Who was Isaac Fawkes?

Isaac Fawkes (also spelled Faux) was an English conjuror and showman of the 1720s, famous at London’s Bartholomew and Southwark fairs. He was known for “dexterity of hand” and for the egg bag, from which he produced egg after egg. From 1727 he worked with the clockmaker Christopher Pinchbeck, whose automata joined the show. He died in 1731 or 1732; sources differ.

Fawkes lived three centuries ago, and very little about him is known for certain. Most of what survives comes from his own newspaper advertisements and a few prints of the fairs where he worked. This post keeps to what at least two of our sources agree on.

What do we know about his early life?

Almost nothing. One source puts his birth around 1675 with a question mark, and Wikipedia says plainly that nothing is known of him before early 1722. We won’t fill the gap with guesses.

Where did Isaac Fawkes perform?

Fawkes made his name at the great London fairs. Bartholomew Fair, held at Smithfield, and Southwark Fair both had his booth.

A picture of Bartholomew Fair in 1721 shows his booth among the attractions, with lettering that reads “Faux’s dexterity of hand” and “Faux’s famous posture masters”. Posture masters were contortionists, who bent their bodies into impossible shapes. A Wellcome Collection print based on that picture calls Fawkes “the famous conjuror”.

He also appears in William Hogarth’s picture Southwark Fair, which Wellcome describes as another portrait of him.

What tricks did Fawkes do?

His best-known trick was the egg bag. In the version linked to Fawkes, a bag shown empty produced a stream of eggs, and a University of London library exhibition shows a detail of him doing exactly that.

His own 1722 advertisement promised “Tricks by Dexterity of Hand, with his Cards, Eggs, Corn, Mice, curious India Birds, and Money”. That one line tells you a lot: his act mixed sleight of hand with cards and coins, the egg bag and live animals.

The egg bag is still part of the magician’s kit today. Professor Hoffmann includes it in Modern Magic (1876), and it is still made and sold as a prop.

Who was Christopher Pinchbeck?

Christopher Pinchbeck was a Fleet Street clockmaker and maker of mechanical automata. From 1727 until 1732, he and Fawkes worked together, most notably at Bartholomew Fair. Pinchbeck’s musical clocks and mechanical scenes became a major part of the show, adding wonders of clockwork to Fawkes’s sleight of hand.

Mixing conjuring with automata became a long tradition. More than a century later, Robert-Houdin, a clockmaker himself, wrote about automata and his own mechanical inventions in his Memoirs.

When did Isaac Fawkes die?

Our sources split on the year. Wikipedia and Princeton University Library’s Graphic Arts blog give 1732, while the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as cited by the Sloane Letters project, gives 1731. We leave it at that.

Why does Isaac Fawkes matter today?

Fawkes is an English conjuror whose name, advertisements and face have survived three centuries. His career shows magic as a paid public entertainment in the 1720s, with a booth, a stage name, advertising and a show built around one strong trick.

What helps you take it further?

• The Egg Bag by Luis de Matos is a DVD tutorial with a Malini-style egg bag included, teaching his professional routine in which an egg vanishes and reappears in a small black bag.
• Hocus Pocus Junior (1634) is a free 38-page PDF of the conjuring of the century before Fawkes: cups and balls, coins and “juggling knacks”.
• Modern Magic by Professor Hoffmann is a free 594-page PDF that includes the egg bag among its classic tricks.

For more early history, read the history of the cups and balls and who was Robert-Houdin, or browse our free ebooks.

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