The Final Curtain: The Performances of a Lifetime

By Mr Ghaz, February 18, 2010

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The Final Curtain: The Performances of a Lifetime

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On March 23, 1918, the illusionist Chung Ling Soo, “the Marvelous Chinese Conjurer,” appeared in a London theatre to demonstrate the feat that had made him famous: his escape from death at the hands of a firing squad.

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A small army of Soo’s assistants, dressed as Boxers (the Chinese nationalists who had rebelled against foreign rule in 1900), marched onto the stage. Wearing magnificent oriental robes, Soo invited two members of the audience to come up and inspect a pair of ancient muzzle-loading rifles.

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Meanwhile, Soo’s wife, Suee Seen, went into the auditorium and asked two people to scratch their initials on two lead bullets. She then put the marked bullets in a cup and brought them back to the stage.

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After supervising the loading of the buns, the voluntary inspectors shook hands with Soo and returned to their seats. Soo then held a china plate in front of his chest as two of his assistants stepped forward, took the rifles, raised them to their shoulders, and aimed at the magician. At a signal, they opened fire.

Midair Miracle

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At previous performances it seemed that Soo had miraculously stopped the initialed bullets in midair by catching them on the plate. He would then offer them to the audience for identification. But events took a different course this time.

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When the two deafening shots rang out, the Chinese conjurer crumpled onto the stage floor as blood poured from a bullet wound in his chest. He was rushed to a hospital but died the next day.

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Soo’s tragic death gave newspapers sensational headlines. Then rumors began to circulate that he had been murdered, or had even committed suicide, and that the fatal bullets had mysteriously disappeared. The truth, however, was in this case far more mundane.

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At the inquest into Soo’s death, Suee Seen explained that her husband always hid the initialed bullets in the palm of one hand; after the guns were fired, he would produce them as if he had caught them. Duplicate bullets were loaded into the guns; a secret mechanism inside prevented them from discharging the bullets. Her husband had never allowed anyone else to inspect the guns; only he knew how the mechanism worked.

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Robert Churchill, an expert gunsmith, was called in to investigate, and revealed the secret of Soo’s death-defying act for the first time. The barrel of each rifle had been sealed, making it impossible to ignite the charge that propelled the bullet. Instead, the detonating spark was diverted to the ramrod tube beneath the barrel, where it fired a harmless charge of powder that Soo had secretly placed there.

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Fatal Spark

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On the fateful night of March 23, however, one of the rifles was so worn that some of the gunpowder in the main barrel came into contact with the percussion cap. As the marksman pulled the trigger, the spark ignited both the blank charge in the ramrod tube and the lethal charge in the barrel. The bullet had then passed through the magician’s body; the police later recovered it from the stage. After assessing the evidence, the coroner returned a verdict of death from misadventure.

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Chung Ling Soo was not the first victim of the bullet-catching trick. At least 10 stage illusionists had died performing it in one variation or another, and the entire fraternity of magicians recognized its dangers. The celebrated Harry Houdini once warned Soo; “Be careful with your bullet-catching trick, as your method is certainly daring.” Chung Ling Soon had trusted his luck once too often.