P. T. Selbit - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

His birth name was Percy Thomas Tibbles and he was born in Hampstead, London. He developed an interest in magic in his youth, when he was apprenticed to a silversmith. The basement of the silversmith's shop was leased to magician and inventor Charles Morritt who used it to develop new tricks and the young Tibbles would sneak in to study these when Morritt was away. Tibbles began doing a coin and card manipulation act under the stage name P. T. Selbit, which he created by spelling his last name backwards and dropping one of the "B"s. He also used Selbit as a pen name, working as a journalist for a theatrical paper, writing a magic handbook and editing a trade journal for magicians.

Between 1902 and 1908, Selbit worked in music halls under the name Joad Heteb. He had deduced audiences wanted something that seemed exotic so he donned greasepaint, robes and a wig to perform as a "pseudo-Egyptian" character. This episode reflects two characteristics that marked much of his magic career: inventive ability and an entrepreneurial desire to keep pulling in audiences with something new. In 1910 Selbit toured with an illusion titled "Spirit Paintings", in which audience members were asked to name an artist and then pictures in the style of that artist mysteriously appeared on illuminated canvases. His next tour featured a trick called "The Mighty Cheese", in which audience members were invited to try to tip over a huge circular model of a cheese wheel, which they found impossible to do because it contained a gyroscope.

In 1912 Selbit began working for Maskelyne and Devant, who had come to dominate the business of magic shows in Britain with their productions at the Egyptian Hall and St George's Hall. Selbit's first role with Maskelyne and Devant was to tour music halls and American vaudeville during 1912 and 1913 presenting Devant's "Window of a Haunted House" illusion. In 1914 Selbit introduced the "Walking through a Wall" illusion at St. George's Hall.