CROYDON CHRONICLES: Theatres in the town attracted some of the world’s biggest Vaudeville stars in the early 20th Century, including the mysterious Chung Ling Soo. DAVID MORGAN discovered more from the archives
Many great entertainers have trodden the boards in Croydon, especially when the music halls were at the height of their popularity.
Magicians and illusionists have always held an intrigue with the public and back in October 1911, the manager of the Croydon Empire, Eustace Jay, was proud to announce that one of the very best in the business was to appear in his theatre.
Chung Ling Soo was to bring the mysteries of the Orient to Croydon.
Master of mystery: a Chung Ling Soo show poster, typical of his time touring England
Soo never spoke during his act. Dressed in Chinese robes and with heavy stage make-up, he looked every inch the Chinese character his biography claimed him to be: the son of a Scottish missionary and a Cantonese woman.
The Croydon audiences would be wowed by his act.
An octagonal cabinet with glass sides was hauled into the air and spun rapidly around. As the cabinet slowed down, Soo’s assistant, Suee Seen, materialised inside it.
Then, a cauldron was suspended from a tripod and Soo filled it with water.
Assistants lit a metal gas ring on the stage and as the water began to boil and bubble, Soo tossed dead pigeons, rabbits and ducks into the cauldron. With a clap of his hands, he then dipped into the cauldron and produced pigeons, rabbits and ducks which were very much alive!
It was not until Soo died that the public was able to uncover the truth about his fantastic magic act. It turned out that his whole life, certainly on this side of the Atlantic, had been one giant illusion.
Mystifying: a newspaper report of Soo’s Croydon performance in 1911
Chung Ling Soo wasn’t Chinese though. He was American.
He was born William Ellsworth Robinson in Westchester County, New York state, in March 1861. His parents, of Scottish descent, were themselves in show business, his father James, touring with Charlie White’s Minstrel Show.
The family moved to New York City when their son was young.
James Robinson had various stage names, including “Professor Robinson”. This act included doing magic tricks and illusions, some of which he taught his son.
William Robinson practised and practised his tricks until, aged 14, he was given his first spot on the Vaudeville stage. “Robinson, the Man of Mystery” began well down the lists on the play bills, but he was determined to become a headline act.
In 1887, by now 26, he began to perform “black arts magic” using the stage name “Achmed Ben Ali”. This name resembled that of a German magician Max Auzinger who performed as “Ben Ali Bey”.
In disguise: William Robinson, performer, and his silent alter ego, Chung Ling Soo
Robinson copied this act, which involved dressing in white and standing in a black recess with lights around it which were directed at the audience.
As Robinson/Achmed waved a staff, an assistant, dressed in black and invisible to the audience, pulled black cloths from white objects to make them appear, or cover them to affect a disappearance. Vases and other objects appeared to float in mid-air.
One of Robinson’s assistants was Olive Path, nicknamed Dot because she was so small. Her size was very useful in the act. Dot’s stage name was to be Suee See. Robinson and Path would later marry.
One of the Vaudeville agents, Ike Rose, was aware of the demand in Europe for “Chinese” magic, and he booked Robinson to work in Paris for a month. To get the gig, Robinson would have to imitate the act of Ching Ling Foo, a real Chinese entertainer.
Robinson shaved his head and moustache, hired a Chinese juggler, Fee Ling, and soon boarded a ship heading for France.
This kind of “cultural appropriation” was common on the stage and in movies and television in western society even relatively recently, yet is now deeply offensive to many people today.
Robinson opened at the Folies Bergère in early 1900 using the name Hop Ling Soo. It wasn’t a great success. He spilled the water from the cauldron during his featured trick. One Parisian critic wrote that he seemed out of his depth and would be better performing in a suit and tie, and not in Chinese costume.
Assistant: Olive Path in the costume of Suee See
The audiences liked him, though, and at the end of the month, Rose booked him to appear at the Alhambra in Leicester Square for a month.
Opening on May 16 1900, Robinson’s alter ego was an immediate success. He now used the stage name Chung Ling Soo, which would stay with him for the rest of his theatrical career.
The London audiences were astonished at the range of illusions which were performed on the stage. They saw Soo shaking bran between two plates before he produced a pair of doves. For the first time ever in London, they saw “aerial fishing” with live goldfish being caught at the end of a line cast out into the audience.
Soo’s contract was extended by another three months and the audiences were clammering to find out more about this mysterious “Oriental”. The more that people probed into his background, the further he tangled himself up in a web of deceit.
In order to convince people that he really was Chinese, he invented the story about his father being a Scottish missionary and his mother a Cantonese woman. He elaborated on this further by saying that both his parents had died by the time he was 12 and, as an orphan, he was the raised by an old Chinese magician named “Arr Hee”. This magician, Soo continued, had taught him many old tricks which he had had brought to Europe.
To help maintain his back-story, Soo never spoke on stage. He always performed in complete silence. For interviews, he used Fee Ling, his juggler, as an “interpreter”, to speak on his behalf.
Wizard performer: by 1909, as this Sydney newspaper report shows, Soo was at the height of his powers
After his long and successful run in turn-of-the-century London, Soo was booked to tour Australia. It was stated in a newspaper report that by earning £400 a week, he was being paid twice that of the Governor General. Being paid at that rate would have meant that Soo might have earned, in modern values, more than £3million a year.
Soo was constantly looking for new material, and used the Australian tour to develop some different illusions. He perfected a new ending to the bubbling cauldron trick. Instead of finishing by pulling out live animals, he ended the illusion by producing his smiling assistant from out of the pot.
After travelling across the country and to New Zealand, when Soo returned to Sydney, he performed the “The Birth of a Pearl” for the first time. A giant oyster shell was placed on the stage, which opened and closed. Water gushed up from a pipe in the base of the stand and coloured lights played on the spray. When the shell opened again, there stood Suee Seen.
It was after his Australian tour that So performed at the Croydon Empire, part of a comeback tour in England. As well as topping the bill in music halls, he was also on stage for two-hour solo matinees. During these silent solo performances, Soo would perform 38 illusions, ranging from sleight of hand and small apparatus tricks to large-scale pieces of magic.
But it was one of his tricks which he had performed hundreds of times through his career which proved his undoing.
Marked bullets were inspected by members of the audience, chosen at random, and placed in the barrel of a gun. After the signal was given to fire the weapon, Soo would sweep a plate in front of him and catch the bullets which were heading for his heart. The marked bullet would then be held up, to great applause from the relieved audience.
In March 1918, Soo performing at one of London’s great music hall venues, the Wood Green Empire. On that fateful night, the order was given to fire the gun. But Soo collapsed on stage.
Chung Ling Soo finally broke his on-stage silence and, in English, he uttered, “My God, something has happened. Lower the curtain.”
In character: by the time of this photograph, taken c1906, Robinson had immersed himself in the fake Chinese entity he had created and become a hugely successful music hall act
His wife went over to him and saw blood oozing out on to his costume. Neither of them knew what had gone wrong. William Robertson, also known as Chung Ling Soo, was taken to hospital but died the next day. He was 57.
At the inquest, a gunsmith who examined the weapon explained what had happened. There were two barrels on the gun, one above and one below. The bullets were placed in the bottom barrel, but when the trigger was pulled, only the top barrel was fired. At least, that was what was supposed to happen.
Soo cleaned the gun after every performance. But he had become careless. Some gunpowder had leaked into the bottom chamber and caused the bullet to fire.
Another “illusion” which unravelled at the inquest was that Soo wasn’t legally married to his long-time assistant Suee Seen/Olive Path. As William Robinson in America, he had married Bessie Smith. But he had never formally divorced even after he left to start his Chinese illusion act in Europe.
Stage illusionists have changed much in the 115 years since Chung Ling Soo was the top of the bill here in Croydon. But even star performers such as Derren Brown, famously from Croydon, probably have a few tricks up their sleeve that owe their origin to Chung Ling Soo.
David Morgan, pictured right, has been chronicling Croydon’s history for Inside Croydon for more than a decade. Morgan is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Family counts cost of burglary during Croydon’s Walnut Fair
- The high street business that made sure Croydon was on song
- Teacher whose poetry saw ‘The Merry Gang’ visiting Croydon
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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