On the evening of May 9 1911, thousands of people packed into the Empire Palace Theatre in Edinburgh. They had come to see a magician. But not just any magician. He was one of the most successful illusionists of his age – flamboyant, secretive, spectacular and very, very expensive. His real name was Sigmund Neuberger. But audiences didn’t pay to see Neuberger. They paid to see The Great Lafayette. And Lafayette understood something about showbusiness that remains true today:
Being good isn’t enough. You have to make people remember you.
His productions were enormous. There were elaborate sets, machinery, assistants, animals and illusions involving carefully timed substitutions and transformations. Lafayette guarded the workings of his performances jealously. Everything about him was calculated to preserve the mystery. He had transformed himself into a character. On the 9 May however, the illusion became horribly real.
The Empire’s programme that week featured Lafayette and his company in a production called ‘The Lion’s Bride’. A surviving programme from the theatre dated 8 May – the day before the disaster – is still preserved in Edinburgh’s collections, complete with scorch marks. The following night, The Lion’s Bride would become Lafayette’s final performance.
The performance involved an Orientalised set, a live lion and a substitution where Lafayette apparently changed places with another performer, and like so much theatrical scenery of the era, the stage was filled with material capable of burning very quickly.
During the performance, fire broke out above the stage. Exactly hoe those first moments unfolded has been described differently over the years. Modern research into the disaster points towards a failure involving an electrical light above the stage, which ignited the surrounding material. Other accounts have described scenery or a lantern catching fire. Whatever the precise first spark, there was soon no doubt about what was happening. The stage was burning and it burned fast.
For an audience watching an illusion show, there must have been a terrible moment of uncertainty. Was this part of it? Smoke, flames, disappearing performers and apparent danger where all part of the world Lafayette created on stage. But this time there was no illusion.
The Empire held an audience of roughly three thousand people that night, and here is where the story becomes almost unbelievable for a reason sometimes overshadowed by Lafayette’s extraordinary death:
The audience got out.
The theatre’s safety curtain prevented the fire from immediately spreading from the stage into the auditorium. Contemporary and later accounts describe an evacuation carried out with extraordinary calm, with the orchestra reportedly playing the National Anthem as people left. The precautions designed to protect the paying public had worked. Behind the curtain was another matter entirely. Backstage, performers, stagehands and animals were trapped in a rapidly developing inferno. The fire curtain itself had reportedly become stuck before it completely descended. Some backstage doors were locked. Flames tore through the scenery and equipment surrounding Lafayette’s company.
Later retellings often make a particularly dramatic claim about those locked doors: that Lafayette himself demanded they be secured because he was obsessed with preventing anyone from discovering the secrets of his illusions. It is certainly a good story, but it is also one that deserves a little caution. Research into the fire confirms that backstage exits were locked, but establishing precisely who ordered them locked, and why, is rather more difficult. Like many stories surrounding famous disasters, the neatest version has been repeated so often that it has gradually acquired the appearance of certainty. What is certain is that the conditions backstage were disastrous. And somewhere in that chaos was Lafayette.
Accounts soon circulated that he had initially escaped but returned to save his animals. The details vary – some say his horse, others mention the lion. Contemporary accounts describe him returning to rescue his animals or pets. One version occasionally repeated today has him returning for his beloved dog, Beauty, but that one we can dismiss. Beauty was already dead.
The dog was, by all accounts, one of the great loves of Lafayette’s life. Beauty had been given to him as a puppy by fellow magician, Harry Houdini, and Lafayette adored her. She reportedly travelled with him, ate exceptionally well and enjoyed the sort of attention usually reserved for human celebrities.
When she died, just days before the Edinburgh fire, Lafayette was, understandably, devastated. He arranged for her burial at Piershill Cemetery in Edinburgh and reportedly made arrangements that when his own time came, he would be buried with her. I doubt he could have imagined how soon that would be.
Back at the Empire, the fire was eventually brought under control. Then came the terrible business of recovering the dead. Among the remains was a badly burned man dressed like the Great Lafayette. There seemed little reason tom doubt his identity, Lafayette had been performing when the fire broke out. He was missing. Here was a body wearing his costume. The magician was dead. The remains were taken to Glasgow and cremated and that should have been the end of that.
It wasn’t.
Three days after the fire, workers were still searching through the wreckage beneath the stage when they discovered another body. Another man dressed as Lafayette. This one was found with distinctive rings belonging to the magician, identified by his manager. The Great Lafayette had been found again.
The explanation for this mix-up lay in the very thing that had made Lafayette famous.
Illusion.
Lafayette used a body double named Richards as part of his act. During Te Lions Bride, the audience saw what appeared to be Lafayette in circumstances where the magician could not possibly have been. That was the trick. And in the confusion after the fire, the trick had continued. The first body recovered and identified as Lafayette had actually been Richards’ They had cremated the wrong magician.
There is something almost impossibly macabre about it. A man who had spent his career appearing where he shouldn’t be and disappearing from where he apparently stood had managed, entirely unintentionally, to perform one final substitution after death. Even contemporary newspapers were forced to correct the extraordinary story. Lafayette had been declared dead. His supposed remains had been cremated. And then Lafayette himself had apparently reappeared beneath the ruins of the theatre. There would be no miraculous escape this time. His actual remains were also cremated.
Then Edinburgh witnessed Lafayette’s final procession. Huge crowds reportedly lined a route of more than two miles as his ashes were carried through the city. The great showman who had spent his career drawing audiences had managed to gather one last one. His destination was Piershill Cemetery. Beauty was there waiting for him. The Great Lafayette’s ashes were interred beside his dog, and a white marble monument marks the grave.
It would be easy to end the story there. The magician and his beloved dog reunited. Te extraordinary mistaken cremation. One final illusion beyond the grave.
But the Empire Palace fire was not just Lafayette’s tragedy. Other people died with him. Members of his company and theatre staff were caught backstage, and animals used in the production also perished. Contemporary reports and later accounts do not always agree on the exact number of victims, which is reason enough to resist turning a disputed figure into another piece of repeated folklore.
What the disaster did demonstrate was a disturbing imbalance in theatre safety. Measures designed to protect the audience had worked remarkably well. Thousands escaped. The people working behind the stage had been far less fortunate. The disaster contributed to renewed attention being paid to stage fire precautions, including sprinkler systems and safer emergency exits. Fire-resistant doors equipped so that performers could escape quickly became part of the discussion surrounding theatre safety. The Empire itself survived. It was rebuilt, reopened, and the site remains associated with entertainment today.
Lafayette became something else. A legend. But that was inevitable. Sigmund Neuberger had deliberately created the Great Lafayette as something larger than an ordinary man. Contemporary descriptions portrayed him as a master showman, a man who understood spectacle, mystery and publicity. His death contained all three – a burning theatre, a frantic escape, a magician apparently killed trying to save his animals, a corpse in costume, a cremation. And then, three days later, another Lafayette emerging from the stage. If someone had proposed it as a illusion, it would have sounded ridiculous.
Yet the central, extraordinary fact remains.
The Great Lafayette really was identified among the dead. The body believed to be his really was cremated. And then his actual remains really were discovered.
For once, the magician didn’t need to fool the audience.
Reality had already done the trick.
