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Billing himself as
"The White Mahatma"and changing his name to Samri,
Baldwin created the mentalism act in which unspoken audience questions are answered by the
mystic performer (commonly called a "question and answer"
act). Of course, this routine was already in use in private seance
rooms by spiritualists, but Baldwin is the one who first built the
routine into a stage act. To achieve this, he invented the wax
impression method of transferring messages to a clipboard, a method
still used by mentalists today. He coined the phrase "somnomency" or trance-talking, to
describe his act, which he called "Rosicrucian Somnomency".
Though Baldwin was careful to declare himself a magician and not a
medium, he was nonetheless regarded by many in his audiences as a psychic.
His professional
career began as an imitator of the famous Davenport Brothers, with
an exposure-type demonstration of spiritism and the Spirit Cabinet,
but soon evolved into a two-person mentalism act featuring his first
wife Clara, then later his second wife, Kitty
Baldwin. The act had a number of very successful world
tours.
Most of the time, the
Baldwins' act was promoted as a vigorous exposé of the methods used
by the popular fraudulent mediums of the day. However, there were
times that the women (especially Kitty) were performing more as
mediums themselves.
For some reason,
Baldwin decided to abandon show business in 1899 and go into the
mercantile business. It was a bad decision; by 1904, he was
financially forced to resurrect the mentalism act, and in 1906 Kitty
divorced him. The divorce proved to be the downfall of the act. By
1920, Baldwin was working as a technical consultant on the Thurston
show. Interestingly, he also did "personal readings" at
this time, answering questions from the "spirit world" in
exchange for a modest contribution from an interested sitter.
Apparently, he taught his daughter, Shadow, the "tricks of the
trade" as well.
At the end of his
life, Baldwin actually began to believe in Spiritualism as a
religion, and joined the San Francisco Spiritualist Church shortly
before he died.
Financially, Samri
Baldwin was a poor investor. By the time of his death, any money he
had earned was long gone. His daughter, Shadow, used some of his
stage tricks in her occupation as a professional psychic, but her
career was greatly damaged by Harry Houdini's exposure of spirit
mediums in the 1920s.
See
S.S. Baldwin: Exploder of Spiritualism
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