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The man responsible for this change was Cheltenham-born John Maskelyne. As was Robert-Houdin, Maskelyne had been apprenticed to the craft of watchmaking, and he, too, had a great interest in conjuring. During a visit to a performance held in Cheltenham Town Hall, of the Davenport Brothers who professed to be producers of spiritualistic phenomena, Maskelyne probed part of their secret and he stood up at the conclusion of the performer and loudly announced that not only were the Davenport Brothers frauds, but further that within a month he would, in the same hall, duplicate, using natural means, the experiments that had been witnessed that afternoon.
Maskelyne kept his word for using as a partner George Cooke, he and Cooke decided that the pesentation of magic could be the profession for them. The year was 1865 and with the expose of the Davenport seance, plus something quite new, an escape from an examined box, the professional careers of Maskelyne and Cooke commenced with a performance in Jessop's Aviary Gardens in Cheltenham.
A tour of the country followed. The box of tricks became part of a sketch, "La Dame et la Gorilla" a trick that later assumed other names including "Will, the Witch and the Watchman" and was performed under the name of "The Witch, the Sailor and the Enchanted Monkey" by the American illusionist Kellar. It was in 1873 that Maskelyne and Cooke came to London and after appearing at a few concert halls that they had personally rented, they took over a small hall in the Egyptian Hall in Picadilly.
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