{"id":7317,"date":"2010-01-26T15:57:53","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T14:57:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/?p=7317"},"modified":"2012-12-19T17:00:15","modified_gmt":"2012-12-19T17:00:15","slug":"bohemias-magic-shop-remembered-by-chris-jeffrey-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/?p=7317","title":{"rendered":"Bohemia’s Magic Shop \u2013 remembered by Chris Jeffrey"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Bohemia<\/a>

Bohemia Magic Shop with (presumably) owners Mr and Mrs Spray.<\/p><\/div>\n

By Chris Jeffrey<\/strong> (Jun 2007)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure what year I discovered The Magic Shop at 110 Bohemia Road. It must have been around 1960. The shop was owned by Mr and Mrs Spray. Roland Spray had been a professional conjurer until his sight started to fail and he had to give it up. I had been hooked on conjuring since receiving a David Nixon Magic Set for Christmas, and every Saturday as a boy of about twelve or thirteen I used to cycle up to Bohemia Road and spend up to an hour in the company of Mr Spray and his magic. In retrospect it must have been a bit trying for him to have to entertain a small boy every week, but he did not seem to mind. He would demonstrate a lot of the tricks from behind the glass display counter, and to see a brown rubber cigar passed from one hand to the other and then vanishing\u00a0 was amazing. It still sends a tingle down my spine to think about it.<\/p>\n

I bought the cigar, a rubber egg, a stone egg, a set of multiplying billiard balls, Chinese Linking Rings, a black bag for vanishing the stone egg as made famous by Tommy Cooper, and other tricks too numerous to mention.\u00a0 When Mrs Spray died a light seemed to go out of his life, and although he soldiered on alone I wonder whether it was worth the struggle for him. By this time Mr Spray was nearly blind, and I sensed that maybe he\u2019d had enough when I was finally admitted to the inner sanctum, a small parlour at the back of the shop. Here he offered to sell me some of the props which he had used during his career as a stage magician.<\/p>\n

Without giving away any of his secrets I can say that I bought a wooden box with secret panels, a red wooden box with a hidden black bag, and a red cardboard box with a black interior and a concealed flap.\u00a0There was also a black, velvet-covered circular display stand with hooks for hanging magically produced watches on.<\/p>\n

Strange to think that now, almost fifty years later, I still visit the shop of an elderly gentleman in Bohemia Road for a pleasant hour or so on most Saturday mornings. The difference is that the only prestidigitation that you\u2019ll see in Bookman\u2019s Halt occurs when money changes hands.<\/p>\n

COMMENTS<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Paul Smith<\/strong> writes (Aug 2007)\u00a0Dear Sir, I picked up a copy of your May issue while on business in Bohemia, and was fascinated to see an article on Bohemia\u2019s Magic shop. Your picture caption was indeed correct \u2013 the couple standing in the shop doorway are Mr and Mrs Spray. I know this because I was brought up in St Paul\u2019s Road in the late 1950s and 1960s and knew the area very well then. More to the point, I have a fairly direct family connection to Mr Spray himself. My recollection of Roland Spray\u2019s life differs from the account portrayed in the article, which suggests that Mr Spray gave up performing after his eyesight began to fail. In fact, he was still a practising magician long after he\u2019d gone completely blind. By that time, of course, his first wife had died, but for a long time my godmother Ethel had acted as his on-stage assistant \u2013 increasingly, she became his eyes. Eventually they married, and Ethel came to live at and help run the shop. There were many stores in that part of Bohemia Road and the surrounding streets that are now no longer there. For instance, in Cranbrook Road there was a grocer\u2019s called Pegram\u2019s Stores, while Butler\u2019s Emporium stood on the corner of Salisbury Road and Bohemia Road. There was also a furniture shop where Park Lane Homes is now, and two doors down from there was the Cabin, a sweetshop whose owners lived above it. There were more than just these few, of course, but the Magic Shop is one I remember really well because of the family connection.\u00a0Paul Smith,\u00a0Hollington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bohemia Magic Shop with (presumably) owners Mr and Mrs Spray. By Chris Jeffrey (Jun 2007) I\u2019m not sure what year I discovered The Magic Shop at 110 Bohemia Road. It must have been around 1960. The shop was owned by Mr and Mrs Spray. Roland… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[111,7,77],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7317"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7317"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25063,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7317\/revisions\/25063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bohemiavillage.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}