Henri Robin

A carte-de-visite portrait of the French magician Henri Robin (1811-1875).

Born Henri-Joseph Donckele at Hazebrouck in northern France, he showed an early aptitude for conjuring. Adopting the stage name Henri Robin, he became one of the most successful magicians of the day, with a varied act that included many popular tricks. According to one historian of Victorian magic: 'Small gifts were produced from a cornucopia previously shown empty; birds were produced from a gypsy cauldron; a mechanical figure performed various antics; a child was lifted painlessly by a single strand of its hair; two young assistants were vanished from beneath a large cone. But perhaps the outstanding feat was "The Medium of Inkerman", in which a drum purporting to have come from the battlefield of the recent Crimean War tapped answers to spectators’ questions. The instrument was isolated upon a thin tripod. Who, then, was responsible for the tapping? Obviously the spirit of a drummer from the Battle of Inkerman!' [Geoffrey Lamb, Victorian Magic, 1976.]

The Davenport Brothers were famous American mediums; when they came to Paris in 1865 they created a sensation with their 'chambre mystérieuse'. To show that the brothers were fakes, Robin recreated their most famous trick. Bound hand and foot and concealed in a similar cabinet, he produced equally mysterious manifestations without any assistance from the spirit world.

Photographed by Pierre Petit of Paris.