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Deception has always been an integral part of magic. So when Sophie Lloyd set about attempting to gain access to the formerly male-only ranks of the Magic Circle, she concocted an elaborate disguise.
To become the magician Raymond Lloyd, she wore a male bodysuit, wig, gloves to disguise her feminine hands – making sleight of hand even more difficult – and wore “plumpers” in her mouth to give herself a square jaw.
“I had to change my look completely. We took it very seriously,” said Lloyd, now in her 60s, sitting in the Magic Circle headquarters in London 30 years after she donned the disguise to pass the entry exam.
“I remember feeling a bit foolish standing up there in front of the three [Magic Circle] examiners and a big audience of over 200. I was very nervous, but it worked. When I did the interview afterwards, I pretended I had a very bad throat to disguise my voice, and he totally believed it.”
The deception was a success and Lloyd was duly admitted to the exclusive society. But when she later revealed herself to be a woman, after hearing rumours the society was on the brink of admitting female members, her membership was revoked.
Ironically, she was ejected from the Magic Circle on the same day the first women were admitted as members in October 1991.
Now, 30 years later, Lloyd will be welcomed as a member of the Magic Circle at a show on Thursday, after being successfully tracked down through a public appeal last year.
“We are delighted to finally be able to invite Sophie back in to the society as herself,” said the Magic Circle president, Marvin Berglas. “It is something we should have done when we accepted those first women into the club in 1991. I’m so glad she has accepted our apology so we can right this wrong for what happened all those years ago.”
Lloyd’s deception was the brainchild of her close friend and magician Jenny Winstanley, who was infuriated that although she could perform at the Magic Circle, she wasn’t allowed to become a member.
She felt she was too recognisable to pull off the stunt herself, so recruited Lloyd, then an actor learning her trade in London in the 1980s, to help. The duo set out to prove that women were worthy of their place at the society, and were just as good at magic as men.
“I remember she said to me: ‘I’ve got the most amazing idea,’” said Lloyd. “She said, you should take the exam. Oh, we can do it, I know we can do it. She played my agent, Sylvia. I knew that it wouldn’t be easy.”
She said Winstanley was “really excited” to find out that women were going to be allowed to join the Magic Circle, and felt “completely snubbed” by the society’s reaction to their trick.
“We couldn’t get our heads around it, we thought people would be amused. I was annoyed, but she was hurt,” she said. “We had proven we could keep secrets and were good enough to get in. It looked ridiculous that they were offended by what we did and that we were thrown out of a magic club for deception.”
Laura London, the first female chair of the Magic Circle, who spearheaded the search to find Lloyd, said: “It is such a shame, which is why we thought this story just had to be told.
“I felt it was important the Magic Circle should be able to recognise Sophie as the role model for women magicians, as well as show that we are now a completely open society,” she said.
“For two people to go to such extraordinary lengths to prove a very important point, it’s inspiring. To welcome Sophie is probably one of the greatest things I’ve been able to do since I’ve been a member here for 22 years.”
The Magic Circle tried in vain to find Lloyd when her story came to light, but she had seemingly vanished into thin air. It turned out she continued performing magic for about a decade after being ejected from the Magic Circle, touring the country with an anti-bullying themed stage show in which she played a young boy.
She later moved to Spain with her husband, and it was only after a family member spotted the coverage of her story that she decided to come forward. Lloyd said she was initially reluctant to contact the society “because I wasn’t that happy when I left [the Magic Circle]. I was just sad.”
The warm welcome back was “bitter sweet”, Lloyd said, as Winstanley wasn’t able to enjoy it with her – she died in a car crash in Sardinia in 2004. She said her friend would have been thrilled by the reaction and to see how different the society was now.
“In the old days, going back 30 years, there were just older men – grey hair, suited up – and you didn’t get many young people, not really. You never saw women,” Lloyd said. “It’s completely different now. Everyone is welcome.”
Winstanley’s contribution to magic will also be recognised in Thursday’s ceremony. Lloyd said: “Jenny was a wonderful, passionate person. She would have loved to be here. It’s for her really.”
