When the mesmerist came to town
Audiences the world over marveled at Kennedy the Mesmerist, including those in Palmerston North.
On Friday, March 20, 1896, a youngish, pleasant-faced showman with auburn hair and moustache bounded on to the stage of Palmerston North’s Theatre Royal, and gave a spellbinding presentation few in his audience would ever forget. He was Kennedy the Mesmerist. Posters advertised him as the ‘‘king of laughmakers’’ and promised ‘‘screams of laughter at every performance’’. The show was a smash hit. Although copies of the Manawatu Standard and Manawatu Times are missing for that time period, the Feilding Star of March 21 gave the Palmerston event a mention.
‘‘This evening at the Assembly Rooms Mr T.A. Kennedy, the popular and successful mesmeric entertainer, will make his first appearance here for one night only, when there will be no doubt be an unusually large audience to welcome the gifted artist. Mr Kennedy appeared last evening at the Theatre Royal, Palmerston North, meeting with a flattering reception from a crowded house. That he will receive a similar reception this evening goes without saying. The Feilding season is for one night only, since Mr Kennedy is announced to appear in Marton on Monday evening.’’
Kennedy toured his show around New Zealand for almost nine months, charging one to three shillings a ticket, and attracting huge crowds and numerous reviews.
By the late 1890s, mesmerism, the forerunner to modern hypnotism, had been around for about 50 years. It was Viennese doctor Anton Mesmer who first discovered how to put a patient into a deep trance, using the power of suggestion to cure an ailment or end a habit.
Controversial in medical circles, mesmerism was highly popular as entertainment. It got a boost with George du Maurier’s 1894 novel Trilby – about Svengali, a mysterious mesmerist who hypnotises a young woman (Trilby) into singing like an accomplished opera singer. So who was Kennedy? Thomas A. Kennedy, sometimes called ‘‘Professor’’ Kennedy, was often assumed to be Australian, English or American. He performed in all of those countries, but he was a Canadian, born in Dundas, Ontario. He first attracted attention in print as the star of The Bayliss and Kennedy and Bright Light Vaudeville Company, touring America.
A Chicago correspondent wrote that: ‘‘Kennedy was the first to submit his subjects to… having needles pushed through their flesh, and similar ordeals. The remarkable degree of proficiency he attained in the art of mesmerism made him a wonder to members of the medical profession’’.
He performed throughout Australia in the 1880s, and for about four years, until 1894, was a headline act at the Royal Aquarium, a huge entertainment complex in London, followed by 12 months at the Albert Hall.
After his Palmerston North appearance, the Wanganui Herald reprinted a story Kennedy had told a Melbourne interviewer: ‘‘In 1888, in the house of H.M. de Young, proprietor of the San Francisco Chronicle, a young lady guest with a marvellous voice resisted all entreaties to sing because of nervousness. Mrs de Young asked Mr Kennedy if he could cause the young lady to believe she was alone in the room, and the table was a piano.
This he did, and the young lady sang as woman never sang before’’. Du Maurier, lecturing in San Francisco at the time, saw the hypnotic feat, and that is what sowed the seed of Trilby – at least he says so.
In London (novelist) Marie Corelli used to call on Mr Kennedy and have long conversations about hypnotism. Mrs Kennedy remonstrated with her husband about giving his ideas to other people, and when Corelli’s book From Life to Death was published, she brought it to him and said ‘‘here’s your book’’.
It was made up of talks Marie Corelli and Mr Kennedy had had together, and he admired her for the clever way in which she utilised them.
During his 1896 North and South Island New Zealand tour, Kennedy’s startling reputation and publicity drew huge crowds – except at the start.
In January, the Otago Daily Times noted: ‘‘Kennedy didn’t draw the attendance anticipated, as skepticism prevails regarding the phenomenon’’.
And on March 25, the Wanganui Herald printed a review calling Kennedy to task for making his entranced subjects perform funny, but ‘‘vulgar’’ antics. The review also implied that the subjects that night seemed to be audience ‘‘plants’’ rather than locals. But the audiences kept coming. The Bay of Plenty Times reported that Kennedy put a man named Frederick Keating to sleep for six days. During this time a doctor ‘‘inserted surgical scissors under his fingernails and applied strong ammonia to his nostrils’’. The man later awoke ‘‘seemingly none the worse for his long repose’’.
On to Sydney, then America: the Los Angeles Herald reported on August 30 that ‘‘Kennedy has caused more people to laugh during this week’s engagement than any other artist that has ever appeared at the Orpheum,’’ and the San Francisco Call noted Kennedy’s ‘‘quite wonderful cures from the cigarette, drink and opium habit’’ through mesmerism.
Thomas Kennedy’s demise was as dramatic as any of his presentations.
On November 16, 1899 – three years after his Palmerston North appearance – he died suddenly at the home of his brothers H.H. and William Kennedy in Chicago, where he’d been booked for a show.
No mention was made in news items of his wife, or any children.
Kennedy the Mesmerist had been felled by what was then called Bright’s disease. It’s now known as nephritis, a kidney disease.
He was 45.
It was Viennese doctor Anton Mesmer who first discovered how to put a patient into a deep trance, using the power of suggestion to cure an ailment or end a habit.