ELECTRIC ‘ WIZARD’ LIGHTS UP THEATRE
American showman’s high-voltage stunts thrilled audiences, but others saw a current of hocus-pocus
Normally, people try to steer clear of the electric chair. But not Charles Quill, a vaudeville performer who performed under the name Electra, “the wizard of electricity.”
“One of Electra’s stunts is to allow himself to be strapped in an electric chair, and then laughs as anywhere from five to 10 thousand volts goes through his body,” said a Vancouver World story from April 23, 1910, when he appeared at the Pantages Theatre.
“When he lets a powerful current shoot through his body and one sees the six-inch sparks flying off the end of his tongue, one can almost believe the assertions of Electra’s press agent that the performer fairly eats electricity.”
He wore a copper cap or bracelet during his show, which were attached to a transformer that provided the electricity.
His act included lighting candles with his fingertips and tongue, lighting a cigar with his finger, and holding a stick of carbon in his teeth “and by contact with the current producing a brilliant illumination similar to the brightest arc lamp.”
He was a sensation for a time, drawing a big write-up in the New York Times on March 1, 1909.
“Charles Quill offers himself as practical proof that in all but a few cases an electric shock in the death chair fails to kill a convicted murderer, and that death does not come until at the autopsy the body passes under the doctor’s knife,” said the Times.
The Times said that Electra was zapped with 1,800 volts of electricity — “a hundred more that are used to kill in Sing-Sing” — and appeared none the worse for wear.
Quill claimed he discovered his ability to withstand electric shock when he was accidentally electrocuted while working at an electric company powerhouse in San Francisco. Given up for dead, after a couple of hours he was up and about.
Quill said in a San Francisco Call story that he had “horrible dreams” for days after the powerhouse incident.
“I thought I was between two live wires and was burning to death, and would roll out of bed, shrieking and yelling like a madman. Mr. Raymond read of my wonderful escape and asked me if I wouldn’t try some experiments.
“I didn’t mind and gradually I took stronger and stronger currents until I have reached the ‘death limit.’ I suppose some day it will get me, all right, but I have to go somehow, and I can make a lot of money at this, so what’s the difference?”
Quill said he was able to be zapped without being killed because scientists had found he had “more carbon in his makeup and less iron in his blood than other people.”
Maybe, but there also may have been some hocus-pocus involved. In 1913, he took his act to New Zealand, where he supposedly hooked up to a tram wire and had the current run through his body.
The Dominion newspaper in Wellington reported he had “interfered” with the tram wire by placing another wire over it, “thus producing an electrical discharge by burning out a fuse in the wire. (Quill) then pretended to take the current through his body, which in reality he did not do, as there was no circuit.”
Quill was fined three pounds in a magistrate’s court for “interfering without authority with an overhead wire used in the working of City Corporation trams.”
On the boat back from New Zealand, Quill met a young Scottish woman, Jennie Fraser Currie, and told her he could make her a star for $500.
“He drew a rosy picture of life in stageland, with applause, rich monetary returns, excitement and thrills,” the San Francisco Call reported on Aug. 23, 1913.
“Miss Currie’s blue eyes opened wide. She did not think to enquire why ‘Electra,’ who had been in stageland for many years, was not bedecked with diamonds. She even forgot to enquire why, with his vocal and mechanical art, he was forced to play ‘small time’ in Australia.”
Currie gave Quill the money after the boat docked in San Francisco, but after a couple of weeks had second thoughts and asked for it back. When he failed to do so, she took him to court, charging him with embezzlement.