Lives of the Conjurers

  courtroom was filled to overflowing. Crowded together were both supporters and detractors of Slade, along with a pack of journalists. The Times published a daily transcript of the proceedings.

The principal witness for the prosecution was Lankester.

A corpulent, bearlike man, he filled the witness box.

Lankester described grabbing a slate that was supposedly empty, and finding it filled with writing. He claimed that Slade had used sleight of hand to exchange slates. Asked if he had actually observed this sleight of hand, Lankester admitted that he had not. “The nature of sleight of hand— if there is sleight of hand—prevents you observing,” he explained. Laughter filled the courtroom, as it would often during the trial. Lankester’s testimony was confirmed by the colleague who had accompanied him.

Another witness was a magazine editor named Hutton.

During an earlier séance, Hutton testified, he had proposed a test: have the spirit leave a message inside a double slate that has been fastened with a lock. But Slade had declined the test, claiming that his wife’s spirit refused to write on locked slates. When Hutton asked if some other spirit might be willing to do so, Slade had checked with the spirits. Their response, found scrawled on a slate, was emphatic: “  .”

But the most compelling, and entertaining, testimony was provided by John Nevil Maskelyne, England’s foremost magician. The prosecutor had told the court: “You will find that nothing that Slade does is at all beyond the power of any ordinary conjurer.” And he had called on Maskelyne to reproduce Slade’s miracles by non-supernatural means.

Maskelyne had stepped into the witness box and put on a magic show. He demonstrated techniques by which writing could seemingly be elicited from a spirit. In one example he used a thimble device to surreptitiously write on a slate. The slate was handed up to the judge, who read aloud (with mock amazement): “‘The spirits are present.’”

Maskelyne was enjoying the opportunity to perform, with the spectators as audience. He was also relishing his 