Subsequent Career and Illusions
Following his court battles in America, which effectively prevented him achieving the same level of success there as he had in Britain, Selbit returned home in 1922. He turned his attention to developing new illusions in the hope of creating something that would repeat the impact of sawing. He is credited with devising Girl/Man without a Middle (1924), Through the Eye of a Needle (1924), The Million Dollar Mystery, Stretching a Girl, and Avoiding the Crush, Selbit's Blocks and possibly also the Siberian Chain Escape. Although some effects were highly ingenious and several were sufficiently successful that they continued to be performed by subsequent generations of magicians, none achieved the fame of sawing.
In 1928 Selbit went to the aid of Morritt, the magician from whom he had surreptitiously learned so much at the start of his career. Morritt had been arrested and charged with "obtaining money under false pretences" as the result of a misunderstanding over the way he was scraping a living from an act titled "Man in a Trance". Selbit and Will Goldston helped to fund Morritt's defence and he was eventually acquitted.
Read more about this topic: P. T. Selbit
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