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(Germany: 1726 - 16th May 1803)
British-Jewish parents. Moved to England in 1760. Likely inventor of Clock Dial (1777). He was the first magician of note to feature mind reading. He played in 1781 at the Haymarket Theatre in London to appreciative audiences. Was contemporary and rival of Philip Astley and Giuseppe Pinetti.
Coauthors: Giuseppe Pinetti, Gustavus Katterfelto
The Conjurer's Repository or the Whole Art and Mystery of Magic Displayed by the following celebrated characters; Pinetti, Katterfelto, Barrett, Breslaw, Silbley, Lane &c
This is a compilation of tricks lifted from other conjuring books. William Bradford writes in his review in Genii:
It contains general magic, mostly of the close-up variety, a lot of mathematical mental magic, a lot of chemical effects, one trick called "How to show the Hen and Egg Bag, and out of an empty Bag to bring above an hundred eggs, and afterwards a live Hen", and even some pages on calculating probabilities...
This early work from 1784 deals with a number of interesting subjects including conjuring, fortune telling, riddles, paradoxes, funny stories, math tricks, chemistry, electricity and other science tricks.