“FIND THE LADY”

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 July 1939, Page 11

“FIND THE LADY”

CARD-SIIARPERS BEATEN.

The Duke of Somerset, the tall, 57-year-old holder of the second oldest dukedom in Britain, who made one of his.rare public appearances to open two new 8.8. C. transmitting stations at Start Point and Clevedon, Somerset, on June 14, is more feared than a policeman by card-sharpers. The Duke is one of the most expert conjurers and sleight-of-hand men in Britain, and is president of the Magic Circle, the society which was started over thirty years ago by Mr. Jasper Maskelyne and to which most brilliant illusionists belong. He has the reputation of being able to outwit the cardsharpers, and it is because racecourse tricksters can never be quite certain that the Duke is not among the crowd to whom they are "telling the tale’’ that he is so feared. A few years ago when lie was al a race-meeting in Ireland a friend of his was fleeced of £3O by some sharpers. Tho Duke heard about it. He joined the ring of “suckers” who crowded round the little collapsible table on which tho sharpers spread out the cards.

Keeping up his pretence of being an “innocent,” the Duke eventually allowed himself to be drawn in. The trick tho sharpers wanted to play on him was tho old one of “Find the Lady,” where three cards, one of which is a queen, are manipulated so quickly that the final postion of the “Lady” is not where it seems to be. But the Duke, who was even better at the trick than the sharpers themselves, found the Lady every time, and within a few minutes had taken over £4O.

The shock of having met their master was so much for the sharpers that they took to their heels. The Duke, who is a South African war veteran with the Queen’s Medal and five clasps, and a D.S.O. from the Great War, started his sleight-of-hand tricks when he was a boy because he was so dissatisfied with a box of conjuring tricks his father gave him as a birthday present. Ono of his tricks has even baffled the magicians of the Magic Club. He “burns” a £5 note in full view of his audience and then restores it to the owner undamaged. Although he has been asked many times to give a demonstration of his conjuring, the Duke refuses to perform in public. "I don’t believe in giving shows in public,” he told a Sunday Referee reporter in London, “as it would be doing a lot of hard-working professionals out of a job.”