Clifford, Edith | The sabre swallower who impressed Houdini

Clifford, Edith

The Cliffords. L'Avaleuse de Sabres in the Latest and Most Sensational Act of the Twentieth Century. Newport, Kentucky: The Donaldson Litho Co., ca. 1915

Color lithograph poster (27 x 40 1/2 in.; 685 x 1027 mm). A couple of almost imperceptible creases at top margin. Framed and glazed with Plexiglas. 

Edith Clifford joined the Barnum & Bailey Circus in Vienna in 1901 and is still remembered as one of the most prodigious sword-swallowers of all time. Clifford is reported to have routinely swallowed eighteen- to twenty-inch blades and, on occasion, even a twenty-six–inch sword. She was also known for swallowing up to twenty-four blades at one time. Clifford impressed no less than Harry Houdini, who wrote in Miracle Mongers and Their Methods (1920) that he attended the circus in 1919 "especially to witness Mlle. Clifford. … The sensation of her act is reached when the point of a bayonet, 23 1/2 inches long, fastened to the breech of a cannon, is placed in her mouth and the piece discharged; the recoil driving the bayonet suddenly down her throat."

Clifford was twice married to circus performers, first to James Morris, the "Elastic Skin Man," and then to Karl Bauer, a German-born aerialist; both couples were billed, under Edith's last name, as The Cliffords. The present poster evidently depicts Bauer, who, as Ricky Jay observed, "is generously given equal billing" even though "his sole function appears to be handing his wife the objects she will devour" (LP&FW).

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, p. 6; LP&FW, pp. 290–91 & color plate