The Esoteric Walford Bodie, “MD”
In a century that has produced a number of great stage hypnotists, from Gil Boyne and Ormond McGill, Pat Collins, the Amazing Polgar and Kreskin, to Paul McKenna and Derren Brown, there is one man that outshines them all.
His name is Walford Bodie, “MD”, and he was quite the flamboyant character.
Born in 1869 as Samuel Murphy Bodie in Amberdeen, Scotland, he worked as an electrician for the Scottish National Telephone Company but eventually his side career as an illusionist became his true calling. He was a natural showman: a stage magician, sleight of hand artist, ventriloquist, and hypnotist. Among his titles was “The Electrical Wizard of the North”, the “British Edison”, “Modern Miracle Worker” and “The Most Remarkable Man on Earth”.
His act consisted of a number of radical phenomena of the time period, especially electricity and stage hypnosis. Stage hypnosis as a specific art was quite new at that time (I have only found a few references from this time period explicitly using the term “stage hypnosis”, including a few books with this title) and he is the earliest stage hypnotist on record that I have been able to locate with an international reputation.
His electricity demonstrations were very showy. His act included a fake electric chair, a replica of the one that executed William Kemmler in Sing Sing in 1890 (the first prisoner to be executed by the electric chair.) Bodie, who billed himself as “The Man They Could Not Electrocute”, would place himself in the chair and pass 30,000 volts through his body for the climax of his act, illuminating sixteen incandescent bulbs and two arc lamps held in his bare hands. (Electric currents with high voltages and low amperage can arc across relatively long distances but cannot overcome or cause damage to objects with even modest resistance, such as the human body.) However, in 1920, Harry Houdini arranged to obtain the real thing for Bodie. (Houdini was a great friend and correspondent of Bodie’s.)
There are no definitive records or descriptions I can find about his stage hypnosis act: what little I can discover was that he did not perform what we would expect as a modern stage hypnosis performance. His stage hypnosis act was more medical in direction, involving sensational cures, especially of paralysis. His bloodless surgery’ demonstrations utilized hypnotism and electricity (’Bodic Force’) to cure the afflicted and the lame. He even formed the Bodie Electric Drug Company, retailing ‘Electric Life Pills’ and ‘Electric Linament’.
Lacking a medical degree, he said the initials “MD” stand for “Merrie Devil” which got him in trouble more than once. During a performance in 1909, medical students thronged the audience and pelted him with rotten fruit, eggs, and other garbage, so much so that he had to leave the stage to the chanting of “Bodie, Bodie, Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack”, wearing, as one commentator put it, “a coat of many colours”. That same year, a group of Scottish medical students took him to court to challenge his use of the initials “MD”, but, showman that he was, he turned the proceedings into another of this performances and won exoneration.
Bodie died in 1939, at the age of 70, after completing a season of performances.
Trivia:
- Bodie and his signature waxed mustache was the target of a parody by Charlie Chaplin: Chaplin’s first big break in show business was in a review lead by comedian Will Murray in 1906 in London, where Chaplin parodied Bodie in a performance entitled “Casey’s Court Circus”. Chaplin was 17 at the time.
- Bodie himself campaigned against the electric chair as a means of execution, advocating the gallows, instead, as a more human method.
- Bodie was so popular that when, in 1916, he lost his entire production equipment during WW I, he was back on tour within six months. His production company was on their way through the Mediterranean to perform in India when the ship he was traveling on was sunk. He and his wife were separated during the rescue and were not reunited for several weeks because his rescue ship was also sunk.
- During a tour of Ireland, Bodie was named Life Governor of the town of Cork.
- Bodie was also an author. Two of his most notable publications are “The Bodie Book”, a nonfiction account of hypnosis and related paranormal subjects like telepathy and mental suggestion, and “Harley the Hypnotist”, a mystery novel involving a hypnotist detective.
- A true Scotsman, Bodie officiated at the opening of the Royal Tarlair Golf Club in Macduff, Scotland, on April 4th, 1926 and drive the first ball on the course.
Tags: Walford Bodie
February 1st, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Fascinating. Thanks.
His self-promotion and fake medical titles would make him a good fit for many hypnotists around today!
February 1st, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Thanks for the comment, Graham. LOL. It does apply to some hypnotists out there, I will grant you, but check out the 10 Questions for hypnotist that runs on Fridays. You will fund some really wonderful hypnotist there. Heck just be a regular to the blog and you will see that there are some valid people out there (just as there are valid self-improvement enterprises).
August 19th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Congratulations on your article, which provides an excellent account of the great Scottish showman, Walford Bodie, and his on-stage performances. Walford Bodie was one of the world’s best known, and highest paid entertainers, and was described as such by the New York Times, in 1910, when they spoke of his London court trial, which Bodie commandeered for his own self promotion and benefit. He was later to publish quite a famous poster covering the event. Both Charlie Chaplin and Harry Houdini could be considered to be proteges of Walford Bodie.
Houdini became a life-long friend, while Chaplin was known to imitate Bodie, on-stage in London in 1906, and as late as the 1930’s. A minor correction, and an addition to your very fine article: Bodie and his troupe were on the way back from India in 1916, when his ship, The Arabia, was torpedoed and sank in the Mediterranean. He was later taken to Malta, and re-united with his wife. Bodie also published three books, the earliest of which you have not mentioned. It is a wonderful little piece of work called “Stage Stories”, and is a fine piece of history, in that it covers the early life and exploits of the great man as he travelled around Northern Scotland, performing his popular Walford Bodie Show, in company with his very talented wife, and co-performer, Jeannie Bodie (nee Henry). Jeannie had a number of sisters, including the talented Marie (Mystic Marie), Isabella (La Belle Electra) and Kittie (a noted singer and pianist), and a brother, Willie, who were part of the show. Others sisters included
Maggie Saunders, who was later to become a well-known actress in Pantomime, in both the Gaiety Theatre and in Rothesay, and Ellen, who was later to become the mother of the famous Scottish actress and comedienne, Helen Norman. Walford Bodie was much more than just a mere hypnotist or conjurer. Regardless of what may be said about him, or his hypnotic act, and how it was carried out, using electrical gimmickry and the like, he was a giant of the British stage in the first decade of the twentieth century. Bodie claimed to be the “World’s Greatest Showman”.
Chaplin or Houdini would not doubt that. Very few true historians would. The record speaks for itself. Scotland should be proud of Walford Bodie.
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