A Celestial Celebration
MADAM ZOMAH
“The Unsolved Mystery”
Zounds! After three years writing this series between 2006 and 2008, and updating it off-and-on over the past fifteen years, I have finally arrived at the end.
Before I get to my concluding profile, though, let me thank Sammy Smith and the late Phil Willmarth for initially publishing this column in The Linking Ring, and all the friends who provided information and images. I’m also grateful to Julie Eng and the team at Magicana for creating an online home for this material and giving me a reason to expand it. Access to sources like AskAlexander and Ancestry.com has led me to new information, and several of my subjects provided updates to their own careers. Each entry contains a list of other women in magic who could have been profiled, but I don’t pretend that these are exhaustive. The beauty of an online series is that updates are easy. I welcome additions and corrections to the information within these profiles.
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Many of the female performers whose names begin with Z were mind-readers. There must be something about the mysterious sound of the letter that makes it a good fit for that specialty. It’s certainly not a smart idea for getting one’s name first in the phonebook! Zallah, Zamra, Agnes (and later Ada) Zancig, Miss Zenola, Zidia, Madame Zilla, Zonda, Zorita, and Princess Zulieka are among the crystal-gazers who flourished—or in some cases flopped—during the vaudeville era and beyond.
One of the most successful of them all was Madam Zomah (1876-1963). Her real name was Adelaide Ellen Giddings, and she and her husband Alfred James Giddings (1872-1948) married in 1903. They performed a telepathy act as “The Marriotts” until 1910, when they changed the name to the Zomahs. Mrs. Giddings told Peter Warlock that she came up with the name “Zomah” after seeing an advertisement for Zambuk ointment on the subway. Using an elaborate Egyptian-themed setting with Madam seated on a high-backed throne and dressed in a robe and headdress, these English performers billed their act as “The Unsolved Mystery.”
Unlike Julius Zancig, Mr. Zomah was almost completely silent during the act, and yet his blindfolded wife could identify any objects presented to her. Magicians expecting a verbal code were baffled. In a two-page ad that appeared in Will Goldston’s The Magazine of Magic in 1917, Madam Zomah offered this challenge: “A code? You watch for it, listen for it, guess at it. You discover nothing; after a moment’s consideration, you reject every guess. The assistant makes no signal to Zomah; he speaks no word to her save the simple request for information and the acknowledgement that the information is correct.” The ad goes on to offer “big cash rewards to anybody who can duplicate her performance or can prove that she employs confederates.”
While Mr. Zomah never put himself forward in the act, he would move all over the theatre to select objects for his wife to identify. To quote a 1955 article in The Wizard: “No matter where Mr. Zomah was in a vast auditorium, stalls, circle, or gallery, descriptions of articles handed to him, together with the most intricate details, numbers, colours, quantities, and frequently intimate contents of receptacles, were transmitted with miraculous rapidity.” To conclude their act, the still-blindfolded Madam Zomah played a hand of nap (a trick-taking card game) with two members of the audience, using cards that had been shuffled, dealt, and cut by the spectators.
Sometimes called the “Human Wireless,” during their long career the Zomahs topped the bill at the London Coliseum and the Alhambra, and they toured America, India, Australia, and Canada. They performed before King George V and Queen Mary, and a letter expressing royal pleasure in their performance was reprinted in the Zomah’s publicity. Occasionally, however, their seeming powers of mental telepathy were taken a bit too seriously. Will Goldston tells one such story in his Sensational Tales of Mystery Men. In 1920, when the Zomahs were playing in Montreal, an agitated man named Major Griffith came backstage, begging that Zomah break a hypnotic spell that another man had placed on him. The Major swore that he no longer had control over his own actions and threatened that if Zomah could not help him, he would murder the alleged hypnotist.
As Goldston recounts the story, Zomah humored the man and pretended to “cure” him. Major Griffith left, and the magician thought that was the end of that. But a year later, he read that Griffith had shot his enemy fatally through the heart. Now, Goldston is infamous for embellishing his tales, but whether the yarn is true or not, the Zomahs would not be the first or the last mentalists to have bizarre encounters with true believers.
The popularity of the act took a hit, however, when it was “exposed” by J. C. Cannell in 1933. His article “Famous Music Hall Secrets Exposed” appeared in a magazine called Answers and explained the “Unsolved Mystery,” claiming that the act’s creator had personally revealed the method with him. In response, the Zomahs formed the Institute of Magicians in London in 1934 to “combat the menace” of exposure. Not only did Zomah insist that Cannell’s explanation was false, but he countered that as a member of The Magic Circle, he was forbidden by oath to reveal his secrets.
The Zomahs also took Cannell to court, alleging that his exposure had done serious financial damage to their livelihood. Furthermore, as creator of the act, Alfred Giddings accused Cannell of libel in claiming that he had learned the act’s secrets from Giddings himself. The case went to trial in 1935, and noted magicians appeared on behalf of the plaintiff, including Noel Maskelyne and Louis Gautier. Horace Goldin and Murray also testified, confirming that once a magician’s secret is out, a decline in bookings is inevitable. Theatrical agents were called in to verify the point, since the Zomahs had to demonstrate material loss resulting from the exposure. The jury wanted to know whether a code was in fact involved, but Zomah refused to take the bait, claiming that he had declined to answer that very question when posed by His Majesty King George V.
Mrs. Zomah herself took the stand, insisting that the couple would never dream of betraying the art of magic by revealing their methods. John Mulholland quoted this line of her testimony in The Sphinx: “Magicians who disclose secrets of tricks are regarded by their fellows as blacklegs and are shunned by all decent performers.” The judge ruled against Cannell and forced him to pay £900. But the damage had been done. Even an incorrect exposure was poisonous for bookings, and by 1937, the Zomahs had retired from the stage. Alfred Giddings remained president of the Institute of Magicians until his death in 1948, at which point his widow assumed the helm.
Stanley Collins was a close friend of the Zomahs and is quoted by his biographer Edwin Dawes as attributing much of the success of the act to Adelaide: “Zomah was possibly just a little too modest and self-effacing to be considered a great showman, but in Madam Zomah he had a partner of extraordinary charm and personality.” As it turns out, two women may have been responsible for the success of the act. Adelaide’s sister, Ethelbertine, was also a magicienne, but more importantly, it is thought that she was part of the secret behind the “Unsolved Mystery.” Etherlbertine supposedly hid behind the tall throne during the performance, and, using binoculars, told Madam Zomah what objects her silent husband was holding. But Madam Zomah never tipped the method. She once said in an interview quoted in Abra that “Every husband and wife who live in harmony for many years can to some extent read each other’s minds, and they do it every day.” She claimed that since the couple had no children, their secret would vanish forever with her. Madam Zomah died on March 3, 1963. She was 87.
A version of this article first appeared in the June 2008 issue of The Linking Ring and appears here by permission. For more information on the Zomahs, see David Britland’s post for 2 March 2016 on his blog Cardopolis. More of their story is also told by Bob Loomis in his book A First Look at Second Sight (2022).
Stargazing
A few other names must be mentioned: Miss Zarena was a magician from Scotland in the 1950s and ‘60s. Both Zelda, the “Queen of Mystery” and Myrtle Zento were female escapologists during the Houdini era. Zenda White did a black art act early in the twentieth century. Chinese performer Huang Zheng appeared at FISM in 2006. Zhou-Zhou and Yuanyuan from China won the coveted IBM Gold Medal in 2018. Diana Zimmerman (aka Diana the Enchantress) is a well-known magician, art collector, founder of CMS Communications, author of fantasy adventure novels, co-founder of the Magic Castle Junior Society, and so much more. Zirka (1877-1910) married the mysterious L’Homme Masque and had a manipulation act as the “Reine des Cigarettes.” Finally, Maritess Zurbano is a successful Filipina-American magician and hypnotist based in Seattle.