10 PEOPLE KILLED WHILE PERFORMING MAGIC TRICKS

Magicians, illusionists, mentalists, escapes artists—they all have their element of danger, which is what makes them exciting to watch. That danger can also be fatal, for amateurs and professionals alike.

Here are 10 people who were killed performing such feats.

10 Charles Rowen

Charles Rowen, otherwise known as “Karr the Magician” or “Karr the Mysterious,” was a South African escape artist and magician. His main tricks were escaping from straight jackets and jumping into piles of broken glass.

In 1930, Karr was performing in Springfontein, Orange Free State, South Africa. He was attempting a very dangerous stunt in which he was tied up in a straight jacket while a man drove straight at him in a car. The car approached from (180 meters) (200 yards) away, accelerating to a speed of 72 kilometers per hour (45 mph). If you do the math, that would give Karr about 10–15 seconds (depending on how long it would take the driver to get up to that speed) to get out of the straight jacket and get out of the way of the car.
But he was too slow.

Karr was unable to escape in time and he was run over by the car, which almost severed his leg. This happened in front of a large group of people, including small children. Before he died, he exonerated the driver of any wrongdoing.

9. Madame DeLinksy

The Gun Trick is when a magician pretends to be shot by a gun, giving the illusion that they either stopped or caught the bullet with their body. This trick, especially the bullet-catching variation, is one of the most dangerous tricks in a magician’s repertoire. Despite the gun trick being an illusion, it still puts the magician in harm’s way. No bullets are fired during the trick because people simply can’t catch bullets, yet there are at least 15 deaths associated with this trick.

One of the more notable deaths happened when a Polish magician and his wife, Madame DeLinsky, were performing in Arnstadt Germany for Prince Shwarznberg-Sonderhausen in November 1820. Their version of the the Gun Trick was that Madame DeLinsky would face a firing squad of six men, stopping all six bullets. The DeLinksys asked the soldiers to insert a blank load into their rifle. One solider didn’t and loaded a live round. Madame DeLinsky was shot through the abdomen and died two days later.

8 Benjamin Rucker

Benjamin Rucker, who performed under the stage name Black Herman, is a bit different than the other magicians here because he died of natural causes—although nobody believed it.

Black Herman was the preeminent African American magician of the time. Because of the Jim Crow laws, he played to mostly black audiences in the South, but was popular elsewhere. One of his signature illusions, which he used to promote his upcoming shows, was being buried alive then exhumed three days later, after which he’d go on with the show. That is why no one believed he really died when he had a heart attack at the end of one of his shows in April 1934. Using the disbelief to their advantage, Black Herman’s promoters charged people to get into the funeral to see that Black Herman was, in fact, dead.

Notably, magician and comedian Tommy Cooper suffered the same fate after having a heart attack on stage, leading people to believe it was part of the act. Nobody charged admission to his funeral, though.

7 Dr. Vivian Hensley

Nothing puts a black stain on the world of magic like an amateur getting in over his head while trying to perform a dangerous trick. Forty-three-year-old Vivian Hensley was a dentist in Brisbane, Australia. As a dentist he probably should have known the dangers of sticking non-food items into his mouth, but nevertheless, he died a very painful death from something he swallowed.

Dr. Hensley was performing his own trick called “swallowing the rusty razor blade” for his young son. He did the trick by pretending to slip the razor blade into his mouth while really putting it down the sleeve of his coat.

On July 6, 1938, while performing the trick he slipped up and accidentally dropped the razor down his throat. His wife made him eat cotton balls as she drove him to the hospital. Despite a battery of X-rays and two bouts of surgery, the doctors were unable to locate the razor, and he died four days later.

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