When picturing a magician, the image that usually pops into my head is a man with a mustache and a funny hat, tricking an audience. You might not know that Adelaide Herrmann, an impactful female magician, used her dance and illusion skills to take over her and her husband’s performance company and save her name from bankruptcy. Author Allison Meier wrote the article, “She Caught Bullets with her Bare Hands- and Made Magic’s Glass Ceiling Disappear,” She explained that growing up in Baltimore, Adelaide pushed the boundaries of Victorian womanhood by doing aerial acrobatics and dance. She met her husband at a talent show when he pulled her up to be a volunteer in one of his acts.

They married in 1874 and moved to a mansion where she and Alexander lived a luxurious life in a mansion with numerous animals, which increased their debt. In one of her memoirs, Adelaide said that back then, performers lost more money than they ever gained, and being a woman in Victorian times, making money was hard enough. Adelaide described that they tricked their audiences by “using music, lights, costumes, and a heightened sense of drama. The Herrmanns excelled at transforming theaters into phantasmagoric worlds where anything might happen.” As they performed, Alexander fell ill from repeated heart attacks, seemingly caused by tobacco. Adelaide begged her husband to quit, but he “would not, or could not,” give up cigarettes. He sadly passed away in 1896.

While this was a tragedy, his death began her career as a solo female magician. She did ask Alexander’s nephew, Leon, to take his place, and he did. Leon made his debut in 1897 when she did her famous “Bullet Catch.” Here, she used a sleight of hand to trick the audience, replacing a firing squad’s bullets with blanks and “catch the bullets.” She and Leon found they had some differences and went their separate ways a couple of years later, but Adelaide became known as a soloist queen of magic. Her specialty was still dance, but she continued to use their many animals to perform stunts and tricks to thrill their audiences. I knew every magic trick had a secret solution to it that was usually obvious. But after reading the bullet catch article about Adelaide, I realized how complex magic tricks could be. Many people have died attempting this bullet trick, but Adelaide showed no fear during the trick in hopes of saving her name and company from bankruptcy.

Adelaide thrived in the show business company, even after a tragic fire burnt down her warehouse, ruining her props and killing over 60 of her animals, she still defied the odds and chose to “rise again like a phoenix” and honor her life in performance through her memoirs and a show called “Magic, Grace, and Music” where she highlighted those three aspects of her career as a 73-year-old. She sadly died in 1932 but left behind a life of incredible, showstopping performance and significant impacts as one of the first female magicians.