JACOBS, JOSEPH (known as Jacobs the Wizard):
English conjurer; born at Canterbury 1813; died Oct. 13, 1870. He first appeared in London at Horn's Tavern, Kennington, in 1835, when he introduced the Chinese ring trick. At the Strand Theatre in 1841 he achieved a great success by the aid of expensive apparatus. Jacobs in 1850 invented the trick of producing from under a shawl bowls of water containing goldfish; he appeared at the Adelaide Gallery in 1853, in America in 1854, and in Australia and New Zealand in 1860. In the last-cited year he opened the Polygraphic Hall in London.
Bibliography:
- Jewish Record, Nov. 18, 1870;
- Frost, Lives of the Conjurers, pp. 214-220, London, 1876;
- Boase, Modern British Biography.
