Mysterious Dr. Q Dark Trumpet Seance (Dr. Q Ad Part 2)

I've been a huge fan of seances & "spiritualism" since before I knew what those words meant. When I was 10, I tried to contact the recently deceased Heather O'Rourke via Ouija Board, and I have always loved seance scenes in the movies.

This trick would have been great to witness back in the early 1900's, when we didn't have a ton of technology and our minds would have been more susceptible to this kind of thing- and I was excited to find out how the trick actually works via The Life and Mysteries of Dr. Q @ google books.

I thought that "Dark Seance" was meant as an Occult selling point, but the trick is actually performed in the dark. This is so the audience- which is sitting around you in a circle- cannot see that the trumpet you placed between your legs has a long black hose coming from it to your mouth, where you can voice the "secrets of the dead."

Kind of hokey when you know how it works, and you would really have to practice to make sure they can't hear you mumbling into the tube, but it would be fun to see an experienced Magician perform it.

The Master Secret of the Swami (Dr. Q Ad Part 1)

This extremely wordy and curious ad is selling some kind of mentalist trick. My searches for "Secret Swami" in relation for Dr. Q turned up nothing. This will be another one to keep in the back of my mind and hope I can find something on it later!

This is also page 1 of a 4 page ad- all Dr. Q- the rest coming over the next few days, and I found some great background on the other tricks in the ads.

Looking over the front page, it got me thinking about the folds of the paper, and how a lot of the ads of that size are folded identically- did someone do that after it arrived? How often were these ads sent out- or did they come with other books or tricks?

A Revised List of Magical Books & Publications

From June of 1920. I am noticing that whoever was writing copy for Thayer had a hard time being concise- but this is, after all, supplement no. 2 to catalogue no. 4!

The inside reads like a "what to find on ebay" list of magic books from the time period. I did a few random searches from the list and here was what I was able to find for sale:

• You can find a copy of Hoffman's Later Magic for $450.00 on amazon.com.
• This store is selling Burling Hull's Modern Handkerchief Act for only $35.00.
• You can read The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin via google books.

A Race With Cards

I thought this was a fun little newspaper clipping. One of the hundreds of magic tricks someone took the time to cut and save- a lot of these are paper clipped together and tucked into envelopes. There are dozens of clippings of brain teasers and magic tricks from the newspaper in the cigar boxes.

I know my Grandfather loved to clip articles to share; he would often send me articles of interest in his letters to me. I wonder if he taught himself any of these tricks.

Poole's Latest Stage Features and Mysteries

Here is the reverse of the ad. I wonder if they were actually creating their own tricks, or buying and renaming it from other magicians.

An Ad from the Poole Brothers

Here is page one of the ad- I will post the other tomorrow. While I recognize Mr. Hull, I could not find anything concrete on the Poole Brothers. I can figure out that they owned a store in New York, but it seems like they were publishing a ton of catalogs, yet I didn't find anything definitive on them by searching around online. There are various famous 'Pooles' from that time period- anyone know which specific Poole Brothers this is?