John Nevil Maskelyne

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Maskelyne became interested in conjuring after watching a stage performance at his local Town Hall by the fraudulent American spiritualists the Davenport brothers. He saw how the Davenports' spirit cabinet illusion worked, and stated to the audience in the theatre that he could recreate their act using no supernatural methods. With the help of a friend, cabinet maker George Alfred Cooke, he built a version of the gigantic cabinet. Together, they revealed the Davenport Brothers' trickery to the public at a show in Cheltenham in June 1865, sponsored by the 10th Cotswold Rifle Corps to which they belonged . In addition to the pseudo-spiritualist phenomena of the Davenports, they added comedy illusions which included the transformation of Maskelyne and Cooke into an 'unprotected female' and a gorilla. Inspired by the acclaim they received for their clever exposure of the deception, the two men repeated their show several times.

Following their local success, they branched out taking their show to nearby towns. Encouraged by their results, they decided to become professional magicians and organised tours, building on their initial routines and expanding their programme.

At first they struggled to make ends meet but they were saved by a young and relatively inexperienced theatrical agent named William Morton, who saw their show in Liverpool and offered to finance a tour. He engaged them at a weekly wage of £4 10s for Maskelyne and his wife, and 50 shillings for Cooke. Morton ran them round the country for two years, ending at The Crystal Palace for several weeks. He then secured for them the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, renovated it, put in a new stage and opened at the end of 1873. Morton remained their manager for 20 years. He helped them to become firmly established on the national stage, including such marathon theatrical engagements as their famous 31-year tenancy at the Egyptian Hall, which ended in 1905 when the Hall was demolished.

Maskelyne and Cooke invented many illusions still performed today. Maskelyne was adept at working out the principles of illusions, one of his best-known being levitation. Levitation is commonly but incorrectly said to be Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin's creation, but it was Maskelyne's. The confusion arises because Robert-Houdin invented the illusion "La Suspension Ethéréenne" (aka the "Broom Suspension"). Levitation is also credited to American magician Harry Kellar, who in fact stole the illusion by bribing Maskelyne's technician, Paul Valadon.

On Cooke's death in February 1905, Maskelyne started a partnership with David Devant. Devant first joined Maskelyne's team in 1893 when he auditioned as a replacement for Charles Morritt, a conjurer and inventor who worked with Maskelyne at the Egyptian Hall but who left to set up his own show.

In 1894, Maskelyne wrote the book Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill. It became an instant hit, and to this day is considered a classic gambling book. It was the first detailed revelation of the secrets of cardsharps. Other authors prior to Maskelyne had written about crooked gambling, but never had anyone published a work with in-depth, detailed explanations of the secrets of crooked gambling. The first edition was published in London and New York. Later, when it entered the public domain, the Gambler's Book Club of Las Vegas published the first reprint. It is now also available online in the form of an annotated website. Maskelyne wrote several books, but Sharps and Flats is by far his most important and best known literary work.

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