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Professor E. Cooper Taylor

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Professor E. Cooper Taylor
BornEdward Cooper Taylor
February 16, 1852
New Brunswick, New Jersey.
DiedFebruary 16, 1927 (age 75)

Professor E. Cooper Taylor (1852-1927) was a touring professional magician as "Taylor The Wizard" and is said to have been the first to used the valuable idea (in 1882) of getting the cooperation of the police in challenging him to escape from their cuffs.[1]

Biography

In 1867, after attended a performance in New Jersey by John Henry Anderson Jr. (son of the famous John Henry Anderson (Wizard of the North), a fifteen year old Taylor went backstage to give him a demonstration of his own skill. He asked the professor if he could join the show and he was hired. Thus beginning the career as a touring magician that would continue for more than thirty years.

In 1869 Taylor left the Anderson troupe to start out on his own, and Anderson presented his father's linking rings. He would buy the equipment, with the rights to use the stage name, of retiring magician Otis Everett Crosby.[2]

His Bullet Catching act with a rifle and handcuff escape were great favorites with his audiences.[3]

He was SAM member No. 484 of the Boston Assembly when he passed away.[4][5]

References

  1. John Booth. Fine Art of Hocus Pocus, The. (1996): 181
  2. E. COOPER TAYLOR And His Fellow Touring Magicians of 1869 by E. Cooper Taylor III, Yankee Magic Collector, 1990.
  3. Taylor the Wizard by Cooper Taylor III in The Yankee Magic Collector, (1983)
  4. MUM, April 1927
  5. Sphinx, April 1927