ELLISDON & SON.
‘OUR STORE IS AS CLOSE AS YOUR NEAREST MAILBOX’
Magical Memories by Allen Tipton.
In 1944 before BMS( Boys Magic Service), two years after the magic bug bit I discovered a plentiful supply of conjuring tricks in our local (Cradley Heath) Woolworth’s. An entire counter, covered with colourful packets, intriguing boxes, all decorated with strange magical titles & illustrations of magicians performing They were all designed to catch the eye, the heart & the pocket of the Schoolboy Conjuror.
An Ever Varying Array Of Magical Wonders.
My first ever buy was Salamander’s Breath. You received a wad of wool & a piece of tow. ‘Ignite the slow burning tow; insert it into the wool & place in the mouth! Now blow out smoke & sparks to the horror of your beholders.’ Well it certainly caused horror in my parents.
The Hindoo Cones came in a long thin, colourful box decorated with a turbaned magician who gestured over 4 small cones and a glittering coin. Someone placed the coin under a cone & while your back was turned, shuffled them about. You then pointed out the cone without fail. A hair attached to the coin told you which.
The Mystic Ring had a length of rope bound to each wrist as you clutched a solid ring in one hand. Covered, you put the ring onto the rope. One ring was already up your sleeve and the other took its place under the cover.
The Great Eastern Folding Paper Mystery, in which a flat object wrapped in the inner most of 3 papers disappeared or changed to something else, went down very well. Still marketed today as The Buddha Papers.
The Lit Cigarette in Handkerchief introduced me to the TT and you must be familiar with The Magic Pound Note Machine. I had to have this as I’d seen Dante explain it to Laurel & Hardy in their film.
The Afghan Bands, the Multiplying Billiard Balls, the Magic (Imp) Bottle which lay down only on the conjuror’s command, and the Ball & Tube (only you could make the ball sink into the tube) The 3 Bells Mystery (as the Rattle bars) & the Card Box (but made of very strong cardboard) are still around today.
From The Mystic Envelope I learned about double envelopes. The Balancing Glass on Card (which had a hinged flap) taught me about feked cards.
In a latter catalogue I came across a Torn & Restored Tiny Newspaper. Miniature copies of the Stage were used. Last year one of our young magicians asked me to script his new miniature T & R newspaper. I didn’t say a word! With The Great Paper Tearing Enigma I learned to do it with blue tissue paper.
Every one of these miracles was stamped with the initials E & S. Who were these Purveyors of Prestidigitation. The answer was: Ellisdon & Son. Where they came from & how they set up one of the biggest, Novelty & Joke shops in the world had to remain a mystery to me for 60 more years.
Some of the answers.
In 2005, on the Internet I came across someone in Australia asking for an Ellisdon Ventrilo. This was what was known as a bird warbler. Pat Page uses one very effectively in Children’s Magic. Replies said use a swazzle but no, it was not what he wanted; it had to be the Ellisdon model.
ELLISDON & SON p.2.
This brought back my memories of those halcyon days and I posted some details of E & S on Talk Magic Forum. A reply came from the USA. Mrs. Tina Futch was the daughter of Helen Basnett nee Ellisdon. Loads of e mails flowed and some answers to my many questions were soon forthcoming. I had made a new friend & received some answers.
The Firm was founded in Sydney Australia; in 1897 by Albert Ellisdon (known to the family as Pop Pop) He originally sold tools, shovels, saddles, & gold panning equipment to the pioneers; all by Mail Order.
Eventually the gold fever boom ran its usual course, sales dropped so Albert with his son Ernest G Ellisdon (known as Poppy) & Grandson Bryce, moved to England in the 1930’s. We think to the High Holborn area. They were at 245 & 245 for many years. Why England?
Well Pop Pop & his sons loved a joke and they thought England, after a depression, could do with cheering up. So they fulfilled a need. Jokes & Novelties were scarce. It was a market hardly touched by the magic dealers (Davenports was the only exception). Grandpa handed the business over & Ellisdon & Son, or E & S as they became universally known, grasped their opportunities to infiltrate the Great British Sense of Humour.
Non Strike Matches, Joke Spiders, Mucky Pup Stuff, Dribble Glasses, Hairy Warts & Boils and Instant Snowstorms (ruined my father’s cigarette) & the inevitable Stink Bombs hit the market. They were purchased by young & old alike. The Firm had arrived & England laughed again.
The Jokes.
I avoided buying most of the jokes (it was magic I was after) except the Snowstorm, the Blackface Soap (another telling off at home); The Magic Soot which didn’t go down too well at all, sprinkled on my mother’s best white astrakhan coat. It did brush off easily. Whew! I tried the Nail Through Finger, The Window Smashing (metal plates) the Novelty Visiting Cards, the Sex Indicator (first introduction to the pendulum idea), the Millionaires Outfit (loads of stage money) It’s In The Bag & Merry Widow Hanky (both turned out to be miniature ladies panties) and the famous Seebackroscope. Lots of magicians in the last year recall buying this. A sort of jeweller’s eyeglass, made of bakelite and held in your eye enabled you to see sideways and behind you. I was the envy of my class. A very useful gadget for boy spies.
Advanced Magic!
My repertoire grew with the Erratic Card Vanish (the back palm done with a pink metal clip on the back of the card) the O So Easy Wine & Water trick, the Egg Bag with a red bag I’ve hated black ones ever since. The real egg had to be carried in cotton wool. My first Chinese Linking Rings. These were 4 inch ones made of a rough grey metal( it was wartime) but they worked.
The young lady behind the Woolworth’s counter was entranced. She’d made a point of being in charge of it every Friday (Pocket Money Day) just to see the miracles she sold me the week before performed. She had no idea of their methods or even inkling as to how they worked. I had my first real audience of one! This was Stand Up, Close Up magic before its time.
Show Business here I come! But there’s more.
ELLISDON & SON.
THE LARGEST MAIL ORDER HOUSE IN THE WORLD FOR JOKES & NOVELTIES
More Memories by Allen Tipton
The Ellisdons were used to selling by post; it was the only sure way of reaching customers in the Australian Outback, so here in Britain, mail order catalogues were inevitable. Over the trading years the circulation of these rose to over 200,000, sent to every part of the world. Tina Futch, on the wall in her study, has a framed envelope, which arrived in 1958,from Rhodesia, written in pencil and addressed to ‘The largest mail order house in the world for tricks & novelties, promptest service to all parts of the world, Ellisdons’ And it got there!
Other stock.
In the catalogues besides the jokes, novelties & magic there are household items, as cuckoo clocks, bread & food slicers, cigarette lighters, razors, replica guns & starting pistols etc. I was not allowed even imitation guns, except the Numatic Paper Busting Gun, which fired holes in an attached mini reel of paper. One item, ‘the Converta Bottle’, turned old bottles into utility articles within minutes. I quote Bryce Ellisdon,’ They were much favoured by army officers’. The mind boggles.
Theatrical wigs, beards & stage makeup were added and catch phrases appeared on every page:
Good Clean Fun For Everyone. Baffling Secrets That Surprise. Magic, The Spice Of Enjoyment (and for every magician) Something New & Different.
Eye catching, intriguing & bewildering
The fascinating, tempting illustrations were drawn by Bryce Ellisdon (a talent inherited by his niece, Penny Altmann (See
www.mydreamlines.com) and the copy was written by John Basnett (Tina & Penny’s father).
John also wrote the booklet on ‘How To Throw Your Voice’, which was accompanied by the Ventrilo. I still have a copy & 2 Ventrilo’s
The Vamping Chart I could never work out. It was a long cardboard strip with wording & coloured sections. You placed it upright above the piano keys & vamped thousands of songs, waltzes & ragtime numbers. ‘No knowledge of music required.’ For me it didn’t work. I just had to keep playing scales & Schubert’s Serenade till Father said “Oh do go upstairs and practise your magic instead.”
I always flew up the stairs.
The E & S Card Locator was a mechanical stacked deck. You received a 7 inch long card on which was mounted a dial. The Locator Card and dial had the 52 cards & I think 1 to 52 printed on them. You rotated the dial, and it told you where the selected card was. I never worked this out.
Apal. This was an imitation cigarette in plastic I discovered in the 60’s. It contained an herbal extract, which stopped you smoking; and it did. A very popular buy and was reissued, by another firm, 15 years later as Nobacc.
ELLISDON & SON. p.2
Even more Magic
I bought the Modern Thumb Penetration; a plastic TT with a hole in it so you could ‘penetrate’ your thumb under a handkerchief with a big needle. The Magic Box enabled me to send a coin into 2 sealed boxes & little bag (the coin slide) Two Cabinets of Card Tricks (which introduced me to printed feke cards), and The Great Siberian Gang Escape. By now my Friday audience of one had grown to six shop girls who watched me on Woolworth’s floor, ‘struggling’ to escape the chain which bound my wrists. I said I’d learned it from Houdini!
Behind The Scenes.
At the height of their fame E & S employed over a hundred local craftsmen (Shades of Edwin’s Supreme) who worked from their homes plus a regular Staff of 40 in their factory in Kempston Road, Bedford, supplemented by a number of senior citizens all doing their bit for the old Firm. All this in addition to importing novelties from around the world. Regular adverts in appeared in magazines, boys’ comics and Abra. Indeed in the June 1959 issues of Abra it was announced the opening of a new shop at 145-146 High Holborn ( not far from Davenports famous 111 address) Somewhere in the family archives Tina has a photograph of herself, aged 8 in the arms of Tommy Cooper in that shop.
The End of an Era,
In 1980 Bryce sold his share of the business to David (Penny’s husband)
who with John Basnett ( his father in law) moved the Firm down to Launceston in Cornwall.
In 1982 Tina says’ We had to call it a day. Schoolboys were no longer interested in stink bombs & invisible ink, preferring computer games’.
Ernest Ellisdon died in the 1970’s;John Basnett in 1995 & Bryce (aged 82) in
June 2005. But there’s still Tina, Penny, their husbands Jerry( the factory foreman) & David+ children & grandchildren. Ellisdons may rise again one day
I only have the instructions left in my files for the Cigarette In Handkerchief & a 1972 E & S catalogue, from Neville Wiltshire, who achieved great status in his school days with a pack of Ellisdon Striptease cards! However, on the bookshelves there are still copies of Easy Card Tricks by L. Widdop, Modern Magic by Bert Douglas & Modern Conjuring by J.C. Cannell. Their ageing covers are still bright with the colour, excitement & knowledge of magic they brought to a young schoolboy in the 40’s. I’d never part with them. I still refer to them. They were my first entrance to the Wonderful World Of Magic.
Postcript.
Sid Templar, founder of the Hawkins Bazaar chain of novelty shops, was inspired by Ellisdons. He put out a 24 page, mini catalogue taken from their 1938 & 1956 catalogues. Alas it sold out BUT if you go to
www.partytoo.com on the net, click on party products then gifts then books, they have a supply at 90p each. I’ve bought 10 and six have already gone out, by request, to magicians all over the country who still remember how they sent off postal orders to The Largest Mail Order House For Novelties In The World.
And to those of you who have memories of E & S please let me know and I’ll pass them on to Tina who will be delighted to hear from you.
Began magic at 9 in 1942. Joined Staffs M.S at 13. Nottm.Guild of M. (8 times President. Prog Director 20years)IBM. Awarded Magician of Month 1980 By Intern. Pres. IBM for reproducing Dante's Sim Sala Bim. Writes Dear Magician column for Abra. Mag.