Adelaide was a professional dancer who married a famous magician named Alexander Herrmann. She started out as his magic assistant, but then, he tragically died when she was in her 40’s. Without any money or means of supporting herself, she dove head-first into the magic industry and made a name for herself practically overnight. People loved her work so much, she performed magic longer than her husband ever did, and even longer than most men ever did in the Victorian Era. Even though her act was famous and well-loved at the time, her memory has tragically been all but forgotten today.
The Assistant Becomes The Magician
Born in 1853 in London, Adelaide Scarcez was living in the heart of the Victorian Era. Her father built a museum called The Egyptian Hall on Piccadilly street, which drew huge crowds of people. As a young girl, she wanted to be a professional dancer. Even though her father was wealthy and probably well-connected in the London entertainment scene, it was her dream to move to New York City and become a dancer.
When she arrived, Adelaide needed a job. The ballet world in New York is incredibly competitive, and there is a small window of time in which girls can actually get their foot in the door. Even if they get hired, their window of opportunity is very small before they have to retire. Instead of the New York Ballet, Adelaide was working for The Kiralfy Brothers, who had a circus and burlesque show.
She found her golden opportunity when she met a magician named Herrmann the Great, which was interesting, because she thought Herrmann the Great was back in London. Turns out that there were two Herrmann brothers- one named Compars who performed in Europe, and Alexander, who performed in the United States. He agreed to hire her as his assistant. Like most ballerinas, Adelaide was thin, elegant, and graceful. So she fit in perfectly to the magic assistant role.
The two fell in love, and got married in 1875. At 22 years old, Adelaide was officially one of the Herrmanns. As time went on, Adelaide learned plenty of magic tricks, and she started to invent her own, but they were very difficult to pull off. She would encourage Alexander to use her tricks on her behalf, after demonstrating them during rehearsal. But he would often fail, because they were too hard.
For example, she made a trick where various colors of sand are poured into a bowl of water, but then the magician reaches in and grabs dry sand out of the water. When Alexander embarrassed himself in front of the crowd, he decided to stick to the tricks he knew he could handle.
In the Victorian Era, spiritualism was very popular, and people were being duped out of their money in hopes of communicating with their dead loved ones. Instead of trying to push the envelope to do highly skilled illusions, Alexander started to publicly debunk mediums and psychics who claimed to communicate with the dead. He exposed them by replicating how spiritualists do their tricks, and explained it all to the public. Herrmann helped expose a famous medium named Ann O’Delia Diss Debar, who was eventually sent to jail for fraud and rape. One of her tricks was to claim that she was being possessed by the spirits of famous dead artists, and she would sell those paintings for huge amounts of money. Harry Houdini was also speaking out against her, and the entire magic community celebrated when she was finally behind bars.
In 1896, when Adelaide was 43 years old, Alexander died. She never expected that her husband would die at such a young age. Back then, an assistant was nothing without her magician. Even though he was successful and made a lot of money, it was a far from enough to retire on. Adelaide also genuinely loved magic, and she didn’t want to stop.
Adelaide thought that maybe the name “Herrmann the Great” could live on in someone else in the family. So she tried to convince her nephew Leon to become the new Herrmann the Great, but they often disagreed on how to run the show. She became his manager, and also spent time teaching him how to do tricks. Things were going well, until he became very arrogant. He believed he could do it all on his own without giving his aunt a percentage of his earnings.
Leon Herrmann fired Adelaide as his manager. However, as soon as she was out of the picture, he failed miserably. He had no natural talent for magic, and any success he had in the past was because of his aunt’s coaching. Leon Herrmann gave up on magic. Adelaide realized that if she wanted something done right, she would have to do it herself.