Master Eddie Abbott “The Wonder of the Nineteenth Century”

This post is about what is probably the youngest magician we have covered here on Propelled Pasteboards. He went by the name of Master Eddie Abbott, and his story is an interesting one. Eddie Abbott’s card is slightly oversized, is on heavy card stock, and is blank on the back. Whether it can be called a throw-out card is a matter of opinion.

 

Abbott’s card advertises an appearance at Girard’s Wonderland, which was often referred to as a curio hall.  It was in Buffalo, New York, and it was known for having some unusual acts in its day. This appeared in the Buffalo Evening News for April 27, 1898. A troupe of trained goats heads the bill!

There is basically nothing on young Master Abbott in the magic magazines that I have access to. He was written up however in H. J. Burlingame’s Leaves from Conjurers’ Scrap Books which was published in 1891. Gabe Fajuri included Abbott in his book on child magicians entitled Child Prestidigitators: Precocious Magicians: Wonders, Marvels, & Prodigies published in 2001. Both books have a brief history of Abbott, and mention the fact that Abbott was given much praise for his ability.

My first thought was, if Eddie Abbott was so good, why is there not more on him in the magic journals? Maybe it was because adult performers did not think he warranted the attention, or maybe it was just that there were not many magic magazines in the late eighteen hundreds. Looking at the newspapers of the time seems to confirm what Burlingame had to say about Eddie Abbott. In the following article, they called him “The Wonder of the Nineteenth Century”.

From the Santa Cruz Sentinel for September 17, 1890 and the Topeka Capital for June 23, 1892.

In May of 1889, The Times in Philadelphia said the six year old Eddie will perform at the Carncross Opera House and will be “performing some of the most difficult feats of the older illusionists”.  In October of that year in Carlisle Pennsylvania, this ad ran in The Sentinel newspaper.

Master Eddie was assisted by Prof. H. J. Abbott, who was his father. Also on this bill were Harry and Mildred Rouclere, very well-known magicians and mind readers of the era. Not bad company for young Master Abbott. Two months later, Abbott was performing at B. F. Keith’s Bijou in Philadelphia, and with him on the bill were Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Cohan. For those readers who enjoy the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy, you know that the Cohans were the parents of George M. Cohan, one of the most famous performers and song writers on Broadway in his day. Abbott was referred to as “the infant rival of Kellar and Herrmann”. Once again, Eddie was in very good company!

In January of 1893 Eddie Abbott is playing at Tony Pastor’s Theatre in New York. Tony Pastor was a legendary Vaudeville impresario. Pastor was known for giving the great Harry Houdini one of his big breaks in 1895, but Eddie played there first. Here Eddie is going by “The Only Boy Magician”.

 

It appears that once the twentieth century arrived, Eddie Abbott changed the type of performance that he gave, from that of a magician, to being billed as a “Monologue Comedian”. That was how he appeared at the Ninth and Arch Dime Museum on November 24, 1901 in Philadelphia. I can only assume that this was the same Eddie, as there is no more mention of him as a magician, and the venues seem of the same type for the Eddie Abbott listed. By May 10, 1908 in Washington D C, he was calling himself a “Character Monologist” at the Surprise Theatre on Pennsylvania Avenue. Since it looks as though Eddie was born around 1883, he would have been 25 and an adult at this time. The references to him start to disappear after this period, and I have not been able to discover what became of him.

One thing is for certain. Master Eddie Abbott really did make a mark as a child magician for a few years in the later part of the eighteen-hundreds. There was a lot more written about him in the newspapers than I had expected. Maybe he really was the rival of Kellar and Herrmann, and deserved the billing of “The Wonder of the Nineteenth Century”.

H. J. Burlingame – From Back in the Past

I have had the below item in my collection for close to 30 years. It is a letter that was written way back in 1889. The letterhead is for a company named C. L. Burlingame, Manufacturer of Conjuring Apparatus. It says the firm was established in 1872. So who was C. L. Burlingame?

In reality, it was a man by the name of H. J. Burlingame. The following throw-out card is a favorite of mine for a couple of reasons. His name looks like it is hand written across the face, but it is actually printed on there. The back of the card is extra special, as it is a rare blue Bicycle “Pedal” back, first issued in 1899. I have never seen another one except for in the Bicycle checklist that was written by Mrs. Joe Robinson in 1955.

Burlingame’s full name was Hardin Jasper Elroy Burlingame, and he was born on June 14, 1852, in Manitowac, Wisconsin. As a teenager, his family moved to Chicago. After graduating from Business College, he worked for many firms over the years in clerical positions. He lost one such job when the firm he worked for was destroyed in the “Great Chicago Fire” of 1871. He decided to go to Europe in 1872 to continue his education. While in Holland, he became interested in magic and studied under the great magician Okito’s father, David Tobias Bamberg. Evidently with Bamberg’s permission, Burlingame took the name Jasper Bamberg and used that as a stage name for a while.

From the cover of Mahatma for December of 1898.

On his return to America, he became involved in many aspects of magic. Besides performing, he started several magic businesses. He did not want to use his real name so the magic concerns had names like George L. Williams and Co., and Ralph E. Sylvester & Co., both of which sold spiritualistic and bogus medium effects. His main business in magic he called C. L. Burlingame.

But there was more to H. J. Burlingame besides being a magician and magic dealer. He has been considered by some as one of, if not the first magic collector in America. He compiled many scrapbooks of early magic memorabilia, and put together a large library of magic, that was the seed that grew into what is considered the largest conjuring library in private hands.

With all of this wealth of magic history, it only made sense he would put it to use. Burlingame went on to write a number of magic and especially magic history books. In 1891 he wrote Leaves from Conjurers’ Scrapbooks, and in 1897 after the death of Alexander Herrmann, he authored the book Herrmann the Great, The Famous Magician’s Tricks.

From the author's collection.

In 1907, Burlingame had a nervous breakdown and settled in Syracuse, Indiana. He passed away on August 27, 1915 at the age of 63. Many magic collectors of today will have copies of the history books that he wrote.

 

Attempting to figure out the timeline of when Burlingame owned his different businesses has been a real challenge. The letterhead above with the Chicago address says it was founded in 1872. But wasn’t he supposed to be in Europe at that time? Another thing, look at the rubber stamp with the overprinted name Edwin Neale as successor to the business. The date on the letter is 1889. Was Burlingame no longer the owner of C. L. Burlingame? Some collectors out there have Burlingame catalogs that also have the Neale overprint on the cover. So who was Edwin Neale?

There is very little information that I can find on Neale in the magic magazines. One thing I do know however is that he also called himself a “Manufacturer of Conjuring Apparatus”. I know this because I also have one of his throw-out cards. It has a red Bicycle “Old Fan” back which was first issued in 1885.

While the history of these two magicians is still somewhat of a mystery, they both had great throw-out cards to remember them by.