Who was John Nevil Maskelyne?

John Nevil Maskelyne (1839 to 1917) was a Cheltenham watchmaker who became Victorian London’s best-known stage magician. He made his name in 1865 by copying the Davenport Brothers’ “spirit” act and showing it was trickery, then ran his own magic theatre at the Egyptian Hall from 1873 to 1905 before moving to St George’s Hall. He spent his life exposing fake mediums and card cheats, wrote Sharps and Flats (1894), and started a family of magicians that ran for three generations.

Who was John Nevil Maskelyne?

He was born in Cheltenham, England, on 22 December 1839, and trained as a watchmaker. That bench training matters. The magic historian Henry Ridgely Evans, in The Old and the New Magic (1906), paired him with Robert-Houdin as two famous watchmakers who became conjurers, and wrote that Maskelyne later gave up sleight of hand to build mechanical illusions. His inventing went beyond the stage, too: Wikipedia and the Magic Circle both credit him with a coin-operated toilet door lock, the source of the phrase “to spend a penny.” If you haven’t met the Frenchman yet, our post on who Robert-Houdin was is a good companion read.

How did he expose the Davenport Brothers?

The Davenport Brothers were American performers who claimed spirits made things happen while they sat tied up inside a cabinet. When they appeared in Cheltenham, young Maskelyne watched closely and became convinced it was all trickery.

With a local cabinet maker, George Alfred Cooke, he built his own version of the cabinet. In June 1865, at a show in Cheltenham, the pair reproduced the act and presented it openly as trickery, not spirits. It worked so well that Maskelyne and Cooke turned professional. We won’t go into how the cabinet worked; what mattered was the point it proved, that a conjurer could do on purpose what a “medium” called supernatural.

What was the Egyptian Hall?

The Egyptian Hall was an exhibition building on Piccadilly in London. Maskelyne and Cooke opened there in 1873, and their run lasted about 31 years. It became known as “England’s Home of Mystery,” and the Magic Circle says many of the most important illusions of the age were first shown there.

Here is what audiences saw (never how it worked):

• Psycho. A mechanical figure that appeared to play the card game whist, picking cards from a rack. Sources disagree on the year it first appeared, so we’ve left the date out.
• Levitation. The 1881 English edition of Robert-Houdin’s The Secrets of Stage Conjuring tells readers to visit the Egyptian Hall, where they would see Maskelyne himself, in gaslight, “float gently upwards towards the roof of the hall.”
• Comic spirit sketches. The same book describes Cooke, bound and sealed in a cabinet, ringing bells and rattling tambourines, the medium’s favourite tricks played for laughs.
• The Great Dictionary Trick. Professor Hoffmann, in Later Magic (1904), says it was “invented by my ingenious friend Mr. Maskelyne” and caused a sensation at the Egyptian Hall.

Why did he fight fake mediums?

Spiritualism was popular in Victorian Britain, and Maskelyne set out to show the public that the mediums’ wonders were tricks. He put his case in print in Modern Spiritualism, an account of the movement’s rise with exposures of so-called spirit mediums. (Wikipedia and our scan date it 1876; Magicpedia gives 1875.) In 1891 he and the doctor Lionel A. Weatherly published The Supernatural?, with Maskelyne covering spiritualism and theosophy from a magician’s point of view.

He never stopped. In 1914 he founded an Occult Committee to investigate claims of supernatural power and expose fraud. Fellow writers noticed: Hoffmann dedicated Latest Magic (1918) to him as a “Fearless Exposer of Falsehood and Fraud.” Harry Houdini later fought the same battle in America, which our post on who Harry Houdini was covers.

What is Sharps and Flats?

Published in London in 1894 by Longmans, Green, and Co., Sharps and Flats is Maskelyne’s exposé of how cheats win at games of chance and skill. He signed the preface from the Egyptian Hall in February 1894, and wrote that “A goodly portion of my life has been spent in battling with superstition, credulity and chicanery in every form.”

The chapters cover common sharpers, marked cards, reflectors, holdouts, manipulation, collusion, faro, prepared cards, dice, roulette and gambling houses. It’s still regarded as a classic gambling book, and card magicians have prized it ever since. It’s a free ebook from us.

What happened after the Egyptian Hall?

The last show at the Egyptian Hall was on 5 January 1905, and the building was demolished that year. Cooke died in February 1905, and Maskelyne went into partnership with David Devant, who had first joined the company in 1893. The show moved to St George’s Hall on Langham Place, which became known as Maskelyne’s Theatre.

The same year, 23 magicians met at Pinoli’s Restaurant in London and founded the Magic Circle. Devant was its first president. Maskelyne was a member, and the Circle later met at St George’s Hall.

John Nevil Maskelyne died of pneumonia in London on 18 May 1917, aged 77.

Who carried on the family name?

His son Nevil Maskelyne (1863 to 1924) was a magician too. He was president of the Magic Circle from 1906 until his death, and with Devant wrote Our Magic (1911), a serious book on the art, theory and practice of magic.

Nevil’s son Jasper Maskelyne (1902 to 1973) was a stage magician in the 1930s and 1940s. He is best known for claims about wartime camouflage and deception in the Second World War, but historians dispute much of that story, so treat it with caution.

Timeline

Year	Event
1839	Born in Cheltenham on 22 December
1865	With George Alfred Cooke, exposes the Davenport Brothers’ act in Cheltenham (June)
1873	Maskelyne and Cooke open at the Egyptian Hall, London
1891	The Supernatural?, with Lionel A. Weatherly
1893	David Devant joins the company
1894	Sharps and Flats published
1905	Egyptian Hall closes, Cooke dies, partnership with Devant, move to St George’s Hall, Magic Circle founded
1914	Founds an Occult Committee to investigate claims of supernatural power
1917	Dies in London on 18 May

Why does he still matter?

• Honest framing. He called his own cabinet work trickery, not spirits. It’s the same rule we follow: present mysteries as entertainment, never as real powers.
• A home for magic. Maskelyne and Cooke’s 31 years at the Egyptian Hall gave London a home for magic, and the family carried it on at St George’s Hall.

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