Magnetic South: The Georgia Magnet's tour of New Zealand

"… she successfully resisted the forces pitted against her, giving an astounding manifestation of some power other than that making up the ordinary phenomena of nature." So wrote the Feilding Star on 25 October 1899, reporting on an early incarnation of the supernatural showpeople that still tour the world today. But other newspapers took a sceptical line that media today could learn from.

The originators of the 'Georgia Magnet' or resistance act are generally conceded to have been the promoters of Lulu Hurst (1869-1950), a slight girl in her early teens who enjoyed astronomical success touring vaudeville theatres throughout the US during the 1880s. Her act consisted of a range of 'tests' at which members of the audience (generally large, strong men) were challenged to overcome her. These tests included feats such as Miss Hurst resisting the attempts of one, two or even three men to push her backwards, lift her into the air, force a billiard cue through her hands to the stage floor and similar stunts.

Miss Hurst and her promoters attributed her seemingly supernatural strength to a mysterious energy, akin to electricity or magnetism, which they referred to as the 'Great Unknown'. Upon Lulu Hurst's retirement from show business at the still-tender age of 16, there emerged a proliferation of performers who appropriated the Magnet name and act. At least two of them toured New Zealand around the turn of the 20th century, by which time many of their standard 'tests' had not only been duplicated, but quite frequently exposed by academic sceptics in various newspaper and magazine articles.

Notably, these included EW Barton-Wright's very comprehensive exposé entitled How to Pose as a Strong Man which had been published in Pearson's Magazine (London) a year previously. Barton-Wright was a former engineer who became the first man to introduce the Japanese martial art of jujitsu to Europe. He also devised his own eclectic self-defence system, which he called Bartitsu; a combination of Japanese jujitsu with boxing, wrestling and Swiss stick fighting.

Observing the fundamental similarity between the subtle leverage principles at work in the Magnet act and his own study of body mechanics as they related to hand-to-hand combat, Barton-Wright had clearly explained many of the Magnet's secrets in a 'how-to' format:

It must not be supposed that it is necessary to possess any unusual strength to pose as a strong man; indeed, in many strong men's feats, strength plays a less important part than knack and trickery.

… [The Georgia Magnet] declared that it was solely owing to the fact that she possessed remarkable magnetic and electric powers that she was able to perform these feats. This, of course, was not the case, for anyone of average strength, who follows these instructions, will be able to perform them.

Barton-Wright addressed the psychological aspect of the Magnet's act, referring to techniques of distracting the audience's attention from the actual methods employed through 'patter' and misdirection. His concise essay, well-illustrated with step-by-step photographs, was unusually accessible to the lay reader. Magician and arch-skeptic Harry Houdini also summarised the physical mechanics and psychological principles of the resistance act in his book Miracle Mongers and their Methods (1920).

On 28 August 1899, the Auckland Star reported that a new Georgia Magnet had arrived in New Zealand. This mystifier was a young French-American woman named Matilda 'Tillie' Tatro. Miss Tatro's stage name of Annie May Abbott was a successful attempt to cash in on the fame of her manager Richard Abbey's former protégée and star, another Magnet who had by then retired from show business.

Mr Abbey's patter had come to redefine the 'Great Unknown' as the 'Odic force'. This hypothetical, animistic energy had first been proposed by the scientist Baron Karl Ludwig von Reichenbach in 1845. By 1899, the notion of Odic force had also been embraced by many spiritualists and by researchers of apparently psychic phenomena such as telekinesis.

By 14 November the Magnet was well into her New Zealand tour and was receiving excellent, if mildly sceptical, press notices:

It is claimed for Miss Annie May Abbott 'the Georgia Magnet', that she is the possessor of some odic or occult power. The sceptical, however, will remain of the opinion, that she is simply a mistress of leverage and equipose. But whatever the power may be, there is no gainsaying the fact that the entertainment she provides is a very clever one. It is at once both entertaining and instructive, though the amusement, it must be added, is provided largely by the Committee.

Young men, fresh from the gymnasium, exerted all their muscular energy, and staid and respectable city fathers pushed and shoved till their bald pates reddened; but all with one result - the 'Magnet' remained rooted to the ground. The gentleman who acted as master of ceremonies last evening was quite mysterious about the power possessed by Miss Abbott, but he went the length of grandiloquently stating that it was in the region of the nebulous mists that hang out beyond the domain of already explored and classified science.

The Magnet failed to attract on her last performance in Wellington, as it was reported that one of the Committeemen had actually succeeded in lifting her off the stage and that "the entertainment was concluded at an unusually early hour". However, this did not prevent a local politician, Mr TK McDonald, from scoring some points for topicality in a speech given on the evening of 20 November:

"The members of this triple alliance, however, are very much mistaken if they think they are going to get rid of the Right Hon. RJ Seddon (Applause). He is like the Georgia Magnet - they can not shift him. (A voice: They shifted her at last.) They did not know the power that enabled 'the Magnet' to remain fast, but they knew what kept Mr Seddon in power. It was 'the power of the people'. (Applause)"

The Magnet continued her tour, playing to packed houses in Auckland in early September. The editor of the New Zealand Graphic appreciated the show but evinced strong scepticism regarding the Master of Ceremonies' spiel about 'Odic force' and 'magnetic influence', going so far as to re-print EW Barton-Wright's exposé in full. The paper also published an editorial cartoon expressing the wish that the Magnet might use her powers to 'lift' certain recalcitrant City Council members out of their seats.

Response from the Magnet's representatives was swift and came in the form of a politely blistering letter to the editor of the Auckland Star.

The Magnet's defender in this instance was Danvers Hamber, who was at that time the assistant editor of the New Zealand Sporting and Dramatic Review. In a high dudgeon, he proceeded to point out the various ways in which Miss Abbott's performance differed from Barton-Wright's descriptions. Barton-Wright had addressed the fakery of 'Georgia Magnet'-style feats in general rather than Annie May Abbott's act in particular, and his article also included several feats that were not part of the standard Georgia Magnet repertoire. Moreover, as Barton-Wright had explained, there are several ways to perform the various Georgia Magnet 'experiments' without resorting to 'odic force', all of them requiring the practised application of leverage and balance combined with the ideomotor effect - the influence of imagination, suggestion and/or expectation on unconscious bodily movement.

The ideomotor effect was first formally described and defined by William Benjamin Carpenter during the mid-19th century. A physician and physiologist with a strong critical interest in claims of psychic phenomena, Carpenter observed and then proved that the apparently mysterious workings of spiritualistic phenomena including ouija boards, table turning and dowsing could easily be explained via ideomotor action.

Specific to the Georgia Magnet 'experiments', subjects who believed that they would not be able to overcome the 'odic force' tended to find that they could not, while those who believed that the force was stronger than they were tended to find themselves flung about the stage. These effects were exacerbated by the strict protocols of the 'tests', which subtly disadvantaged the volunteers in terms of position, momentum and leverage.

Danvers Hamber's fears were somewhat justified when several other regional newspapers followed the Graphic's lead, printing increasingly sceptical editorials as the Magnet's tour continued through the provinces. Their consensus was that, while the show was very entertaining, the 'odic force' patter was now well past its prime.

The editor of the Timaru Post asserted that:

… the 'Georgia Magnet' possesses no power, psychic or otherwise, that is not possessed by every member of her sex. As an example. The 'Georgia Magnet' holds the downward end of a stick in her clenched right hand, and one or two men are expected to force it through. Why, almost a child could resist their efforts. We know it is claimed that she does not grasp the stick, but we have seen her do it …

Twice has the 'Magnet' been lifted from the local platform, despite her exertions and anatomical distortions, and twice has it been clearly demonstrated that there has been no magnetism or 'new force' holding her down …

As previously stated, we have no objection to such exhibitions as shows, merely; but we are bound to protect truth and science from incursions of that description. It is unlikely the Magnet will attract much more in New Zealand, as all the papers are busy exposing her tricks.

It's unlikely that EW Barton-Wright was even aware that his Pearson's Magazine article had played so great a role in this New Zealand newspaper controversy, but there's no reason to doubt that it would have pleased him.

By November of 1900 the Magnet had departed the Land of the Long White Cloud and was enjoying success in an Australian tour. She seems to have faded from Kiwi consciousness until 18 April 1903, when local papers reported she had apparently fallen on hard times and expired of consumption at her home in Georgia. The Evening Post published a letter by the New Zealand magician and exposer of spiritualist hoaxes Professor Robert Kurdarz, the stage name of Thomas Driver.

Kudarz wrote that: "As far back as 1892 [Magnet acts] were exhibited in Christ-church by Professor Charles N Steen [who, by the way, was for a long time associated with the original Annie May Abbott, in America], and he also was the first to introduce the 'Georgia Magnet' in Australia, in the person of Miss Rose Howard, in Melbourne, in 1893, when I was giving exhibitions of magic along with Steen in St. George's Hall. …

"The two 'forces' that were never mentioned in connection with 'Magnetic Lady' exhibitions were the very two that would give the 'show away' - viz, 'gravitation,' and the 'centre of gravity,' and the tricks which the latter 'force'' plays you would hardly believe. Moreover, the 'Georgia Magnet', like all other young ladies, always had her own way, notwithstanding all the precautions taken by her sterner committee."

As it turned out, the reports of the Magnet's demise proved to be false; she was in fact alive and well, and performing to packed houses throughout the American Midwest.

Postscript

In much more recent years, the Georgia Magnet or 'resistance act' has been emerging from an almost century- long period of hibernation. The most famous modern exponent of the esoteric art of the 'immovable body' is a young Laotian mentalist and magicienne named Sisuepahn, who has defied the attempts of Arnold Schwarzenegger, amongst many other athletes and celebrities, to lift her from the ground.