The founding of our magic club

Throughout 1990 John Field had several discussions with Brian Lee about magic particularly on the technical side trying to help him with the tricks he had bought at Christmas. He began to realise how much he was missing the company of magicians, talking about magic and trying out new ideas. He had the idea that a small group of magicians in his area of Surrey might meet once a month to fill that need. He canvassed the idea with John Wilkinson and Brian who both expressed enthusiasm for the idea. They all thought that there might be five or six of them and that they could take it in turns to meet in each other’s houses. A small, informal group with no rules, money or any formalities.

It seemed to him that the best place to recruit like-minded magicians was by placing an ad in the Abra “smalls”. To be honest he did not expect a great response and thought that he would be lucky to get one reply. The advert ran for two weeks, the first on Saturday 19th January 1991 and the second repeated the following week. The advert quite simply read “MAGIC ENTHUSIASTS – Meet new friends with a view to arranging regular meetings in the North Surrey area. First date in February. For details contact John Field” Donald Bevan kindly gave the new club a plug in his editorial on the 2nd February.

John’s wife, Monica, was slightly apprehensive. She had been around in magic long enough to know that there are many “oddballs” in the strange community called magicians and as he was proposing that the first meeting should be at their home she really wondered what they were letting themselves in for.

In fact he received far more calls than he expected including some voices from the past namely Bill Caldwell and John Palfreyman. In all some 17 people made enquiries and were invited to attend on Thursday 7th February 1991. Everyone was required to be in a position to explain about their background and interest in magic. They were also all required to perform at least one trick by way of an audition, something which many feel is lacking in the Society today. All those attending were asked to complete a questionnaire (see appendix) which in effect led to the basic foundation of the Society.

In fact the meeting did not take place. On the night of the 6th February they had one of the heaviest snowstorms for many years with some six inches of snow falling. Many roads were impassable and more snow was threatened. A quick phone call to all concerned led to the meeting being postponed to Thursday 21st February 1991.

The great night arrived and they hastily re-arranged their rear lounge to provide seating theatre style with a card table at the front. And waited! To the best of his recollection the first to arrive was Dave Redfearn but others soon turned up and the chairs were quickly filled. He started the ball rolling by giving a brief resume of his background and then launching into a dealer item by George Blake called Wundeck. He had purchased this from Oscar Oswald many years previously and had performed it many times. It was an impossible prediction of a freely selected card. In a way performing it that night changed his magical direction completely.

Those attending that night were John Anscombe, Julian Bird, William Caldwell, Leslie Cole, George Dallinson, Steven Day, Jeffrey Drayton, John Field, Dean Forster, Leslie Jarvis, John Kenton, Brian Lee, John Palfreyman, Tony Peach, Colin Peters, David Redfearn and John Wilkinson. These seventeen have the distinction of being recorded as the founder members of the Society

One by one they all took it in turns to go through the same ritual. He cannot remember what everyone did but his two oldest sons, then aged 12 and 9 were enthralled by what they saw and when Tony Peach produced a live dove from nowhere they were all taken by surprise. It was a fascinating evening and they all resolved to meet again on 14th March and he agreed to book a venue. This was the Marshall Room at the Ashtead Peace Memorial Hall in Ashtead. The Hall itself was built for the benefit of the village residents after the end of the First World War and was to become their home for the next three and a half years. The entire meeting was recorded on VHS tape which still exists somewhere.

At the first meeting he had distributed a questionnaire inviting members to comment about the future of the club, if indeed it was to have a future. Several were returned promptly enabling him to prepare a summary which was sent out with the details of the next meeting. The response is duplicated in the appendix. Interestingly the final name of the Society was not amongst those originally suggested.

The second meeting took the same format as the first with everyone performing a few tricks and chatting informally about magic and life generally. They were all keen to keep the association going and decided that they would meet on the second and fourth Thursday of each month. The hall met their requirements and they decided to continue using this as their venue although it was agreed that the meeting on 25th April would be a business meeting at his house to make fundamental decisions about the club. Already they needed some formal structure because they were asking everyone to contribute £2.00 a night to defray the Hall expenses and they were generating a surplus. With the letter fixing the dates of the next meetings he attached an outline of the topics to be considered at the business meeting. (See Appendix)

By the 25th April they had sixteen possible names for the Society, which were listed on a ballot form. (See Appendix) Number thirteen on the form was the Surrey Society of Magicians. They invited everyone attending to nominate three names from the list and after counting the votes they ended up with a tie between the “Surrey Sorcerers”, and the “Surrey Society of Magicians” each receiving seven votes. They added to this short list the next most popular name the “Surrey Institute of Magicians”. By a show of hands it was finally agreed to name the club “the Surrey Society of Magicians”.

Thus was the club born.

Written By Founding Member, John FIeld