ORMONDE PENSTONE, America’s Premier Lightning Chromographist, Smoke Painter, Billiard Ball Manipulator, assisted by Mdlle Diane D’Anjou. Lightning Portraits with Living Faces. Extraordinary Problems in Pure and Legitimate Sleight-of-Hand.[1]

In his 1911 England Census return, blacksmith Frederick Wonfor of 14 Harley Street, Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, recorded the presence of his wife, Annette Wonfor, his mother-in-law, Jane Booth, and two lodgers, Carmen Penstone, born in Lyons, France, and her husband, ‘Ormonde Penstone, 32, Music Hall Artiste Conjurer’, born in ‘San Francisco, America’.[2]

It should surprise no one familiar with other articles in this series that the only true thing about this latter entry is that the man calling himself ‘Ormonde Penstone’ was a music hall artiste. Although simply one of thousands of music hall acts active in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, with, as we will see, stage names and acts copied from other, more successful acts, Ormonde and Carmen Penstone can serve as an example of how performers picked up and threw off their identities with the flow and ebb of audience applause. Although innocently meant, not for nothing did Frederick Wonfor, in his census return, record Penstone’s industry or service as ‘deceiving the public’.

Mr Ormonde Penstone, who had recently returned home from South Africa, highly amused the children and adults for upwards of two hours by his ventriloquial and conjuring entertainment.[3]

The real names of Ormonde and Carmen Penstone were Arthur Carey Woodrow (1874–1932) and Luzie Carmen de Vernet (1879–?). We can know this from the 1932 death registration for Ormonde Penstone, which records his name as ‘Arthur Carey Woodrow, known as Ormonde Penstone’. The death was reported by Penstone/Woodrow’s second wife, Joan Elizabeth Woodrow née Hitchcock, whom he married in 1922 in Bethel, South Africa. Penstone’s obituary reported that he was born in Devizes, Wiltshire (not San Francisco, California). It also made some claims about his career, to which we will return.[4]

As for Carmen Penstone? Arthur Carey Woodrow, the son of a leather factor clerk, was born in Devizes in 1874, and, in 1901, was living at the family home in Bristol with his parents, brother, and, critically for our purposes, wife, Carmen, who was born in France. From there, and the information in the quote above that Ormonde Penstone had recently returned from South Africa, we are able to locate the 9 May 1898 marriage record for Arthur Carey Woodrow and Luzie Carmen de Vernet in Johannesburg, South Africa. Ormonde and Carmen Penstone were Arthur and Carmen Woodrow of Devizes, England, and Lyon, France.[5]

The first mention I can find of Arthur Woodrow using the Ormonde Penstone stage name dates from January 1900, just after his and Carmen’s return from South Africa—a journey that we can reasonably suppose was prompted by the outbreak of the Second Boer War. This mention was in the form of an advertisement that Woodrow/Penstone placed in a Bristol newspaper.

MR ORMONDE PENSTONE (Facial Cartoonist, Lightning Cartoons and Sketches, Conjuring and Ventriloquism), from the Opera House, Capetown, and the Empire, Buluwayo, just arrived from South Africa.[6]

Alas, although performances in South African theatres were reported in the British theatrical press, I have as yet been unable to determine if Ormonde Penstone did perform at the Opera House, Capetown, and Empire Theatre, Buluwayo, although both theatres were real and existed in 1899.[7] Regardless, we need to look a lot closer to Arthur Woodrow’s Bristol home for the origin of his stage name and both the first and last versions of his act.

THE GREATEST EVENT THAT HAS EVER TAKEN PLACE IN ELGIN. DR AND MDLLE S. ORMONDE, THE WORLD RENOWNED “MAHATMAS OF THE WEST” AND ROSICRUCIAN PSYCHOGNOMISTS, and the Brilliant, Unparalleled, and Inimitable ORMONDE FAMILY “LA BELLE SUNFLOWER COTERIE” from the[…]Principal Theatres and Opera Houses in all the Great Cities of the Two Hemispheres, with the GREATEST AND MOST MARVELLOUS ENTERTAINMENT on EARTH, introducing Novel, Amusing, and Sensational Attractions.[8]

‘Dr and Mdlle S. (Stella) Ormonde’ were Andrew Garrioch Omond (1842–1902) and Catherine Omond née Drysdale (1839–1895), Scots-born founders of a family of entertainers with the fantastic name of ‘La Belle Sunflower Coterie’.[9] (Note the spelling: the real family name was Omond, without the ‘r’ and ‘e’) An entire variety bill in themselves, the Omonds and their children presented the full gamut from virtuoso violin-playing through musical mimicry, fortune-telling, and lightning mental maths to elaborate illusions. Although both Andrew and Catherine Omond were dead by 1902, the act continued for nearly a decade with two of their children stepping into the roles of Dr and Stella Ormonde. Of greatest interest to us is the turn performed by one of the Omond children under the stage name, Fred Ormonde, who was described in a theatrical billing of October 1899 as a ‘Lighting Cartoonist, Chromographist and Ventriloquist’.[10]

This is clearly the template for the billing used by Ormonde Penstone in his January 1900 advertisement. As the Omonds/Ormondes had been active in Britain and Ireland since at least 1894,[11] Arthur Woodrow had likely seen or read about the act either before travelling to South Africa. Woodrow may also have read one of the several books that Andrew Omond wrote about his career as a showman. This connection with the Omond/Ormondes, already strong given Woodrow’s stage name and act, is strengthened further by the fact that, in Woodrow’s later career, he formed a variety company of his own that he called the ‘White Mahatma Mysteries’, another steal from the Omond/Ormondes.[12]

(There is an outside chance that Arthur Woodrow was, for a brief time in the late 1890s, ‘Fred Ormonde’, which is to say, one of a series of performers over the years to whom the Omonds assigned that stage name—as the Omond children’s own continued use of their parents’ stage names shows, the troupe was no stranger to re-using stage names.)

Arthur Woodrow’s 1901 England Census entry referenced above, gives his profession as ‘photographer’, not music hall artiste; however, this simply reflects the struggles any performer would experience in attempting to continue a career and name made in one country in a second country—Woodrow had been working as a photographer’s assistant back in 1891; it would be natural for him to fall back on this profession while he waited for bookings to appear. It may also, of course, reflect conflict between Woodrow and his parents over his career choices.[13]

Said career began to pick up in late 1901. Ormonde Penstone’s billing at this time stated that he was assisted by ‘Mdlle Diane D’Anjou, Parisian Facial Delineator’—Carmen had joined the act as a sketch artist. As we will see, in many ways, the story of the evolution of the Penstone act across the next decade is the story of the evolution of Carmen Penstone as a performer. However, before we explore that, we need to look at the most significant evolution of Ormonde Penstone’s part of the act, which occurred at the end of 1901.[14]

A talented artist, too, Ormonde Penstone gives a clever lightning sketch of the Houses of Parliament and London Bridge, which he traces out upon an enamelled-surface blackboard by lamp smoke.[15]

Smoke painting appears to have come to Britain in the summer of 1899 as part of the act of a German performer called Mdlle Rombello, who had been performing what was known as ‘sand painting’—mixing different coloured sands in frames to form pictures—in Europe and America for some years. It is possible that the smoke painting part of her act was copied from that of a French performer called La Belle Wilma, who first performed her ‘sand and smoke painting’ act at the Cirque Medrano in Paris in April 1899. La Belle Wilma would herself begin to tour the English halls in October 1899. Within two years, a number of performers, billed either as ‘sand and smoke painters’ or just ‘smoke painters’, had also got in on the act.[16] The most significant and longest-lasting of these was unquestionably Velvel Morgenstern, aka Willibald Wolf Rudinoff, aka William Rudinoff (1844–after April 1928).

William Rudinoff, as we see him on the "Palace" stage, making his smoke-pictures and imitating nightingales, is only a small part of the real William Rudinoff, the man of a hundred arts, as was said some lines back. He is one of the most remarkable of versatile men. On the stage he seems a king of light-hearted jesting. In private life he is a man of intense seriousness, adoring art as an end rather than means to end; a hard worker, a thinker, oil painter, water-colourist, etcher, a worker in dry point and silver point; a musician, poet[...].[17]

Rudinoff was a Polish Jew, a refugee, and an artist, an entertainer, a seeker of knowledge, and a citizen of the world. He would have a nearly 30-year career in Europe and America and then vanish without a trace.[18] Rudinoff is of importance to us here both because he was the likely model for Ormonde Penstone’s smoke painting act (as the only man performing the act in the English halls when Penstone took it up; the other performers being women (La Belle Wilma, Rombello, Oliska)) and because his fame and charismatic personality led to considerable column inches being devoted to him, providing us with our best description of smoke painting as a music hall turn.

His method of making smoke pictures is clever, swift, and drastic. On a smoke-begrimed enamel board, his fingers and a dry brush quickly fashioned a charming and artistic study of a scene in Belgium. A few deft touches of finger and brush—no paint or crayon or water is used —and the Belgian scene gives place to equally pleasing landscape in Switzerland. [...]Then the enamel cleaned, more smoke is applied, and with about a dozen quick dashes of the brush, see a liner leaving New York harbour.[...]All the while Rudinoff is joking and chattering and talking in intimate style to his audience.[19]

What is interesting about this type of performance is that it survived the advent of cinema, which was responsible for the demise of other visual stage arts, such as dioramas, and, indeed, arguably, is still around today in the form of speed painting.[20] Ormonde Penstone himself included it in his act until at least 1912.[21]

By April 1902, Ormonde Penstone had begun to describe himself as ‘American’ in his billing—as can be seen from the quote that opened this piece. In this, it seems he was influenced by the success in London of German-born American magician Sigmund Neuberger (1871–1911), who performed under the name ‘the Great Lafayette’.[22]

After Penstone’s death, it would be claimed that he and Lafayette had been friends. Part of Lafayette’s act consisted of him putting on yellowface to parody genuine Chinese American stage magician Ching Ling Foo (金陵福, Jīn Língfú, 1854–1922). He was not alone in this: American illusionist William Robinson (1861–1918) famously built his whole career on performing in yellowface as ‘Chung Ling Soo’, an act stolen wholesale from Ching Ling Foo, much to Ching’s ire. Robinson/Chung Fung Soo was someone else with whom Penstone was said to be friends.[23]

Whatever the truth of Penstone’s involvement with either of these performers, yellowface was to become a feature of the Penstones’ act, although it would not be Ormonde Penstone adopting it: By the summer of 1904, Carmen Penstone had abandoned the Diane D’Anjou stage name in favour of one based on her own maiden name, Mdlle de Vernet.[24] However, this was to prove only transitional, as, by the beginning of 1905, she had adopted not only a new stage name but also a new stage persona.

Next week, a charming Chinese lady and an amiably smiling Mephistophelian featured gentleman will justify their appearance by producing all manner of strange things from space without the slightest difficulty. Ormonde Penstone, assisted by Tsaou-ngo, are the couple in question, and their act will be voted the most novel seen for many a long day.[25]

Carmen Penstone was to perform as Tsaou-ngo, sometimes spelled Tsau Ngo, and billed as the ‘Only Chinese Lady Magician’ and the ‘China Town Belle’ for the next two years.[26] In this change to the act, the Penstones were drawing on a number of inspirations. Most obviously, the success of Lafayette and Robinson/Chung Ling Soo, and, by extension, Ching Ling Foo, and another Chinese American magician active in England, Prince Lee Fung, who was an assistant to Robinson/Chung Ling Soo in the early part of his career. We can point to Robinson’s partner, Olive Path, who performed in yellowface as Chung Ling Soo’s wife, ‘Suee Seen’, as the most direct inspiration.[27]

However, to this, we can perhaps add the success of an act from another part of East Asia, the Ten-Ichi Magic Troupe from Japan and, most particularly, its star female stage magician, Ten-Katsu. Ten-Katsu was a sensation during the troupe’s summer 1904 tour of England, which received considerable press, much of it focused on Ten-Katsu. I tell the Ten-Ichi and Ten-Katsu story elsewhere.[28] We can perhaps make this connection because, in 1907, Carmen Penstone’s stage name and persona were to change again, although this time, in the form of a lateral shift, from Tsaou-ngo, Chinese magician, to San Go, Japanese magician.

Ormonde Penstone and Miss San Go are old favourites here[...]Miss San Go, in dainty Japanese costume, also performed number of neat tricks, one of which was to construct a box in full view of the audience, and then in a most mysterious way to produce from it a great number of articles, ending up with a string of about half a dozen large Chinese lanterns.[29]

This shift may have been a call-back to Ten-Katsu, and may, therefore, mark Ten-Katsu as one of the sources of the idea of creating the Tsaou-ngo character. However, it must be acknowledged that there is an alternative explanation, in that, in late 1907, coincident with the abandoning of the Tsaou-ngo for the San Go persona, for a brief time, the Penstones were joined by a third member of the act. This new addition was identified in their billing as ‘Taro’, with San Go and Taro collectively dubbed ‘real Eastern magicians’.[30]

While this may well have been another performer in yellowface, it is tantalisingly possible that this was a performer of genuine Japanese heritage, and their joining the act was the origin of Carmen’s reinvention as San Go. Pernille Rudlin, curator of the Digital Museum of Japan–UK Show Business, has suggested that, as ‘Taro’ is a common contraction of Japanese given names containing the characters ‘太郎’ (Tarō: eldest son), based on the timing, Taro may be Frank Fukada Kumetaro (1875–1946), Japanese acrobat and stage manager. Although tentative, this identification is supported by the fact that, in 1902, Fukada Kumetaro became the stage manager for William Robinson/Chung Ling Soo—the claimed friend of Ormonde Penstone and performer in yellowface whose partner was one of the inspirations for the Tsaou-ngo persona that the San Go persona replaced.[31]

(As an aside, it was while touring with Taro in December 1907 that the Penstones appeared on the same bill as the Fred Karno Troupe, who were performing ‘The Mumming Birds’, the sketch centred on a drunk heckling on-stage performers, the role that would be Charlie Chaplin’s first big success after he joined the Karno troupe the following year; something else that made its way into Ormonde Penstone’s obituary.[32])

As the quote above shows, this further change in stage name and persona also marked Carmen Penstone’s emergence as an illusionist in her own right and not just an assistant to Ormonde Penstone in his illusions. This reflects both Carmen’s evolution as a performer and the Penstones’ exploitation of the emerging phenomenon of female stage magicians. We have already mentioned Ten-Katsu, who appeared in England in 1904; we might also mention Adelaide Herrmann (1853–1932), the ‘Queen of Magicians’, the British-born wife of illusionist Alexander Herrmann, who became a performer in her own right after her husband’s death, and at one time presented a Japanese-themed magic show. Adelaide Herrmann performed mainly in America, but toured Europe in 1902, including appearances at the Hippodrome in London.[33] However, the most obvious templates for Carmen Penstone’s rise to featured status are two female magicians who toured England extensively in acts either conceived by or featuring their husbands, Vonetta, the ‘world’s only lady illusionist’, and Talma, the ‘Queen of Coins’.

Reference must first be made to the interesting, mysterious performance of Mlle Von Etta, a very charming lady, who claims to be the only female illusionist and quick-change artiste in the world[...]Mdlle Von Etta enters in a white trunk, which is placed against a dark background. The big box at once begins to swing about in a weird fashion. In a few seconds, Mddle Von Etta appears, quite differently attired, in the pit of the theatre, and out of the trunk steps a pretty young girl. The trick is wonderful.[34]

Winifred Etta Travers (1878–1968), born Etty Thompson, married theatre manager Thomas Monaghan in 1904. Billed variously as Von Etta, Vonetta, and even the Countess de Russe, from 1906, Etty Thompson was, like Carmen Penstone, the star of an act conceived and arranged by her husband, but one that centred her. She was active primarily from 1906 until 1914.[35]

Vonetta’s act, which, as the quote above illustrates, involved several assistants, was of such a scale that it caught the public imagination, and Vonetta was arguably the most high-profile female illusionist at work in England in this period, reason enough for her to be considered a model for Carmen Penstone’s move to centre stage. Meanwhile, in terms of Carmen Penstone/Tsaou-ngo’s performance style, we might perhaps look to Talma, ‘Queen of Coins’.

Talma, "the Queen of Coins", the latest addition to a very strong programme at the Oxford, is a most excellent turn. She is a clever and charming girl, and let us hasten to claim her, for she is not American! She was born and educated in London, and when sixteen she became stage-struck, and, as nothing else offered, she joined Mr. Leroy, the illusionist,” and with him has remained ever since[...]In her present act, she palms thirty half-crowns with ease and grace. When one sees the little hand, it is indeed a marvel, though she honestly tells you it is all a matter of practice and the development of the muscles of the hand.[36]

Mary Ann Ford (1861–1944), who performed under the name ‘Talma’, was an expert in sleight-of-hand, which was also a prominent feature of the Penstones’ act. Talma was married to her mentor and performing partner, Belgian-born Servais LeRoy (1865–1953). Much as with the Penstones, Talma both acted as an assistant to her husband and had her own featured part of the performance. This was in an act known as LeRoy, Talma, and Bosco, ‘the monarchs of magic’, which partnered the LeRoys with ‘Bosco’, a comedically inept magician character played by a succession of different magicians and comedians over the lifetime of the act. The LeRoys would remain active in music hall and variety for over 30 years.[37]

In short, chasing continued success, Ormonde and Carmen Penstone, over the course of their 11-year performing career, adopted the stage name and performance style of the Ormondes, the nationality and faux orientalism of Lafayette, Chung Ling Soo, and Suee Seen, and the centring of the assistant-come-solo-performer of Ten-Katsu, Addie Herrmann, Vonetta, and Talma. They were like a tribute act, ‘playing the hits’ of top-of-the-bill performers.

CAPE TOWN: TIVOLI[…]—Last night the new company appeared, and a crowded house welcomed the same in spite of the wet weather. Ormonde Penstone is a very clever conjurer, and his tricks have the charm of novelty. Miss San-Go, who assists him, has a charming stage manner, and is a clever performer herself.[38]

Ormonde and Carmen Penstone made their last appearances together in England in July 1912 and then set sail for South Africa. October 1912 would find them on stage in Cape Town; by January 1913, they had moved on to Durban. However, after that, despite performances in South African theatres continuing to be reported in the British theatrical press until the outbreak of the First World War, there are no more mentions of the Penstones. Instead, the next mention in the British press that we have of Ormonde Penstone is the notice of his marriage to Joan Hitchcock in January 1922. The story of what happened in the intervening years is still to be written. Similarly, research into the fate of Carmen de Vernet Woodrow/Penstone is ongoing.[39]

Amazing and Wonderful Attractions Under the personal direction of Dr Ormonde Penstone, THE WHITE MAHATMA MYSTERIES A specially Selected Company of Mystical Creations and Novelties. Come and see the Gifted Exponent of Crystal Gazing—The Physical Marvel of the Century, • MYSTIC VALERA, The White Mahatma She tells of past, present and future events, deaths, murders, fires, robberies, weddings, lost and stolen goods. DR PENSTONE. Scientist, Hypnotist and Electrical Wizard. Beautiful Goddess of the Magi, ISIS, The Modern Witch of Endor. LA BELLE ELECTRA The Human Dynamo. Hung Chow Foo.[40]

Ormonde Penstone and his new wife Joan returned to England in January 1925. By the summer of that year, they had assembled a small company of performers centred on Penstone, now dubbed ‘Dr Penstone’ in imitation of Dr Ormonde, and Joan as ‘Mystic Valera’, a copy of Stella Ormonde in all but name. By 1927, they had gone a step further and renamed their company ‘The White Mahatma Mysteries’. What had begun as a company inspired by the Omonds’ La Belle Sunflower Coterie became a copy of it, right down to stealing the ‘modern witch of Endor’ billing once applied to Stella Ormonde. In what amounted to self-copying, the company included ‘Hung Chow Foo, the Chinese Wonder’—who may have been Penstone in yellowface—harkening back to Tsaou Ngo, Chung Ling Soo, and Suee Seen.[41]

Being who he was, there was no other Troy for Ormonde Penstone to burn.

Arthur Casey Woodrow/Ormonde Penstone died of pneumonia in Herne Bay, Kent, in March 1932, aged 57. He was survived by his second wife, Joan, and their daughter, Frances Joy Penstone Woodrow, both of whom later emigrated to America.[42]

ORMONDE PENSTONE, Billiard Ball Manipulator and Premier Smoke Painter, assisted by SAN-GO, in their Original & Versatile Vaudeville Novelty.[43]

Like many jobbing music hall performers, Ormonde and Carmen Penstone were essentially a tribute act, ‘playing the hits’ of top-of-the-bill performers. They managed to survive, and perhaps even thrive, for over a decade by periodically changing just enough of their act and their on-stage personas to appear fresh without losing that air of familiarity. That none of this, despite the billing, was original was incidental; the Penstones picked up and threw off staged identities with the flow and ebb of audience applause.

Jamie Barras, November 2025

Back to Staged Identities 

Notes

[1] ‘Amusements: Gaiety Theatre of Varieties, West Hartlepool’, Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 16 April 1902.

[2] Entry for Frederick Wonfor, Barrow in Furness district, 1911 England Census, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 19 November 2025.

[3] ‘Children’s Treat’, Bristol Times and Mirror, 12 January 1901.

[4] Death registration for Ormonde Penstone/Arthur Carey Woodrow, Blean district, first quarter, 1932, digital copy obtained from the General Register Office, November 2025. Second Marriage: ‘Births, Marriages, Deaths’, Norwood Press and Dulwich Advertiser, 28 January 1922. Obituary: ‘Dr Ormonde Penstone’, Herne Bay Press, 2 April 1932.

[5] Entries for Arthur Woodrow and Carmen Woodrow, Bristol district, 1901 England Census, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 19 November 2025. "South Africa, Civil Marriage Records, 1801-1974", FamilySearch (https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:6ZHPGVQ1 : Sat Mar 09 22:56:25 UTC 2024), Entry for Arthur Carey Woodrow and Luzie Carmen De Vernet, 9 May 1898.

[6] ‘Sales By Private Contract’, Bristol Times and Mirror, 15 January 1900. The advertisement was clearly placed in the wrong section of the newspaper, so it is doubtful it had whatever effect Penstone was hoping for.

[7] ‘America & the Colonies’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 24 February 1899; ‘A Theatre for Buluwayo’, Dublin Evening Telegraph, 24 May 1898.

[8] ‘Entertainments: Town Hall, Elgin’, Elgin Courant and Morayshire Advertiser, 13 October 1899.

[9] ‘Deaths: Omond’, Orkney Herald, and Weekly Advertiser and Gazette for the Orkney & Zetland Islands, 5 June 1895; ‘Notes of the Week’, The Showman, 7 February 1902.

[10] See Note 8 above for Fred Ormonde. For act continuing after death of parents, see: ‘Dr Ormonde in Ballymena’, Ballymena Weekly Telegraph, 27 August 1910.

[11] ‘The Mahatmas in Lurgan’, Lurgan Times, 31 October 1894.

[12] Omond’s books: See Note 9 above, second reference. White Mahatma Company: ‘Penstone Mysteries for Low Town’, Bridgnorth Journal, 21 May 1927.

[13] Entry for Arthur C. Woodrow, Bristol district, 1891 England Census, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 19 November 2025.

[14] Carmen as D’Anjou, Parisian Facial Delineator: ‘Amusements in Liverpool: Westminster’, Era, 23 November 1901. ‘Diane D’Anjou’: ‘Provincial Theatres: New Brighton’, Era, 2 August 1902. Ormonde Penstone adds smoke painting to the act: ‘Liverpool: Parthenon Music Hall’, Music Hall and Theatre Review, 15 December 1901.

[15] ‘Empire Magic’, Hull Daily Mail, 3 July 1912.

[16] Mdlle Rombello, sand painter: ‘Amusements in America’, Era, 16 October 1897. Sand and smoke painter in England: ‘Amusements: the Alhambra, Blackpool’, Lytham Times, 22 July 1899. La Belle Wilma in Paris: ‘Parisian Music Halls’, Era, 29 April 1899; in England: ‘Entertainments: Empire Theatre’, Morning Leader, 17 October 1899. Other ‘sand and smoke painters’ or ‘smoke painters: Miss Oliska: ‘Birmingham: Bingley Hall Carnival’, The Showman, 25 January 1901.

[17] ‘A Painter’s Eulogy of Hull: M. Rudinoff Chats’, Hull Daily Mail, 24 August 1902.

[18] Neil Philip, ‘The Artist as Fire-Eater: Willibald Wolf Rudinoff’, https://adventuresintheprinttrade.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-artist-as-fire-eater-willibald-wolf.html, accessed 20 November 2025.

[19] ‘Smoke Pictures’, Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 25 January 1928.

[20] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZNTFNUKarQ, accessed 20 November 2025.

[21] See Note 15 above.

[22] ‘The Magician Whose Greatest Illusion Was Death’, https://www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/the-magician-whose-greatest-illusion-was-death-2511731, accessed 20 November 2025. Neuberger died in 1911 in a fire at the theatre in Edinburgh at which he was performing; ten other members of his company perished with him. When the fire started, the audience mistook it for part of the act.

[23] See Note 4 above, final reference.

[24] ‘Empire Theatre’, Grimsby News, 9 September 1904.

[25] ‘Stratford Empire’, West Ham and South Essex Mail, 8 April 1905.

[26] Only Chinese Lady Magician: ‘Charles Coburn…’, Era, 26 August 1905; China Town Belle: ‘Amusements: Palace Theatre, West Hartlepool’, Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 30 April 1907.

[27] Prince Lee Fung: https://mixedmuseum.org.uk/btcotc/mac-fee-and-jenny-lung/, accessed 20 November 2025. Olive Path/Suee Seen: Lyn Gardiner, ‘How Not to Catch a Bullet, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2006/jun/09/classicalmusicandopera1, accessed 20 November 2025. Robinson/Chung Ling Soo famously died on stage in 1918 while performing the ‘catch the bullet’ trick.

[28] https://www.ishilearn.com/staged-identities-ten, accessed 20 November 2025.

[29] ‘Palace Theatre’, Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail, 15 August 1911.

[30] ‘Public Amusements: Palace and Hippodrome’, South Wales Daily News, 19 November 1907; ‘Norwich Hippodrome’, Norwich Argus, 6 December 1907; ‘The Ipswich Hippodrome’, Evening Star, 10 December 1907.

[31] Personal correspondence with Pernille Rudlin, November 2025. Frank Fukada Kametaro: https://ninjin.co.uk/frank-fukada-kametaro/, accessed 22 November 2025.

[32] Karno and Penstone: See Note 30 above, second and final references.

[33] Amy Dawes, “THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES: Magiciennes of the Victorian and Edwardian Eras.” Early Popular Visual Culture, 2007, 5 (2), 127–50. doi:10.1080/17460650701433780; https://geniimagazine.com/wiki/index.php?title=Adelaide_Herrmann, accessed 21 November 2025; ‘London Music Halls: Madame Addie Herrmann’, Era, 12 July 1902; ‘American Music Halls’, Era, 11 November 1899.

[34] ‘Stoke Hippodrome’, Staffordshire Sentinel, 19 June 1906.

[35]  Dawes, Note 32 above, first reference; https://enterthroughthelaundry.com/vonetta, accessed 21 November 2025.

[36] ‘Talma, the Queen of Coins’, Penny Illustrated Paper, 2 September 1899.

[37] https://enterthroughthelaundry.com/mercedes-talma, accessed 21 November 2025.

[38] ‘Amusements in South Africa’, Era, 19 October 1912.

[39] ‘Wakefield: Hippodrome, Era, 20 July 1912. ‘Amusements in South Africa’, Era, 4 January 1913.

[40] ‘New Theatres, Miners’ Institute, Rhos’, Rhos Herald, 5 November 1927.

[41] Hung Chow Foo, the Chinese Wonder: ‘The Wessex Theatre: Visit of White Mahatma Company’, Western Gazette, 4 April 1930.

[42] See Note 4 above. Frances Joy Penstone Woodrow and emigration of Joan and Frances: birth registration, 1926 (she was born 25 December 1925), births, marriages, deaths, search, https://www.freebmd.org.uk/search, accessed 20 November 2025; entries for Joan Elizabeth Stephens and Frances Joy Penstone Hughes, Louisiana, Naturalization Records, 1836–2001, ancestry.co.uk, Ancestry.com Inc. (Operations), accessed 20 November 2025.

[43] ‘Public Notices: Palace & Hippodrome, Halifax’, Halifax Daily Guardian, 3 April 1909.