On this day in 1939 Horace Goldin was performing onstage at the Wood Green Empire theater, the same stage on which William Robinson was fatally shot in 1918. No such sudden tragedy occurred during Goldin’s performance, but afterward he remarked that he felt exhausted, and the following day he died in his bed.
Asked sometime earlier what he considered to be his best trick, he remarked: “My best trick was in tricking the public to like me and my tricks and thereby tricking the managers into paying four times the going rate paid to a magician before.” On his death The Daily Express reported that while he had reportedly earned £700 per week he died with just £587 to his name.
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