Magicians in Wyn Davenport’s

autograph albums
presented by

Anne Goulden
at the

IBM British Ring Convention, Bournemouth

25 September 2014

©Anne Goulden 2014

John Davenport and I inherited three autograph albums from Wyn Davenport. The albums are
ninety years old now and they’re rather fragile, so they had to be scanned before I could do any
work on them. John did that for me, for which I’m grateful – it was a long job.
We’ve always enjoyed looking through Wyn’s autograph albums - but to my mind a collection
of autographs isn’t very interesting unless you know something about the person who collected
them, and the circumstances in which they were collected. So you won’t see many autographs in
the next fifty minutes, but you’ll hear about Wyn Davenport, and some of the magicians she
encountered, and the places where the magicians worked. There’s a trick I’d like to tell you about,
too.
Wyn was the daughter of Lewis Davenport, the magician and dealer. John Davenport is her
nephew. When I first met her, she was not long turned sixty – about the same age as I am now, in
fact. She was living with her mother Winifred in a big house in Kent called Ivydene.

This photograph was taken in the 1930s, when the house looked rather grand. Forty years later,
when I went to Ivydene, it was looking sorry for itself. The family hadn’t been able to keep up with
repairs and maintenance, and the house was going downhill.
Eventually Winifred and Wyn had to leave Ivydene and move to a small flat in Tonbridge. In
1981 Winifred celebrated her 90th birthday.
This photograph was taken in her flat – Winifred on the left, Wyn on the right. Winifred died later
that year, leaving Wyn on her own in the flat in Tonbridge. John and I used to visit her from time
to time and take her out to lunch.
Wyn was always happy to talk about the old days. She’d toured the music halls with Lewis
Davenport’s magic act in the 1920s, and she’d been to South Africa and South America. She’d
worked in Davenport’s magic business, too. We were glad to hear her stories and she enjoyed
telling them.
Wyn never liked this photograph of herself. But it’s as I remember her, when I knew her in her
old age. She had a lot to put up with – she was lonely after her mother died, and she had a great
deal of ill health - but she was always pleased to see us when we visited her.

This is Wyn as a young girl, photographed on Wanstead

Flats in London when her family was living nearby. That
cheerful smile was Wyn’s trademark. I don’t know how
old she was when this photograph was taken, but she was
given her first autograph album when she was ten years
old.
When Wyn died in 1991, she left the contents of her flat
to John. It was crammed with things that she’d rescued
from the big house, Ivydene – more furniture than you’d
think possible given the size of the flat, but also posters
and programmes and old letters - all sorts of things.
Among them were her three autograph albums
two small ones and a large black one.
The two small albums were given to her as Christmas
presents in 1924 and 1926.
These photographs of Lewis and Winifred Davenport are from the large black album – they’re
publicity photographs for the stage act. Lewis had them made into postcards, as performers often
did, and the postcards are pasted onto the first two pages of the album.
Lewis’s page is just signed “Dad”. The inscription on Winifred’s page says “With love to Gus
and Win. Alhambra, London, April 22, 1926.” And it’s signed: “Mum”.
Gus was Wyn’s brother. In April 1926 he was a lad of 13 and Wyn was 11. I like to think of the
two of them racing round the theatres they visited, badgering the performers for their autographs
– though I’m sure that in reality they were very polite, because you had to be in those days.
This autograph is on the third page of the large album, the page after Winifred’s. Harry Gunn
appeared in the same show as Lewis Davenport at Birmingham Empire in February 1927. I think
he must have been tickled by the glamorous photographs signed “Dad” and “Mum”, because he
wrote:
With very sincere wishes to Mum & Dad's "Boy and Girl".
At Birmingham Empire Harry Gunn’s act was billed as “Seaside Silhouettes”. Elsewhere I’ve seen
it described as “comedy song scenas” [poster for the London Coliseum, week beginning 22 Sep
1924]. So he wasn’t a magician.
In fact there aren’t many magicians in Wyn’s autograph albums. It was very unusual to have
two magicians on a music hall bill – so Lewis Davenport wouldn’t usually be working with
another magician.To illustrate this, I’ll show you a typical music hall poster.
This is for the Palace, Bradford, week beginning 1
June 1925. It says at the top:
SPLENDID VARIETY COMPANY.

By the 1920s, the terms “music hall” and “variety”

were used interchangeably. People might talk about
“going to the music hall”, but the show they saw
when they got there was variety – nothing like the
original music halls of the mid-Victorian period.
And a “music hall” of the 1920s was a proper
theatre, with tip-up seats and a fully equipped stage
– again, nothing like the mid-Victorian music halls.
Does anybody remember a television programme
called The Good Old Days? With Leonard Sachs as the
music hall chairman? [Ran from 1953 to 1983.]
Well, the music halls of the 1920s weren’t like
that. Music hall chairmen went out of fashion
around 1900, and variety shows of the 1920s didn’t
even have a compere.
Looking at the details of the Bradford show,
Lewis Davenport was joint top of the bill. Bear in
mind that music halls varied enormously in status.
In the 1920s Lewis Davenport appeared at some of
the number one halls, but he never topped the bill
there. As a general rule of thumb, if he did top the
bill – as at the Palace, Bradford – it wasn’t one of the
best halls. But that doesn’t mean that he didn’t have
a good act.
The other joint top was a comedian named Scotch
Kelly. He was billed as:
The miniature comedy comet.

Gus and Wyn asked him to sign their album and he

wrote:
Life is short/So is bliss/So am I/And so is this.

Scotch Kelly’s autograph album page

 There were seven acts in the show. Two or three of
them were classed as speciality acts: Lewis Davenport,
the Benedetti Brothers, and possibly Rose and Bud.
Dorothy Colston was a singer, and the other acts were
comedians of various kinds.
In music hall and variety circles, the term
“speciality act” included all sorts of acts: magicians,
jugglers, ventriloquists, acrobats, and so on – broadly,
any act with a special skill. There might be several
speciality acts on a variety bill – but with that range of
specialities to choose from, no music hall would book
two magicians for the same week.
Lewis Davenport had many friends who were
speciality acts. I’m sure he respected their skill, just as
they respected his. But the music hall world was tough
on speciality acts – they didn’t get the prestige and the
financial rewards that their skill deserved.
The Benedetti Brothers are interesting. They were
billed as:
Italy’s funniest comedians and violinists,
introducing their own original one-violin duet.
Six weeks after their Bradford date they were at the
Palace, Blackburn and Lewis Davenport happened to
be on the bill with them. Gus and Wyn asked the
Benedettis for their autograph and here it is ….

…. with a rather nice drawing of three intertwined fish.

Variety was international and in principal performers could get work overseas, especially if
they had a silent act – in other words, didn’t use patter. Lewis Davenport’s act was silent and he
did take bookings on the Continent – though not as many as you might expect, given the amount
of time he spent in Germany on business. He took his act to South Africa and South America as
well, but only for one season each.
 One place where Lewis did work with other magicians
was Maskelyne’s Theatre in London – St George’s Hall.
He appeared there many times and at the end of his
career he claimed over 3,000 performances under the
Maskelyne banner. I don’t actually believe that figure,
but he was certainly at St George’s Hall a lot.
When Wyn Davenport was given her first autograph
album at the end of 1924, St George’s Hall was going
through a major change of management. J N Maskelyne,
the founder of Maskelyne’s Theatre, was long gone. His
son, Nevil Maskelyne, had just died unexpectedly and
Nevil’s four sons – the third generation - were struggling
to keep their theatre in business.
One thing they had in their favour was a pool of
experienced, reliable performers, some of whom are in
Wyn’s autograph albums. The other thing that helped
was that the youngest of the brothers was Jasper
Maskelyne. He was a born entertainer and showman, a
worthy successor to the great J N Maskelyne.

Gus and Wyn must have been rather pleased when they got
Jasper Maskelyne’s autograph. It’s not very exciting, though.
He just signed his name without giving the date or the name of
the theatre. There’s no photograph, either – but that doesn’t
matter because we have plenty of photographs of Jasper in the
Davenport Collection.

This one’s my favourite. Jasper was very good looking by the

standards of the time. To add to his appeal, he dressed like a
fashion plate.
My guess at the date of Jasper’s autograph is early 1927, during the run of a magical revue entitled
Hullo Maskelyne at St George’s Hall.
This is the programme for the show. The first half was the ordinary St George’s Hall offering,
with magic acts by Jack Le Dair, Lewis Davenport, Edward Victor and Jasper Maskelyne. The
revue was in the second half.
The original concept was that the cast of the revue should include all the magicians who
appeared in the first half. But Lewis Davenport couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt to the revue format.
Unfortunately for the St George’s Hall management, he had a contract for a four-week season
there, and he’d already agreed to postpone it once. So they were stuck with him. He gave his usual
music hall act in the first half, and didn’t appear in the revue.
The programme describes the revue as “A new all-magic show in eleven swindles; invented,
written and produced by Oswald Williams”. In the cast were Jasper Maskelyne, Oswald Williams,
Harry Hemsley, Cyril Yettmah, Jack Le Dair, and Edward Victor – all of whom signed Wyn’s
autograph album.
This was the second edition of Hullo Maskelyne. The first edition did well, but it was an
expensive production. Money was short at St George’s Hall in these later years, hence the more
economical second edition.
These are four of the performers in the revue. On the left we have Jasper Maskelyne and his
assistant, Cecil Home-Douglas. The two gentlemen on the right are Oswald Williams and Harry
Hemsley – who I’ll talk about later. For now, I’ll tell you a bit more about Oswald Williams’ revue.
Outside Maskelyne’s Theatre, in the wider entertainment business, a revue was a self-contained
show in a large number of short scenes. The emphasis was on comedy, glamour and spectacle.
The second edition of Hullo Maskelyne had eleven short scenes, which Oswald Williams called
Swindles. There was comedy in plenty, and glamour was provided by Jasper Maskelyne and Cecil
Home Douglas. But spectacle was lacking. The only scene which might have been remotely
spectacular was Swindle No.8, in which Cyril Yettmah appeared as “The Wizard of Baghdad”.
But it was a fast-moving, up-to-date sort of show – and it was inexpensive to produce. The
Maskelynes made much use of magical revues like this one in their last years at St George’s Hall.
 This is Wyn’s autograph album page for
Oswald Williams. He was a very inventive
magician, greatly respected in the world of
magic. In the early part of his career he did a
lot of music hall work – though I’m sorry to
say that music hall buffs don’t remember him.
He was a speciality act, after all.
His first booking at St George’s Hall was in
1917 and he was an important figure there in
the 1920s and early 1930s. He became the
resident magician and producer, and
eventually the Maskelynes made him a
director of their family company. He was still
with them when Maskelyne’s Ltd went into
receivership in 1935.

I promised to tell you about Harry Hemsley.

Photographs of him are hard to find, and I’m grateful
to David Hibberd for helping me out with this one.
It’s from an entertainment agency brochure in the
Magic Circle Archive. The same photograph was
used in the St George’s Hall programmes in the
1920s. I rather think that it was out of date by then –
it’s what Eddie Dawes calls the Peter Pan effect.
Entertainers don’t bother to change their publicity
photographs as they get older, and the photographs
never grow up.
Harry Hemsley was a child impersonator, not a
magician, but he worked with Oswald Williams
behind the scenes as well as on stage. Oswald
Williams’ repertoire included a comedy item entitled
Crazy Inventions. Some of the Crazy Inventions were
Hemsley’s ideas.
Harry Hemsley had a very long career, on the
stage, on radio and on television. At the time of his
death in 1951, at the age of 73, he was under contract to appear in the BBC television programme
Children’s Hour. He was a remarkable man.
Harry Hemsley appears twice in Wyn’s autograph albums. The left hand page is from one of the
small albums. My guess is that it dates from 1925 or 1926, when Harry Hemsley was in the same
show at St George’s Hall as Lewis Davenport. His act was billed as “Child Life and
Eggstraordinary Art”, which suggests that he did lightning cartoons as well as his child
impersonations. It’s possible that the “Any old clothes” drawing is one of his lightning cartoons.
The right hand page is from the large black album. Hemsley must have got out his box of paints
to do this page. It was a lot of trouble to go to for a children’s autograph album, but theatre work
involves a great deal of waiting around and perhaps he was glad of something to do. Perhaps he
enjoyed drawing.
Harry Hemsley came from a family of theatrical scene painters and he was a talented artist as
well as a successful performer. We’re delighted to have these two examples of his work in Wyn’s
autograph albums.
This book was published by Raphael Tuck in 1947. It’s a sideways look at the BBC as Hemsley
knew it. He did a lot of work for Radio Luxemburg before the second world war, and he might
have found the BBC rather stuffy in comparison.
Hemsley had an imaginary family of children, Johnny, Elsie, Winnie and Horace. Horace spoke
baby-gibberish which only Winnie could understand. Hemsley’s catchphrase was “What does
Horace say?”
This is one of the cartoons from Hemsley’s book. The four children are about to make a broadcast.
The red light has come on, to show that they’re on air and someone asks, “Why don’t you
commence?” Winnie replies, “We’re waiting for the red light to turn to green.”
Earlier in his career Harry Hemsley did some work for David Devant.

These cartoons are in the Devant

scrapbooks in the Magic Circle
Archive. They’re two of about twenty
different cartoons which Devant used
in his newspaper publicity towards
the end of the first world war – hence
the wartime flavour of the one on the
right. If you thought you could get
away from the first world war by
coming to the IBM convention – well,
you can’t.
The Magic Circle Archive doesn’t
have Hemsley’s original artwork for these cartoons. The images here were scanned from press
cuttings by David Hibberd and cleaned up electronically by Karl Bartoni. They’re still a bit fuzzy,
but the original newspaper cartoons are very small. David and Karl have done a splendid job.
 Also in the Magic Circle Archive is this
poster, which Harry Hemsley designed for
David Devant. It’s a striking image and the
pictures in the bubbles show some of
Devant’s tricks and illusions.
Devant retired from the stage around
1920, a few years before Wyn had her first
autograph album - so we don’t have his
autograph.
The next performer I want to talk about
belongs to the generation after Devant.

Herbert J Collings was a successful society entertainer

and a founder member of the Magic Circle. He was held
in great affection there and he became the Magic Circle
president in 1928. He held that office until he died thirty
years later. He was also president of the IBM for a short
time in 1948, after Oswald Rae bowed out.
The term society entertainer needs some explanation.
Quite simply, it was an entertainer who did private
work. When Herbert J Collings was a young man, it was
said that a society entertainer might be booked for a
party at a posh house in the West End of London one
day – and the next day he might be performing at a
Sunday school treat in a poverty-stricken East End
parish.
Like many society entertainers, Herbert J Collings
was versatile. He was a patter magician and he could do
stage magic or drawing room magic as required. One of
his specialities was plate spinning.
This is a young Herbert J, doing his plate spinning in front of a photographer’s backcloth.
Plate spinning is a juggling speciality and perhaps its best-known exponent was the great J N
Maskelyne. J N presented a plate spinning act in his very last show at St George’s Hall at the age
of 77.
Herbert J presented his plate spinning act at St George’s Hall on two occasions. The first was a
special show that the Magic Circle put on in 1923, when they celebrated Maskelyne’s golden
jubilee [it was the annual Grand Séance].
The second occasion was in the ordinary shows at St George’s Hall, for a short season in 1927.
Herbert J Collings appeared twice in the show: in the first half with plate spinning and drawing
room magic, and in the second half with Chinese magic.

This is a mature Herbert J doing

his Chinese act at a rather posh
children’s party. It was a comedy
patter act in pidgin English,
usually under the name of Col
Ling Soo. The effect of the
gorgeous Chinese robes is rather
marred by the horn-rimmed
spectacles, but it was all part of
the fun. It’s clear that everyone at
this party is having a splendid
time.
When he did the Col Ling Soo
act on stage, he’d ring a small
brass bell to point each joke. It was
a running gag and apparently it
always got laughs. There’s no sign
of a bell in this photograph, but
perhaps it wasn’t needed at a
private party.

…
 My next performer, Okito, was a successful stage magician.
The likely date of his autograph is 1931. He was a Dutchman
named Theo Bamberg and he had a silent Chinese act. He
belonged to the sixth generation of the Bamberg dynasty of
magicians. He was a customer of Davenports magic shop
and a friend of the family.
In the month of January 1931, Lewis Davenport and Okito
were both performing in Berlin. Okito was at the Scala,
Lewis Davenport was at the Wintergarten.

This is the poster for the Wintergarten. Lewis Davenport was billed as “the manipulator
Davenport”. The Wintergarten was a very good date. While Lewis was there, he wrote a series of
letters to variety agents and other people who might book him. The tone of the letters was “Look,
I’m at the Wintergarten, Berlin. I’m doing really well. How about giving me some work?”
This is the programme for the Scala, where Okito was appearing. He was billed as “Chinese
magician and illusionist”.
. The cover illustration of this programme - with the well-heeled, fashionably dressed audience,
and the lights, and the posh cars – tells us that the Scala was a good theatre, just like the
Wintergarten. It puts me in mind of a 1920s programme card that we have for the Victoria Palace
in London
Germany and Britain both had serious economic problems in 1931. They were rooted in the first
world war and they were solved temporarily when both countries rearmed for the second world
war. The glitz and glamour that you see here was no more than surface froth.
While Okito was at the Scala, he sent this postcard to Lewis Davenport at the Wintergarten. The
message on the back is:

Hotel St Petersburg
Mittelstrasse, Berlin
Dear Louis
Kindly drop me a line to the above mentioned address where I can see you after the
show, as I have no time in the daytime. I will be delighted to have a chat with you.
Remember me kindly to Mrs D and good luck to both of you.
Cordially yours
Okito.

Variety artists usually had their evening meal after the show, so it’s possible that Lewis Davenport
and Okito had a late dinner together. In those days of live entertainment, professional entertainers
lived and worked at different times from ordinary people. They were often free during the day,
when ordinary people were working, and they worked in the evening, when ordinary people were
enjoying their leisure time. They often said, “Pros are different” – and they were.
If you want to read more about Okito and his life on tour, I can recommend David Bamberg’s
book, Illusion Show. It’s actually the autobiography of Okito’s son, who spent much of his career
touring South America under the name of Fu Manchu. It’s clear from David Bamberg’s book that
Okito wasn’t an easy person to live with, still less to have as a father - though I’m tempted to
believe that David wasn’t the most tractable of sons.
 Wyn Davenport as a young woman
When Lewis Davenport met Okito in Berlin in January 1931, Wyn Davenport
was sixteen years old and very much the young lady. She played an active part
in Lewis’s stage act as Winifred’s dresser.
Later in 1931 Lewis added Lyle’s Chocolate Box to his act. It needed a girl
assistant, and Wyn was the obvious person. We have in the family collection a
telegram which Cecil Lyle sent to Lewis Davenport at the Grand Theatre, Bolton
on 5 October 1931: “Wish you luck with box.” The Davenports and the Lyles
were friends, and clearly they’d come to some arrangement over the performing rights to the
Chocolate Box.
Nowadays there are two Lyle’s chocolate boxes in the Davenport family collection, and for
many years John Davenport and I looked after one of them. Betty Davenport and Fergus Roy had
the other one.

About thirty years ago I took a series of photographs to help explain how the trick works. This one
shows the chocolate box in our living room. On the left is John Davenport. On the right you can
just see Fergus Roy and his son,
Roy Davenport.
You have to imagine a large
red ribbon tied round the box
with a bow at the top, so that it
looks like an old-fashioned box
of chocolates. The box is on a
stand with wheels, which means
that it can be moved around the
stage.
At the beginning of the trick,
the box is turned round and
shown to the audience on all
sides. Then the ribbon is taken
off and the box is opened up.

The two front doors can be

opened, as you see, and the lid
hinges up as well. The stick at
the back of the box is … an
ordinary stick. The magician uses
it to prod around inside the box
and prove that there are no
mirrors and the box is empty.
Once he’s done that, the box is
shut and opened up again.
 Now it’s full of giant chocolates -
a very colourful production.
The box is shut once more and
then opened up.

The chocolates have gone, but

there’s a girl inside. We didn’t
have a showgirl on hand when I
took these photographs, so
you’ll have to use your
imagination.
In Lewis Davenport’s
presentation, the girl was Wyn. I
don’t want to explain how the
trick worked, but you’ll
appreciate that Wyn had to do a
lot of scrambling to and fro
inside the box. She told us that
her costume for the trick
included a short red skirt. She
was always barking her knee on part of the mechanism, but she’d wipe the blood off on her red
skirt and no one noticed. Once out of the box, she’d do a tap dance to round off the trick.

Here we have a very young Roy

Davenport on the left, and a
young-at-heart Fergus Roy on
the right, both contemplating the
top tray of chocolates.
The reason for their visit was
that Fergus was involved in the
Illusions television series and he
wanted to use Lyle’s Chocolate
Box in one of the programmes.
Our chocolate box had been used
in a local show three years earlier
and John understood how to
work it. So he showed Roy and
Fergus round our chocolate box
and I took photographs of the various stages of the trick.
There were two Illusions series and Lyle’s Chocolate Box was used in the first programme of the
second series. I thought the television team did it beautifully. Wyn was interested to see the
chocolate box on television. She knew exactly what the girl assistant had to do, of course, because
she’d done it herself. But in 1985 she was an arthritic old lady with limited mobility. She found it
hard to imagine that she’d ever been that nimble.

This is a recent photograph of Roy Davenport, from a brochure for

Davenports Magic Kingdom. He’s changed a lot in the last thirty
years, but he’s as enthusiastic about magic as ever.

One last performer: the magician Cardini, who signed Wyn’s autograph album in 1933. He had a
very successful comedy act which might not go down well today. It involved cigarettes and over-
indulgence in alcohol – both frowned on by
our nanny state. He came on stage as a toff
who’d had too much to drink. His wife and
assistant Swan was a very petite lady, and
she appeared as a page boy.
Cardini’s costume was full evening dress
with cape, top hat, cane and gloves – as you
see in the photograph. Partway through the
act he handed the cape and cane to the page
boy, but he kept the gloves and hat on. His
act featured multiple productions of card
fans and lighted cigarettes – all done
wearing gloves.
He did a lot of work in the United States
and in 1957 his act was filmed by NBC for a
television programme. John Fisher made it
possible to include the film of Cardini’s act
in one of the Paul Daniels Magic Shows,
and his biography of Cardini includes a
very detailed analysis of the act. Do see the
film if you can - and if you’re interested in
Cardini, you can do no better than read
John Fisher’s book.
This photograph was taken at Ivydene, around 1935, when Lewis and Winifred Davenport were
entertaining a party of magicians. Dick Cardini is on the far right, next to Gladys and Les Levante.
Swan Cardini is the short lady towards the left of the photograph. She’s standing next to Wyn
Davenport. Wyn was not much more than five feet tall, so you can see that Swan was tiny.
Kneeling on the ground, with a baby on his shoulder, is my father-in-law, Gus Davenport.
Behind him are Bill and Poppy Stickland - Poppy’s helping to support the baby. Bill Stickland was
secretary of the British Ring of the IBM for 52 years, until his death in 1984. He was also president
for two years, from 1951 to 1953. It’s entirely fitting that the bronze bust of him should be on
display at the side of the stage during the annual British Ring conventions.
Lewis and Winifred Davenport are very much in the background. Winifred isn’t even looking at
the camera – she’s talking to someone you can’t see. Lewis is almost invisible - you can just see his
head between Bill Stickland and Wyn.
Wyn told us that Lewis was often very quiet on occasions like this, but if he did start talking
people would listen – because they knew he’d have something worthwhile to say.
In this photograph the group has broken up. Gladys Levante is in the background, talking to one
of the other ladies. Lewis has his back to us and he’s trying to organise Les Levante, the Cardinis
and Bill Stickland for another photograph. What he doesn’t know is that there’s a camera behind
him.
I think Wyn might have grown out of collecting autographs by the time of this visit, so we don’t
have Bill Stickland and Les Levante in her albums. But it’s good to round off my talk by showing
you these informal photographs of the Sticklands and the Levantes with the Cardinis.

©Anne Goulden 2014