the Polytechnic’s scientific exhibitions, see During, Modern Enchantments,142–47.

105. See Jeremy Brooker, ‘‘The Polytechnic Ghost: Pepper’s Ghost, Metempsy-chosis and the Magic Lantern at the Royal Polytechnic Institution,’’ Early PopularVisual Culture 5 (2007): 189–206.

106. Saler, ‘‘Modernity and Enchantment,’’ 715.


One must also keep in mind that magic shows were not the sole preserveof the lower classes, or a popular cultural form that had developed organically.Magical entertainments had been adopted from ‘‘above’’ and were a sitewhere social classes potentially met in shared wonder. While it is easy to slipinto a contemporary binary view of elite opposition to popular magical belief,it has been argued that the formers’ stance on such matters has historicallynot been rigidly linear (moving from belief to disbelief ), but rather ‘‘undula-tory . . . sometimes cyclical.’’107 Clery has argued that a perceived binaryopposition of ‘‘high/reason versus low/superstition . . . was . . . symbolicallydisrupted by any apparent credit given to the marvellous by the elite.’’108 Thissuggests genuine magical beliefs among the better educated may have beenmore widespread than has been believed (and recorded), people policingthemselves to restrict any public declaration that might place them on thewrong side of that binary divide. As H. Strickland Constable confessed in1866, ‘‘we profess not to believe in witchcraft now, but perhaps our credulityand superstition only happen to take other forms.’’109 In its collective, publicnature, beneath the gloss of mere entertainment, the magic show arguablyoffered one such form. It is certainly true to say that even in the mid-nine-teenth century, perhaps especially in this period of supposed secularization,disenchantment, and positivistic science, the magical and supernatural couldstill be relied on to sell seats, attracting audiences eager for a glimmer ofenchantment or tenaciously holding on to hopes of an afterlife in an increas-ingly materialistic age.

Therefore genuine magical mentalities persisted, reinforced in part by theentertainment that supporters of ‘‘progress’’ may have hoped would enablethe manipulation and debunking of such ideas. This could be interpreted ascounterhegemonic resistance to the dominant norms of the period but de-spite their tenacity, such beliefs do not seem to have been consciously opposi-tional. While it clearly highlights that middle-class elites were not sufficientlysecure in their power simply to impose their worldview on the audience, thesubaltern class could not use it, or even contemplate it in such a way asto challenge dominant conceptions of the modern world. As a potentiallyoppositional force, magical beliefs remained fragmented, incoherent, and in-

107. Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wonders and the Order of Nature 1150–1750 (New York: Zone Books, 2001), 17.

108. Clery, Rise of Supernatural Fiction, 30.109. H. Strickland Constable, Observations Suggested by the Cattle Plague, about

Witchcraft, Credulity, Superstition, Parliamentary Reform and other Matters (London: Dal-ton and Lucy, 1866), 98.


creasingly personal, and thus, as Gramsci argues with regard to folklore, theycould not become an ‘‘elaborated, systematic and politically organised’’ con-ceptualization of the world.110 Highlighting the way in which hegemony isnot simply dominant ideological imposition but rather an ongoing renegotia-tion of power, there were no absolute ‘‘winners’’ in this continuous contesta-tion. These shows represented an ever-shifting relationship of power inwhich allegiances to ‘‘traditional’’ beliefs or secular technological worldviewswere questioned, doubted, and potentially won or lost for different membersof the audience each time ‘‘Pepper’s Ghost’’ was turned on or Andersonperformed his act.

CONCLUSION

The popularity of magic shows and ghost projectors in the mid-nineteenthcentury reflect an increasing acceptance of public displays of magical tropeswithin the theater. Safely confined to the stage as entertainment, the educatedelites could openly reengage with supernatural ideas now that they werebeing secularized and rationalized through technology. In their demonstrativenature and in the debunking inherent in technologically created phantoms,these entertainments could be interpreted as self-improving and confirmationof one’s embrace of a ‘‘progressive’’ modernity. Therefore, magical intentionwas lost as it was disconnected from older realities and tamed through itstransfer into spectacle. Continuing an extenuated existence as mere sensa-tionalism, ‘‘magic’’ evoked only cheapened simulations of its former dreadand wonder.

Yet even while theater debased magic into mere entertainment, it stillstimulated genuine magical mentalities among the mixed social audience. Ifmagic was no longer malevolent when it came to the stage, through illusionand deception that confounded more than it enlightened, it at least remaineddelightfully mischievous, out of joint with a contemporary desire to assertmastery over the world through rational knowledge and material explana-tion. The content of Anderson’s shows disturbed the stability of reason andempirical fact, so that ‘‘black is shown to be white, to the discomfiture oflogic,’’ and watches could ‘‘pass through the human cerebrum in utter oppo-sition to the most settled principles of physiology.’’111 Even the setting coulddisturb. The stage was often ‘‘ornamented as a large drawing room,’’ a settingthat served as ‘‘a very powerful auxiliary in the success of the entertain-

110. Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 99.111. The Morning Chronicle, September 4, 1855, 4.


ment.’’112 While this could be read as a domestication of magic, it equallyrepresented the enchantment of domestic space, reflecting the contemporarylocation of much contact with the supernatural via spiritualist seances.

These entertainments stand at an awkward juncture in the educated elites’attempts to create a consensus for a divide between a superstitious past, anenlightened present, and a technological future. Within the broad spectrumof mid-nineteenth-century cultures we see the coexistence of a persistentbelief in genuine magic and its reshaping into something new. Yet rather thanbeing necessarily oppositional they potentially provided mutual reinforce-ment. ‘‘Traditional’’ beliefs formed the basis as to why audiences found suchentertainment so alluring, while those entertainments perpetuated a sense ofthe supernatural, the wondrous, and the invisible in an increasingly material-istic society. As such we can view these entertainments as an activity thatacted as a shifting ‘‘hegemonic landscape’’ in the ‘‘ceaseless power strugglewhere power is never totally secure.’’113 Those concerned with educatingand reforming popular mentalities did not possess sufficient control to ensurethat their ‘‘progressive’’ interpretation of magical entertainments was ac-cepted as the norm, but nor could the subaltern group use it as a coherent,conscious site of counterhegemonic opposition.

Given the magical-scientific duality and symbiosis of these increasinglydemocratized forms of entertainments and the contestation surrounding their‘‘magical’’ nature, they can be classed as neither wholly ‘‘high culture’’ nor‘‘low.’’ Rather magic shows serve to remind us of the extent to which bothconflict and consensus existed in shared cultural forms. As Saler has skilfullydemonstrated, the emphasis on binary approaches that juxtapose the either/or of modernity and enchantment has increasingly given way in recent yearsto an emerging historiographical position that he terms ‘‘the antinomial ap-proach, with its ‘both/and’ logic,’’ a conceptualization of modernity ‘‘definedless by binaries arranged in an implicit hierarchy than by unresolved contra-dictions and oppositions.’’114 This article has sought to demonstrate such aconceptualization, not the either/or of magic and modernity but their some-times contradictory, sometimes complimentary coexistence.

112. The Era, April 19, 1868, 10.113. Crehan, Gramsci, Culture and Anthropology, 175.114. Saler, ‘‘Modernity and Enchantment,’’ 693 and 700.

mit the ‘‘wizard of the north’’ and contested magical mentalities

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