his own flat in Bloomsbury in London. The spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle who attended the séance was unaware of the trickery and declared the clairvoyance manifestations to be genuine. Correspondence with Harry Houdini Selbit had performed an illusion known as "Walking Through a Brick Wall" at St. George's Hall, London in 1913. The American magician Harry Houdini had performed the illusion a year later at Hammerstein's Roof Garden in New York, 1914. Friends of Selbit in England stated that Houdini had originally observed Selbit perform the illusion in London and had stolen it as his own. Houdini responded by claiming that he had purchased the rights from the owner of the illusion, Sidney Josolyne. Selbit rejected the claims of Josolyne and stated that he was the originator of the illusion, and this caused a dispute with Houdini. In Selbit's illusion, an attractive young lady went through the wall. This was different than Houdini's illusion as he had gone through the wall himself. The illusion worked by use of a trapdoor that went underneath the wall. Sawing through a woman There are many versions of the illusion of sawing through a woman or sawing a woman in half as well as other illusions that are based around that theme. There remains a debate as to the exact origins of the idea, with some suggesting there is a record of it from 1809 or that the idea can be traced back to ancient Egypt. Modern magic inventor Jim Steinmeyer has written that a description of the illusion was published by the great French magician Jean Robert-Houdin in 1858, but Robert-Houdin's idea remained just that, a written description of an effect. Selbit is generally recognised as the first magician to perform such a trick on a public stage, which he did at the Finsbury Park Empire theatre in London on 17 January 1921. In fact, Selbit had previously performed the illusion in December 1920 before a select audience of promoters and theatrical agents at the St. George's Hall to try to persuade one of them to book him to perform it. In Selbit's version a female assistant got into a wooden box that was similar in proportion to a coffin but slightly larger. She was secured there by ropes around her wrists, ankles and neck. The box was then closed, obscuring her from view. After the box was placed in a horizontal position,