The Pellew Street Horror & Other Strange True Tales by Slemen Tom

Author:Slemen, Tom [Slemen, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-07-13T22:00:00+00:00

Monsieur Meganique

In the autumn of 1841, the north of England was afflicted with a series of dense fogs, and Liverpool was visited by the worst of them in October of that year. The Monk's Ferry railway-boat ran ashore in the deadly impenetrable mist that month, and the ferry-boats were compelled to keep their bells ringing constantly as they plied back and forth across the Mersey, to warn other vessels of their proximity.

On the Saturday evening of October 2 1841, a jade sea-fog of unusual opaqueness crept down a gas-lit Lime Street. A man in a dark green coat and a flamboyant hat sporting a jaunty feather, alighted from a carriage on that fogbound street and entered the foyer of the old Adelphi Hotel with half of his face swathed in a Persian blue silk scarf. Despite this, a few of the well-travelled guests in the Adelphi recognised the well-dressed visitor immediately; he was a supposedly genuine magician and mystic from France, known as Meganique. Some claimed he was nothing more than a charlatan, but an equal number of people swore he possessed genuine Occult powers.

A sceptical colonel who was lodging at the Adelphi is said to have challenged Meganique to give a demonstration of his 'powers' to the assembled guests and the French self-styled magician did not hesitate in accepting the challenge. Pointing to an unusual jewelled brooch on his lapel, he asked the colonel to gaze at it, which he did. The military man's five friends, who were also observing all of this, described the brooch's diamonds as flashing with a fiery rainbow light.

The colonel soon fell into a trance and Meganique concentrated on his forehead, as he read his innermost secret thoughts aloud for the benefit of the bystanders. The colonel had been having a clandestine affair with the wife of one of his friends, and that man was present in the gathering. A fight between the colonel and a fellow officer ensued and Meganique quickly made himself scarce. On the following morning, a chambermaid entered Meganique's room and caught him levitating a few feet in the air above his bed, wearing just his nightshirt. Her screams, as she dropped the bundle of clean linen she was carrying and careered off down the corridor, seemed to interfere with the magic and the occultist fell down on to the mattress in shock.

The most intriguing episode featuring the magician may interest Beatle fans. At the Royal Amphitheatre, on Great Charlotte Street (where the Royal Court now stands), there was an extravaganza being staged during the week that Meganique was in town. Well's Circus were putting on the show and two Victorian showmen about whom John Lennon would one day write a song, stunned the crowds with their acrobatic skills. Their names were William Kite and Pablo Fanque. Monsieur Fanque, the first black circus proprietor, in an age when slavery was still going strong, was also a superhuman gymnastic 'aeronaut'. He thrilled the Liverpool crowds by jumping through paper-covered hoops encircled

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