3-053-248 - The London Archives (City of London)/Heritage Images

Maskelyne & Cooke's The New Dark Seance & the Wonderful Skeleton! at the Egyptian Hall, 1883. In Victorian times spiritualism became very popular. Many people advertised their paid services as mediums, or interpreters who claimed contact with the spirit world. They held seances in darkened rooms or theatres where ghostly figures would appear and objects move by unseen forces. However, others were sceptical and none more so than John Neville Maskelyne (1839-1917) and his partner, magician George A Cooke (1825-1905). Maskelyne was an inventor who devised his own conjuring tricks. From 1873 Maskelyne and Cooke performed at the Egyptian Hall showing these wonders as clever illusions and not due to intervention from another world. They included apparitions such as living skeletons as advertised here.