Crowds throng outside the Masonic Hotel on Marine Parade Napier for what is thought to be the January 1931 Mardis Gras festival. Photo Hawke's Bay Museum's Trust.
Crowds throng outside the Masonic Hotel on Marine Parade Napier for what is thought to be the January 1931 Mardis Gras festival. Photo Hawke's Bay Museum's Trust. historic2.JPG
The annual Napier Mardi Gras festival began in 1913 and continued in one form or another for the next 80 or so years. Its founders, the Thirty Thousand Club, ran it for around 50 of those years.
As with the modern day Napier Art Deco Festival, many of the gatherings took place directly in front of the Masonic Hotel on the Marine Parade.
The band rotunda in front was ideal for speeches and presentations, and the wide open space of the Marine Parade for sideshows and stalls.
One of the sideshow stalls for the January 1931 Mardi Gras Festival was run by Franklin John Smith, who appeared as a strongman called "Athol the Great."
The shows had feats of strength, for example, bending metal rods, twisting horseshoes, breaking out of chains, or smashing watermelons on his head.
After the week-long Mardi Gras Smith would conduct a Napier show as a magician and illusionist under the name Carter the Great complete with a company of international stars.
Advertisements for the Napier Municipal Theatre show were placed around town in placards and posters and newspapers.
Napier Detective-Sergeant Fitzgibbon was suspicious of the act and made inquiries at the theatre the day before the show. He remembered Carter the Great (an American stage magician of international repute) performing some years ago in Napier and was curious if it was the same person.
He wanted to know about the part of act where Carter the Great would catch bullets from a gun. A man Fitzgibbon came across in the theatre said: "You know no man can catch bullets". The bullets, the man admitted, were fake.
When Fitzgibbon demanded to see Carter the Great, Smith stated it was in fact him.
"Impossible," said Fitzgibbon. "He's in America." Franklin refused to budge – he was "Carter the Great".
Anyway, the show went on the next day.
The ticket price would have been worth the farcical comedic performance that would unfold.
First up was a hypnosis act where 10 volunteers were called on to the stage.
Franklin, aka" Carter the Great", tried to make each man fall forward or backward. He could not make them do either.
He then tried telepathy.
Audience member Walter Girling submitted a question to an attendant on a piece of paper: "Is a person of the same name as me in the South Island any relation?" and he signed it "W. G".
Attempting to mind read what was on the paper, Smith said that Girling's question was asking about property in Auckland.
The question was then read out by the attendant - and the audience were not satisfied with Smith's answer.
"He made us look fools, and we didn't pay for that," said Girling.
A girl was then placed in a basket on stage and Smith, as Carter the Great thrust two swords into the basket.
During the act the basket lid flung open and the girl fled the stage.
Quite noticeable to the crowd, and a plainclothes police officer, was the unfortunate young lass limping off stage.
It would later be known one of the swords Smith thrust into the basket had injured her ankle.
A near riot ensued when the crowd had seen enough, and Smith was "counted out and booed".
The plainclothes constable, Herbert Coddington saw Smith after the show who remarked to him: "I couldn't do a thing right, and it was a putrid show".
Fitzgibbon, on the evidence from the constable, would the next day arrest Smith and charge him with being an imposter of Carter the Great. He would face seven charges of false pretences at the Napier Court House.
Smith's lawyer asked Fitzgibbon if he knew if Carter the Great was alive. To which he replied, "yes", as he had received this from "official sources".
He was performing still then. Carter the Great had fortuitously missed sailing on the ill-fated Titanic 1912 voyage when he couldn't fit his 31 tons of show equipment on board.
Smith's lawyer tried to argue that anyone could assume any name of anyone they liked as it was just a stage name.
The magistrate was not convinced and said Smith was an impostor and sentenced him to one month's imprisonment in the Napier jail.
Smith, who had a number of aliases – including Pit Pot Smith, Franklin Devon, Howard Maitland, Frank John Hertz, it appears, had a rather colourful past of doing this sort of thing – on both sides of the Tasman Sea.
His first appearance in Hawke's Bay for which he was convicted appears to be in 1918 as a 22-year-old at the Hawke's Bay Agricultural and Pastoral Show where he neglected to collect Amusement Tax at a sideshow.
Smith also defrauded P.J.C. Lloyd of £13 (about $1300 in today's money) who lent him the money on the basis of security of £20 ($2000) he had in an Auckland bank account. He was found guilty on both charges and fined accordingly.
More serious was the allegation of rape in 1920 of a 17-year-old girl Franklin had taken in with the promise of a theatrical career.
The attack took place in Auckland where he described himself at the trial as an "Illusionist, or magician".
Smith was found guilty and sentenced to seven years hard labour, but on appeal the sentence the charge was reduced to indecent assault and the sentence to three years.
The trial also referred to the "Lo Kum incident" which involved Smith adopting the stage name Mr Devon, and claiming he would merely assist in a magic show at Wellington's Opera House featuring a Chinese magician called "Lo Kum", who was advertised as being direct from Hong Kong.
Advertising for the show promised £100 ($10,000) to anyone who could prove Lo Kum was not "a true Chinese magician".
"Mr Devon" strapped an unfortunate Chinese man to a board on stage and raised him by winches (in complete theatre darkness) to a lofty height. Mr Devon would run around the stage "making magic passes".
A report from the time stated: "To the mingled delight and disgust of a crowded house, the winch broke, the Chinaman, uttering Oriental anathemas at the helpless "Devon" land on the stage with a horrid bump".
It was the end of Smith's performances in Wellington. It is not known if the £100 was ever claimed.
In 1925 he went to Australia and his shows and other acts landed him in a Melbourne Court.
His last known offence was in 1948 for selling tweed in South Dunedin for which he did not have a hawker's licence.
Michael Fowler (mfhistory@gmail.com) is a contract researcher and commercial business writer of Hawke's Bay history.
Follow him on facebook.com/michaelfowlerhistory
On Sunday March 14 at 2pm Fowler will be doing a talk at the Art Deco Masonic Hotel followed by a high tea. Bookings only at iTicket under Masonic Hotel High Tea. There will an opportunity to buy Fowler's history of the Masonic Hotel.