Dr Walford Bodie packed out Dundee theatres with his high-voltage brand of magic which was lauded by Harry Houdini and Charlie Chaplin.
Bodie was the quintessential showman and used hypnotism as well as an electric chair in his stage act which thrilled crowds and shocked some critics.
Shortly after prisoner William Kemmler became the first person to be executed by the electric chair in Auburn in 1890, Bodie built a replica and incorporated it into his show.
He would invite those brave enough out of their chairs to try out the electric chair and even give some a jolt of voltage to “prove” the reality of his act.
The Electric Wizard was the Derren Brown of his time and he entered cages at Dundee Zoo in 1904 to win a £50 bet that he could hypnotise the wolves and hyenas.
Who was Walford Bodie?
Born Samuel Murphy Brodie in Aberdeen in 1869, Bodie taught himself magic and ventriloquism at a young age.
But his full-time work with the National Telephone Company gave him an understanding of electricity and how it could be used in his act.
Bodie’s show was not only performed illusions and magic, but he also claimed to use electricity and hypnotism to cure all manner of ailments and disabilities, attracting hundreds of people looking for help.
Bodie claimed to be the ‘Most Remarkable Man on Earth’ and became one of the world’s highest paid entertainers in the Edwardian decade.
Brian King, author of Rediscovered Dundee, said Bodie made numerous appearances in the city, stretching back to the earliest days of the People’s Palace.
Brian said: “Despite calling himself ‘doctor’, he had no medical qualifications.
“When challenged on this by members of the medical profession, he claimed that the initials ‘MD’ did not denote that he was a Doctor of Medicine but rather a ‘Merry Devil’.
“Nevertheless, he did claim to effect cures during the course of his stage act.
“In 1903, for example, a Mrs Sturrock of Wilkie’s Lane, Dundee, who was said to have been paralysed for more than seven years was reported to have ‘walked briskly off of the stage amidst the loud applause of the spectators’ after being treated by Bodie.
“Another feature of Bodie’s stage show was his use of an electric chair.
“He would use this to quite literally shock members of the audience, though presumably with a safe level of electricity.
“His own turn in the chair, though, was apparently death defying with thousands of volts of electricity being passed through his body.”
Brian said Bodie’s 1896 appearance in Dundee caused a sensation in the city when he said he would put a young man in a trance for six days.
A coffin was placed on the stage of the Palace in which the man was to lie during this time.
Bodie said that he would be willing to explain the scientific aspects of the feat and promised to give £100 to a local charity if any medical man could prove that the patient was not in a genuine trance, artificially produced.
Brian said no one appears to have successfully claimed the £100 and the invitation to “come and see the man in a trance” seems to have delivered a boost to Bodie’s audiences in the city.
He said: “By the time of his next visit the following year, it was reported that he was playing to packed houses in Dundee – the Palace was said to be ‘full in every part’ with lots of people being turned away.”
Entering the den of wolves
Brian’s book features an anthology of stories from the city’s past including Bodie who was being advertised as ‘Dundee’s favourite entertainer’ by the turn of the century.
He said one of the most famous incidents concerning Bodie in Dundee took place on Saturday, August 6 1904.
Brian said he was in town appearing at the Palace and had been out with friends on the Friday night when he got into an argument about his hypnotic powers with Andrew Philip, the proprietor of Dundee Zoo.
“The phrase ‘Dundee Zoo’ might conjure up an image of some long-lost rolling parkland with animals in spacious enclosures but Philip’s establishment was a double shop at the foot of Castle Street which contained among other things monkeys, wolves and hyenas as well as kestrels, hawks and owls,” he said.
“Philip bet Bodie £50 that he could not hypnotise his hyenas and wolves. The Electric Wizard agreed to the bet and then subsequently forgot all about it.”
Many years later, the Evening Telegraph carried Bodie’s own account of what happened afterwards: “The next morning, when I was walking along the Nethergate, I met a string of sandwich men carrying boards, which stated the terms of the challenge and that the contest was to be held in the afternoon.
“Of course, I went to the circus [zoo] and entered the hyenas’ cages.
“The effect was more or less instantaneous and I soon overcame the animals, and then I entered the wolves’ cages and did likewise with them.
“I have been told that one of the hyenas was in a comatose condition for a week afterwards.”
An advertisement for the zoo on August 10 boasted: “Wolves and Hyenas hypnotised by Dr Walford Bodie.”
Brian said a cynic might speculate that the animals had been drugged but Bodie was proud enough of the event to keep a newspaper cutting about it for years afterwards.
“One theory can certainly be ruled out in any case and that is that the poor captive creatures were so naturally docile that they proved no real threat to Bodie,” he said.
“At the end of the same month as Bodie’s appearance at the zoo, while their trainer, a man named Bardell, was trying to get the hyenas to stand up on pedestals, they began to attack each other.
“Bardell tried to separate them and one of the creatures turned on him.”
The teeth of the animal closed on his right arm, which in the struggle which ensued was terribly torn by the hyena’s claws and he lost much blood.
Was Houdini’s chair a fake?
In 1905 he moved back to Macduff, building a family home, the Manor House.
He used his riches to help the town.
He was that famous that Charlie Chaplin, even in his Hollywood days, did an impression of Walford Bodie.
Chaplin did it on stage in London in his variety days, but when he moved over to America and Bodie became popular over there, he got his old act out.
Bodie was also firm friends with Harry Houdini.
He wrote to Houdini on April 8 1920, asking if he did indeed own the first electric chair which was the one used to execute Kemmler.
Houdini gave Bodie the chair which he displayed in theatre lobbies with a sign that boasted not only its grisly history, but that it was a gift from the “Great Houdini”.
Houdini’s chair was a well-made fake.
The original chair was still in Auburn, unused, since 1914, after taking the lives of 54 men and one woman.
The chair was destroyed by fire during a prison riot in 1929.
Bodie died aged 70 in 1939
When Bodie retired that same year, he paid tribute to the Dundee audiences.
He said: “I have had a great time of it, and I have had great receptions, particularly in Dundee where they never seemed to have tired of my performance, no matter how often I came.”
Bodie’s retirement was short lived and he returned to Dundee several times in the 1930s.
By that stage his fame had waned and he was playing ever smaller venues.
His last appearance in the city was at the Broadway Theatre in Arthurstone Terrace at the end of 1938.
In 1939 he collapsed on stage in Blackpool aged 70 and never recovered.
His death was announced in the Press & Journal, which relived his glory years, praising him as one of the best-known music hall entertainers and a pioneer of showmanship.
His obituary said: “His entrance on the stage was the signal for the brass to blare, the drums to crash and the sparks to fly.
“His method was to not win his audience, but to lord it over them – to make them feel honoured to be in such a great man’s presence.”
