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A cabinet is placed centre stage with the opening framed in naked electric lights to conceal the inner workings, and the interior is hung in the usual funeral black.
Laura Estelle Ellis is the subject. She opens with a pretty singing number, after which she seats herself and an assistant goes through the motions of cutting off the head. The head is then carried across the cabinet and placed in a bowl at the opposite side, where. Seemingly unattached, it sings again.
The mechanism of the illusion is easily guessed at. It is a cheap device, not very well executed and hardly of the sort to carry weight with any but the most provincial audience.
Source:
Variety 7:2 (07/13/1907)