CHAPTER ELEVEN

STRONG MEN OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: THOMAS TOPHAM (died, 1749); JOYCE, 1703; VAN ECKENBERG, 1718; BARSABAS AND HIS SISTER; THE ITALIAN FEMALE SAMPSON, 1724; THE "LITTLE WOMAN FROM GENEVA," 1751; BELZONI, 1778-1823.

Bodily strength has won the admiration—I might almost say, the worship—of 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 to say of her a little further on.

The jiu jitsu of the Japanese is, in part, a development of the same principles, but here again much new material has been added, so that it deserves to be considered a new art.

The following, from Dr. Desaguliers' Experimental Philosophy, London, 1763, Vol. 1, page 289, contrasts feats of actual strength with the tricks of the old-time performers:

Thomas Topham, born in London, and now about thirty-one 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 same advantages.

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 knee-pan is so loose, that the ligaments of it seem either to be broken or quite relaxed, which has taken away most of the strength of that leg.

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.

The feats which I saw him perform, a few days ago, were the following:

1. By the strength of his fingers (only rubbed in coal-ashes to keep them from slipping) he rolled up a very strong and large pewter-dish.

2. He broke seven or eight short and strong pieces of tobacco-pipe with the force of his middle finger, having laid them on the first and third finger.

3. Having thrust under his garter the bowl of a strong tobacco-pipe, his legs being bent, he broke it to pieces by the tendons of his hams, without altering the bending of his leg.

4. He broke such another bowl between his first and second finger, by pressing his fingers together side-ways.

5. 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 TABLE RESTED AGAINST HIS KNEES; BUT AS THE LENGTH OF THE TABLE WAS MUCH GREATER THAN ITS HEIGHT, THAT PERFORMANCE REQUIRED A GREAT STRENGTH TO BE EXERTED BY THE MUSCLES OF HIS LOINS, THOSE OF HIS NECK, THE MASSETER AND TEMPORAL (MUSCLES OF THE JAWS) BESIDES A GOOD SET OF TEETH.

6. He took an iron kitchen-poker, 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 poker nearly to a right angle.

7. 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 not so strong as those that bring them together.

8. 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.

9. 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 lib.-weight who can lift 400 lib.

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 same parts, and that too without straining the persons who try the experiment.

Here follows a long description of a machine for the above purpose.

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, on August 10th, 1749.[1]

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 methods.

About thirty years ago one Joyce,[2] 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.[3] 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 strength.

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 SAMPSON.

Some fifteen years subsequent to Joyce's advent, another so-called Samson, this time a German named John Charles Van Eckenberg, toured Europe with a remarkable performance along the same lines as Joyce's. Dr. Desaguliers saw this man and has this to say of him:

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 stand in and lift great weights, together with a proper girdle and hooks.

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 operandi clear. The figures will be found on plate 19.

Figs. 1 and 2 have already been explained.

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 jack-line 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 force exerted shall act on one point of the rope.

B is a feather bed upon which the performer falls.

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 ordinary strength.

Wanley [4] 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 town-major of Valenciennes.

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 venture to return till his unwelcome visitor had disappeared.

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 pack-thread, 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 family, and soon learned that she belonged to the same stock.

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 Post-Chaise Companion, published in London in 1724:

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 red-hot 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. Price half-a-crown, servants and children a shilling.

From the spelling, I judge that the person who selected this lady's title must have been more familiar with the City Directory than with the Scriptures.

In Edward J. Wood's Giants and Dwarfs, London, 1868, I find the following:

A newspaper of December 19th, 1751, announces as follows:

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 rope-dancing 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 red-hot 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 from the ground with her own hair. To begin exactly at six o'clock.

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 in "Who's Who in Archeology."

[1] 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, London, 1821, (but not in the reprint of 1869).

[2] Or William Joy.

[3] This is the spelling used by Joyce, Eckenberg and others, for the Samson of the Bible.

[4] Wonders of the little World, by Nathaniel Wanley, London, 1806. Vol. I., page 76.



CHAPTER TWELVE

CONTEMPORARY STRONG PEOPLE: CHARLES JEFFERSON; LOUIS CYR; JOHN GRUN MARX; WILLIAM LE ROY.—THE NAIL KING, THE HUMAN CLAW-HAMMER; ALEXANDER WEYER; MEXICAN BILLY WELLS; A FOOLHARDY ITALIAN; WILSON; HERMAN; SAMPSON; SANDOW; YUCCA; LA BLANCHE; LULU HURST.—THE GEORGIA MAGNET, THE ELECTRIC GIRL, ETC.; ANNIE ABBOTT; MATTIE LEE PRICE.—THE TWILIGHT OF THE FREAKS. THE DIME MUSEUMS.

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 been only of slight assistance to the marvelous grip the man possessed.

It is generally conceded that Louis Cyr was, in his best days, the strongest man in the known world at all-round straight lifting. Cyr did not give the impression of being an athlete, nor of a man in training, for he appeared to be over-fat and not particularly muscular; but he made records in lifting which, to the best of my knowledge, no other man has been able to duplicate.

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 strongman—and 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. And—Paris was Paris.

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 veritable colossus. In fact, he reminded me of a two-footed baby elephant.

Always good-natured, 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 good-natured 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 Claw-Hammer, whose act appealed to me for its originality. So far as I could learn, it had never been duplicated.

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 one-inch board; or to nail together, with his teeth, two 3/4-inch boards. He could draw with his teeth a large nail that had been driven completely through a two-inch plank. Then he would screw an ordinary two-inch 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 one-inch 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 one-inch board. But since this act did not get him very far either on the road to fame, or toward the big money—he turned to magic and finally became one of the leading Continental magicians, boasting that he was one of the few really expert sleight-of-hand magicians of the world.

I met Weyer at Liege, Belgium, where we had an all-night 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 stone-breaking 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 sledge-hammer 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 yell, "Harder! harder! hit harder!" until the stone was broken.

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 dime-museum profession was called.

Of all the acts of this nature that I have ever seen I think the most foolhardy was that of an under-sized 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 chest—the silly fool! I said as much to him—and 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, but I can guess.

Among the museum attractions of those years was a man named Wilson who had the incredible chest expansion of twenty-one inches. This man would allow a strong leather strap, about the size of a trunk-strap, 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 working in the shipyards at Newport News, Virginia.

Another "Samson," a German, among other sensational feats, such as breaking coins with his fingers, used to flex his muscles and break a dog-chain 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 him as conducting a school of instruction in health and strength methods.

In the tradition of the "Female Sampsons" noted in Chapter Eleven, I recall two strong-women 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 talkers—and I am referring to conversational quality, not to volume.

Lulu Hurst—known 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 Bullet-Proof Man. This chap wore a jacket that rifle bullets, fired point-blank, 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 contain-ground glass! The third sensation I must, with all due modesty, (business of bowing) claim for myself.

The Magnet failed to attract after about forty-eight hours, for a keen-witted 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 fiasco?"

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 performance—the same stage where the unhappy Dixie lode-stone had collapsed—and 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 me cordially by the hand.

Some twenty-six 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 buried in Clements Cemetery, Fulham.

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 husband-lecturer she was no longer a drawing card, and dropped to the level of an ordinary entertainer even lower, for her act was no longer even entertaining.

In Chapter Eleven we read Dr. Desaguliers' analysis of the mechanics of what may be called strongmanship. Similar investigations have attended the appearance of more recent performers.

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, and with what cheerful asininity they will help on their deceivers.

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 powerfully-built 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 which he was allowed to take part.

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 performance.

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 equilibrium.

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 observations.

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 and oft-repeated attempts.

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 perpendicular and asks the two men to hold it in a vertical position.

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 at the lower end of the stick.

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 twenty-five pounds, despite the very determined and sincere stresses of the two men, who, unbeknown to themselves, were exerting their strength in a HORIZONTAL direction.

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 than with two men, or with one man.

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, ninety-nine, 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 counter-poise 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 reputation.

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 fire-eating, sword-swallowing, glass-chewing, and the whole repertoire of the so-called Human Ostrich, steadily declined, and I recall only one engagement of a performer of this type at a first-class theater in this country during the present generation, and that date was not played.

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 to-day'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 New York.

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 over which oblivion threatens to stretch her darkening wings.

THE END