And that’s why he spends his days spreading the gospel of Goodyear welts, vegetable-tanned leather, and hand-lasting by bandsawing shoes and boots in half to reveal how they’re made.

You could call P. T. Selbit the Julius Caesar of the magic world. He came, he sawed, he conquered. One hundred years ago on Sunday, illusionist Selbit put a woman in a box on the stage of London ...

One high-wire artist is garroted by his wire, another is skewered on a bed of bayonets, the manager gets a tent spike neatly through the noggin, and a Lady-Who-Gets-Sawed-in-Half gets sawed in half.