Today things are very
different. Words like "magic" and "magician" usually mean
some form of neo-Paganism or WICCA. Such a change in the use of these words
would have horrified the great performers of the past. One of the common ties
between all magicians was a strong rationalism that let them to expose what
they saw as the quackery of spiritualism and all claims to supernatural magic.
As mentioned in an
earlier blog my hobby as a teenager and young adult was magic. That is stage
magic and in this I was schooled by a local inventor of magical tricks Normal
Hazeldine who lived in Stockport, England. Along with selling me his tricks and
instructing me on how to perform them Norman also lent me the works of people
like William Blackstone (1723-1780), Thomas Paine (1737-1809), Charles
Bradlaugh (1833-1891) and Annie Besant (1847-1933).
These were indeed
strange books for an apprentice gas fitter to be reading, but the fact that I
read them was not considered strange. Within the working class in Manchester
there was a strong rationalist tradition and people like Tom Paine were known
and sometimes read even by otherwise uneducated laborers.
Of course, this
tradition went hand in hand with support for the Labour Party and a great
respect for people like "battling" Bessie Braddock (1899-1970) the colorful
Member of Parliament for Liverpool. It also fitted well with respect for the
Fabian Society and non-revolutionary socialism.
Bessie Braddock monument
