Fairground shacks and circuses made their appearance in traveling fairs where illusions were presented in the form of side shows , most of them based on the optical inventions of Tomas William Tobin who used mirrors in 1866 ( with The illusion of the Sphinx and The Oracle of Delphi ).

Mainly female " pseudo phenomena " were exhibited and featured such as the headless woman , the three-headed woman , the flower woman , the spider woman , the transparent woman , the fish woman , the amphitrite ( a flying sea nymph using a variation of the Pepper ' s ghost )… The most famous are Thauma , the trunk of a woman placed on a swing , based on the black art ( Dr Lynn , 1879 ) and Miss Gorilla ( woman transformed into a gorilla by the Metempsychose process of Walker and Pepper , 1879 ).

Barnum & Bailey were the great purveyors of these phenomena which took place under their " black temple of magical wonders ". A certain magician by the name of Roltair is credited as the creator of these side show illusions . We find , according to the advertising of the time : Thauma , the splendid apparition and speaking supernatural creature , the birth of Venus , the living mermaid , the mystery of the peacock , the living spider , Flora , Fatima , Magneta , Stella , Galatea , or the seven heads of Bluebeard ' s wives … “ A surprising gallery of forty living beauties , lined with supernatural visions , aerial ghosts and ethereal appearances . The rarest and most extraordinary scientific representation of theosophical manifestations ”.

Side show illusions / Mlle Gabrielle - Dr Lynn s Thauma )

These side shows , once again , relegated woman and undermined their power to an unhealthy curiosity ; cut in half , beheaded , decked out with three heads , transformed into a spider … The shadows of a " curse " are not far away and reminiscent of their ancestorial archetypes . These exhibitions also foreshadow the fate of women in scenic illusions to come ⁷ : cremation , decapitation , quartering and piercing ... all worthy tortures from the Middle Ages where the resurgence of the witch ’ s figure and its eradication was not far away .

The decapitated Princess - Side show illusion

SPECIAL EDITION | 2021 15