Blood, drama and show that shocked nation

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Magician Great Sorcar

One hundred years ago today an English magician called Percy Thomas Tibbles sawed through a sealed wooden box that contained a woman.

The trick was a sensation and has since become one of the best-known magic skills.

Performed with all manner of tools and varying degrees of blood, it always involves someone being cut in half and nearly always with them miraculously being put back together.

The illusion was invented by

Tibbles, who went by the stage name of PT Selbit, and was first performed at the Finsbury Park Empire in north London on January 17, 1921.

Since then, it has been performed by countless magicians in many different ways, simultaneously thrilling and horrifying audiences across the world.

The illusion, unsurprisingly, has sparked much drama over the years.

In 1956 the BBC shocked the nation broadcasting a Panorama programme that featured Indian magician Great Sorcar slicing a young woman in half with a circular saw.

Because the show was live and out of time, the presenter Richard Dimbleby stepped in to say goodbye before the woman came “back to life”.

Afterwards the switchboard was jammed with people thinking they had just witnessed a murder.

In the 1920s Tibbles enraged the suffragettes by inviting Christabel Pankhurst to be sawn in two.

It came after the militant suffragette had advertised her services in a newspaper for “remunerative, non-political” work. Funnily enough, she said no.

There may have been a few minor injuries during the performance of this trick over the years but, as far as anyone knows, no one has been killed.