Samuel Murphy Bodie

Samuel Murphy Bodie, born in Aberdeen, 1869, "Dr Walford Bodie MD" was to become one of Scotland's best known Music Hall entertainers. His shows included sleight of hand, hypnotism, electrical tricks and ventriloquism. Bodie is remembered locally as a flamboyant and imposing character, always smartly dressed with an immaculately groomed and waxed handle-bar moustache. A master showman, he often started his performances with a demonstration of his electrical powers by passing 30,000 volts through his body. Unknown to his audience he used static electricity which produced a lot of sparks but was quite harmless. At one time he used an electric chair. In 1920 his friend, escapologist Harry Houdini, gave Bodie the chair which had been used for the first execution of its kind in the USA in 1890. His use of the title MD was unpopular, especially with Glasgow's medical students who pelted him with missiles and stopped one of his shows in the city in 1909. Famously he always maintained that MD stood for "Merry Devil."

Bodie settled in Macduff after his marriage to a local girl, Jeannie Henry, who he met at show in Banff when he was seventeen years old. He later built a handsome family home, The Manor House, in Skene Street. Jeannie and her sisters, Mary and Isabella, played major roles in Bodie's shows, Jeannie as "Princess Rubie," Mary as "Mystic Marie" and Isabella as "La Belle Electra." Mary and Isabella both died in their early twenties, Mary in 1906 at the Manor House, and Isabella in Glasgow in December 1919. Jeannie's younger sisters, Louie and Kitty, travelled with the shows as "musical conductresses."

Bodie took a lively interest in the affairs of the town and had a public baths and swimming pool built for the use of its residents. "Bodie's Fountain", an unusual granite memorial to his daughter Jeannie who died at the age of 18 in 1909, stands in Duff Street, a few hundred yards from the family home. His eldest son, Albert, after a spell with a local firm of solicitors, followed in his father's footsteps as a member of the Royal Society of Illusionists. He was 26 years old when he died in 1915. The show travelled far and wide and it was on a return voyage from India, during World War I, that the ship they were on was torpedoed in the Mediterranean. Bodie and Jeannie were separated after the ship sank and it was several weeks before they were reunited. During his extraordinary career Bodie amassed a small fortune. In addition to the house he had built in Macduff in 1906 he owned a house boat on the Thames and a theatrical club in London. The great showman was in his 70th year when he died in Blackpool on the 18th October, 1939, while his show was at the town's Olympia. GS.

From an article in North East dialect, courtesy of The Ballater Eagle, 1998, Betty Allan recalls Walford Bodie's spectacular show at the Victoria Hall, Ballater, in 1935. "The handsome Walford Bodie strode on stage in evenin' dress, silk hat and cape. Wi his black hair and glitterin dark een, he fair generated pouer and excitement himsel. A believe that some o the local worthies wis hypnotised that nicht, but A wis ower young tae tak in aa that. The sheer spectacle wis fit fair ca'd the feet fae me. Bricht lichts o every colour flashed roon the stage, blinkin on and aff sae quick it fair faized me. Blue, green, reid, yella, dazzlin white. Noo ye could see something or somebody - then there wis naething there at aa. The highlicht cam at the end o the programme. Blue spotlichts homed in on centre stage. A thin, yalla-haired quine dressed in shimmerin silvery white cam in. In nae time she wis hypnotised by the maestro and laid oot, stiff and straicht, een closed, on a bench. Twa slim posts wis set up, each aboot the hicht o a man. Then the quine wis lifted and set wi her heid on ae post and her heels on the ither. She wis still stiff as a board. Foo could that be? Then the post aneth her feet wis taen awa! A couldna believe A wis seein this. There she floatit Still she bade rigid, her heid restin on the single slim post and her body at richt angles tae it, like a railway signal. The finale wis fin Bodie took awa the post fae aneth her heid! There she floatit under the flickerin steel-blue lichts, rigid, on thin air, held up by naething at aa! A can see it aa as clear noo as on that nicht in Ballater's Victoria Hall in 1935. A canna mind foo she wis brocht back tae normality, but A mind she took a bow amid thunderin applause, and walked aff the stage as fleet as ye like. We spoke aboot Walford Bodie for lang aifter that, and A still think o him wi a lot o respeck. We thocht then that the quine had some wey or ither been electrocuted, but of course the electrical bittie o it micht hae been jist the hokum o a consummate showman. Bodie impressed us as naebody else had ivver deen. He brocht tae oor sheltered, quate village life the thrill o the unknown. Here wis something even oor ain big fowk didna understand! Wow! And we had been privileged tae see it! A still feel privileged. Some fowk ca'd Walford Bodie a charlatan, and some a miracle healer. There's nae doot he wis a byornar [extraordinary] kind o a mannie. He must hae been mair nor sixty years aal that nicht in Ballater, and his 'beautiful lady assistant' wis maist likely his young second wife, Florrie Robertshaw. The quine best-kent as his subject for the 'illusion of levitation' wis a relation ca'ed 'La Belle Electra' and she toured Britain wi him for years. It wis a faimly show and maist o the artistes were related tae Bodie and his first wife Jean. Bodie died in 1939 and wis beeried in the faimly grave at Macduff. For me, as for mony anither that fell under his spell, he remains 'THE GREAT AND ONLY WALFORD BODIE, ELECTRICAL WIZARD OF THE NORTH.' The toon o Macduff should be prood o him."

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