Chung Ling Soo was a stage name of US stage magician William Robinson(1861-1918). He is famous for dying when his "live target" trick went wrong.

During his early career William Ellsworth Robinson called himself Robinson, the Man of Mystery. 1900 he changed his name to Chung Ling Soo and took his show to Europe. He took the name as a variation of a really Chinese stage magician Ching Ling Foo , and to increase his allure with a touch of exoticism. He also used many of the Foo's tricks.

Chung Ling Soo maintained his role as a Chinese scrupulously. He never spoke onstage and always used an interpreter when he spoke to journalists. Only his friends and other stage magicians knew the truth. He corresponded with Harry Houdini.

In 1905 in London, when both Soo and Foo were performing in different theatres, they developed very public feud - possibly just for show - calling themselves as the only "Original Chinese Conjurer" and the other one as an impostor. Foo challenged Soo to perform his tricks but did not show up in the appointed time. Whether this was possibly by design, is unknown.

Due to his later death, Soo's most famous trick was the "live target" (or "comdemned to death") trick. In this trick Soo's assistants - sometimes dressed as Boxers - took two guns to the stage. Couple of members of the audience were called on the stage to mark a bullet that was loaded to one of the guns. Attendants fired the gun at Soo and he seemed to catch the bullets from the air and drop them on an plate he held up in front of him. In some variations he pretended to be hit and spit the bullet onto the plate.

Actually, Soo palmed the bullets and hid them into his hand when they had been examined and marked. The muzzle-loaded guns were gimmicked such that the gunpowder charge fired in a chamber below the actual barrel and bullet never left the gun.

Trick went badly wrong when Soo was performing in the Wood Green Empire , London, in March 23 1918. The gimmicked gun was worn out and some of the gunpowder exploded in the wrong place. Bullet hit Soo into chest.

Soo was rapidly taken to a nearby hospital but he died the next day. Soo's wife explained the nature of the trick and the inquest judged the case "accidental death".

Some conspiracy-minded theorists have continued to suggest that the death was not accidental. In 1955 US stage magician Jack Clarkson claimed that Soo was in debt, that his wife was having an affair with his agent and that the incident was an elaborate form of suicide. Others have suggested that his agent assassinated him this way. There is no evidence to this direction.

Books

• Virginia Andrews - A Gift from Gods: the Story of Chung Ling Soo (1981)