On this occasion the Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to the Davenport Family.
Programmes & Handbills
The majority are for variety shows which include a magician. Most are from the UK covering the 1870s to the present day.
To search for a specific date use the format 10 October 1924
Magicians P.T. Selbit, Owen Clark and Paul Vandy travelled up to Histon, Cambridge to be part of the annual Chivers & Sons Ltd. entertainment which, in 1923, celebrated 50 years of preserve production. This smart six page booklet is headed Programme & Words of Annual Entertainment. It is dated 20 and 21 December 1923. Selbit had two spots, one of which was presenting the séance The Long Acre Ghost which had so impressed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. View the PDF to see all six pages. We include illustrations of this programme courtesy of the Histon and Impington Village Society. The history of Chivers & Sons is interesting. Details may be found in the profusely illustrated book The Chivers Story published in 2023 by the Histon and Impington Village Society.
This Australasian tour covered Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. The show visited the Opera House in Wellington, New Zealand from 25 November to 19 December 1908. The details of the bill are spread out across the pages, forcing the theatre goers to at least look at all the advertisements throughout the programme. The Director of Illusions was Owen Clark. The PDF contains images of all of the pages.
The cover highlights Mr Bertram, the World-renowned Prestidigitateur. The ‘Charles Bertram’ hand written at the top of the front cover looks like Bertram’s signature. See N3237.
The venue is the Egyptian Large Hall. The images for this programme are distorted because the programme had been cut and pasted onto a card. It was therefore not possible to scan them.
This programme is similar, but not identical to N3158.
The venue is the Egyptian Large Hall. The programme details differ in two ways from programme N3159. In N3159 the venue is given as Egyptian Hall which is printed in a different type face. The second difference is that in N3158, at the bottom of page 4, Russell Court is incorrectly spelled as Russel Court.
The venue is the Egyptian Large Hall. There is a Times article on the cover dated 26 November 1874. This means the programme cannot be earlier than late 1874. This programme is almost the same as item N3156.
The venue is the Egyptian Large Hall. There is a Times article on the cover dated 26 November 1874. This means the programme cannot be earlier than late 1874. At first sight this programme appears to be a duplicate of N3157. However the Times article on the cover is different and this programme includes mention of the Misses Gerbaldi at the bottom of page 3. N3157 does not include this.
The venue is the Egyptian Large Hall. The cover announces a change of programme to include Japanese and Chinese Marvels. The probable date for the programme is 1874, because the first of the press opinions on page 4 is from The Times of 12 August, which the newspaper archive confirms is 1874.
This programme promises “The Grand Secrets of the Ancient Egyptian Magicians and the Startling Wonders of the Modern Spiritualists fully explained.”
The handbill includes details of Dr Lynn’s “Bi-diurnal Representations”. This is his way of saying there are two performances each day. Students of Dr Lynn will know he loved long, fantastic words.