The greatest trick that “Raymond Lloyd” may ever have performed was a complex illusion: Convincing an elite, male-only society of magicians that he existed.
That performance won Mr. Lloyd acceptance into the society, The Magic Circle, in 1991. But after revealing a few months later that he was in fact a she, the performer was ousted from the club.
Now, The Magic Circle wants her back and has embarked on a quest to solve what turned out to be a disappearing act — and make amends.
“I would love to look her in the eyes and say, on behalf of the other magicians that we have, ‘You’re absolutely welcome,’” said Marvin Berglas, the president of society.
Based in London, the Magic Circle was founded in 1905 and lists celebrity illusionists David Copperfield and Criss Angel among its honorary members. For decades, only male magicians were able to join — until two women set out to call their bluff.
“I always wanted to be first lady in the Magic Circle,” one of them, Jenny Winstanley, told the Canadian broadcaster CBC in 1991. “Really wanted to prove that women are as good as men.”
But Ms. Winstanley was already regionally known as a magician at the time, according to Mr. Berglas. That could help explain why she turned to a young actress who went by the name Sophie Lloyd for help — and why Ms. Lloyd said she agreed to do it.
“I did it for Jenny,” Ms. Lloyd explained in the same interview. “She thought that it was so unfair that lady magicians couldn’t get into The Circle.”
The women told the CBC that they had spent two years building the Raymond Lloyd character. Ms. Winstanley said she taught the actress magic tricks, and they found ways to disguise what Ms. Lloyd described as her already boyish frame.
The test to gain membership in The Magic Circle, Ms. Lloyd told CBC, involved performing a 20-minute show with tricks and spending over an hour speaking with her examiner, a magician. She passed, earning full membership in March 1991, according to The Magic Circle.
Ms. Lloyd kept up the ruse of being Raymond until The Magic Circle started admitting female members in October that year. Then the women went to the press to reveal their trick.
The Magic Circle, apparently angered about being hoodwinked, voided the membership of “Raymond Lloyd” — and the story “got swept under the carpet,” according to Mr. Berglas.
Stuart Scott said that when he joined The Magic Circle about 20 years ago, he remembered hearing a vague story about a woman trying to sneak into the society.
“It was just one of those rumors. I didn’t think much of it,” Mr. Scott, who works as a deception consultant, said in an interview. “No one ever substantiated it.”
Years later during the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Scott said, he was researching the history of magic in London when he stumbled upon two books about The Magic Circle that both briefly referenced the incident.
“I thought, there has to be more to it than this,” he said. So he started digging, rooting out archival minutes from the society’s meetings and uncovering more about the ruse.
Mr. Scott integrated his findings into the tours he gives at The Magic Circle’s London headquarters, according to Laura London, the first woman to serve as chair of the society. Ms. London said when she first caught wind of the story about two months ago, she started poring through archives herself in hopes of tracking Ms. Lloyd down.
“I think her story is inspiring and it’s an important one to tell,” Ms. London said. “That there are brave women out there that do extraordinary things to prove that they can do things in an unjust world. Such as, in her case, to do magic as good as the guys.”
Professional women in magic are still fighting for recognition three decades after Ms. Lloyd’s feat. And only 5 percent of The Magic Circle’s approximately 1,700 current members are women.
The Magic Circle uncovered articles from the late 1990s that referenced Ms. Lloyd using magic to counteract bullying in schools — but no trace beyond that.
Ms. Winstanley, her partner in the ruse, died in 2004. So The Magic Circle reached out to Ms. Winstanley’s son, Nick Allen. But he said he did not know how to contact Ms. Lloyd — and thought her first name might have actually been Sue.
With little to go on, The Magic Circle turned to the media. But numerous articles in Britain have failed to find her.
Ms. London said that more than anything, she would like to find Ms. Lloyd to apologize.
“It’s important for us to find a way to give her a way to give her some closure on it, if she wants it,” she explained.
Whether Ms. Lloyd would take The Circle up on their offer remains to be seen.
“To be honest,” she said in her CBC interview, “I’m not into magic.”