| Title | Morison Pill Box. (Morrison) |
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| Description | Balls in a box appear, vanish or change color. |
| Details | Ellis Stanyon and other such as Henry Ridgely Evans were incorrect. The correct spelling -- as Professor Hoffmann noted -- was Morison with a single "r" after James Morison (1770-1840). Morison was not a magician nor the creator of the method nor the designer of elaborate pill boxes but rather a trader operating in the West Indies. After contracting a chronic illness on one of his voyages, he developed a vegetable-based tablet which seemed to cure him. Always looking for a new market, he decided to open an establishment ("The British College of Health") just across from St. Pancras Railway Station to make and sell his "Morison pills." He was enormously successful. At one point in the 1830\'s, his sales of pills and ointments were in excess of 65,000 pounds annually. By this time, the term "Morison pill" had become a household phrase...both for the product itself and as a term to note a miraculous remedy. Indeed, the phrase can be found in such diverse literary works of that era as Dickens, Kingsley, and even Engels. Contrary to current musings, James Morison did not sell his pills in elaborate wooden contraptions that resemble ornate ball vases...but rather marketed them in modest containers, papers and bottles.
According to Eric Lewis (whose account of the Morison Pill Box in the October 1987 Linking Ring is a very good source of information on the history and workings of this apparatus), the term was first applied to billiard balls rather than to a ball box...as a result a comic turn the great Philippe took early in his career. Then performing as Talon, he would do a pratfall and call for a "Morison pill" to ease his pain. The assistant would bring out a box of billiard balls which Philippe would appear to consume. The idea of a magic pill the size of a billiard ball brought a good laugh and like many successful jokes it was soon appropriated by other performers. For some time thereafter, magicians would refer to billiard balls as "Morison pills." It was much later that the name became attached to the version of the ball box we now call a "Morison pill box" (or as Prof. Hoffmann suggests "Morison's Pill Box"). |
| Researched by | Michael Edwards |
| Category | gimmick |
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