On October 9, 1895, the semi-weekly Pine Bluff Graphic newspaper published an article describing the “Marvelous Power Displayed by Charles Elliot Niswonger, the Mind Reader.” The article summarized Niswonger’s recent performance at the Pine Bluff Opera House and told of his more notable mentalist feats. It also provided an interesting lead, which, in turn, propels one down a rabbit hole of 1890s mentalists and magicians, one which reveals all the intrigue, scandal, and bizarre deaths one could hope for or expect.

Charles E. Niswonger was born in Darke County, Ohio, in March of 1868. A man who wore many hats, Niswonger was a published author, an employee of the Little Rock and Memphis railway and, of course, a mentalist. His book, The Isle of Feminine, was published by Little Rock’s Brown Printing Company in 1893, two years prior to his Pine Bluff performance. How he went from romantic novelist to railway worker to an acclaimed mind reader remains a mystery.

While his connection to Arkansas remains unclear, what is not in question is Niswonger’s power to impress with his mind-reading abilities. During his demonstrations at the Pine Bluff Opera House, he performed a popular feat in which a member of the audience would hide an object in a secret location which Niswonger would locate using his mentalist’s powers. The author of the article states, “He is able not only to locate articles, but seems to use the mind of his subject just as he would his own.” No magic show would be complete without a card trick; Niswonger did not disappoint, wowing his audience by locating hidden cards and identifying them accurately. Although these tricks were impressive, it was Niswonger’s concluding feat that was, in fact, the impetus for this article.

In his final demonstration, the mentalist paid homage to the late W. Irving Bishop (1855-1889), a well-known American mentalist. While Bishop was known for his own unexplainable mental feats and his “airing of grievances” with one of his peers¹, he is probably best known for the unique and disturbing way in which he died (which happened to be while performing the very same trick with which Niswonger closed his Pine Bluff performance in 1895). Bishop suffered from catalepsy, a condition which occasionally rendered him unconscious and paralyzed. During his final performance he became unconscious and was moved upstairs where he remained in a coma-like state. Two New York physicians (one of whom, it was later alleged, had been eagerly awaiting the opportunity to perform an autopsy on Bishop’s brain due to his mentalist abilities) declared Bishop dead and performed an unauthorized autopsy a few hours after his apparent death. Bishop, aware of his condition (in which the body is rendered comatose and for all intents and purposes appears deceased), habitually carried an identification card on his person instructing that no one should perform an autopsy for at least 48 hours after his apparent death. Unfortunately, this card was not found on Bishop’s person, and it is probable that, while in a paralytic state, he was still alive when the autopsy was performed.²

Six years after Bishop’s death, on stage at the Pine Bluff Opera House, Niswonger performed his closing trick, the same trick that Bishop had been performing when he became unconscious. It involved an old hotel registry book; an audience member was asked to select a name from one of the pages and to keep it a secret. Niswonger then identified the correct date and page and pointed out the name of the guest whom the audience member had secretly selected. Niswonger, going one step further than Bishop ever took the act, reproduced the signature of the guest on a blackboard placed 10 feet away using a small copper wire attached to a member of the audience. Clearly, Niswonger was influenced by the renowned and late Irving Bishop but, it appears, that he was successful in his own right, not only as a mentalist but as a romantic novelist (The Isle of Feminine, surprisingly, can still be purchased through a variety of online sources or may be read for free).

In researching Niswonger, very little was found in terms of how he came to be in Arkansas, what inspired him to become a published author and the details leading up to his performance in Pine Bluff. This said, the dangling carrot that propelled this research was a small article in the Pine Bluff Graphic,³ now publicly available on the Chronicling America site⁴.

Katherine “Katie” Adkins is the Arkansas State Archives Project Manager for the Arkansas Digital Newspaper Project (ADNP). She enjoys regularly delving into the historic Arkansas newspapers that are being digitized as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, a collaboration between the Library of Congress and funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Dive into your own research using the digitized newspapers on Chronicling America. 

1 Early in his career, Bishop exposed the trade secrets of Anna Eva Fay, another well-known mentalist at the time, and publicly identified her as a fraud. Having once managed her career, Bishop was familiar with the intimate details of her performances. Bishop went so far as to include a “Fay act” in his own performances where he explained all of her tricks.
2 In the aftermath of his death, Bishop’s wife and mother pursued charges against the two physicians but a hung jury resulted in no one being held responsible for this unfortunate incident. 
3 https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89051163/
4 Chronicling America is a free historic newspaper repository from the Library of Congress, made available with funds from the NEH.