Magician who pretended to be a man given Magic Circle membership

A magician who tricked her way into the Magic Circle is finally being granted membership – 34 years after she was kicked out.

Sophie Lloyd says she disguised herself as a man to fool examiners into letting her join the elite society in 1991, at a time female magicians were not allowed to be members.

When the Circle announced it was permitting women to join later that year, Ms Lloyd revealed her deception, prompting the society to expel her at the very same meeting it admitted its first female magicians.

Following a public search to find her, the Circle has now apologised to Ms Lloyd and is presenting her with a membership certificate on Thursday evening.

In the late 1980s, Ms Lloyd was studying at a school of mime in London where she befriended magician Jenny Winstanley.

“Jenny was increasingly frustrated that women, including herself, could not join the Magic Circle,” Ms Lloyd says now. “So she came up with an idea to infiltrate the society by having me dress as a man. She couldn’t do it herself as she was too recognisable.”

It was a colossal undertaking. Ms Lloyd had worked as Miss Winstanley’s assistant at gigs but hadn’t performed magic on her own, so had to learn.

She invented a new identity – Raymond Lloyd – and disguised herself with a wig, body suit and “croaky” voice. She wore gloves to hide her feminine hands.

“I had to study the character for two years,” Ms Lloyd told Canadian broadcaster CBC in 1991.

There was nothing she could do about her height – 5ft 2in (1.57m) – so instead she styled Raymond as a “young-looking, 18-year-old,” with some facial “fluff”, she told CBC.

By March 1991, Ms Lloyd was ready to have her skills put to the test. Rather than being scrutinised at the Magic Circle’s headquarters – which Ms Lloyd and Miss Winstanley deemed too risky – Ms Lloyd opted to invite the society’s examiners to a performance at a working men’s club. She even stayed for a drink with one of the examiners afterwards.

“He didn’t suspect a thing,” she says.

A week later, Ms Lloyd was told she had been granted membership to the Circle.

For months, Raymond Lloyd performed magic and even socialised with other Magic Circle members.

When Ms Lloyd and Miss Winstanley later heard the society was going to begin accepting female magicians as members, they decided to come clean about their deception and approached the press.

But the Magic Circle did not take kindly to the news. In October 1991, at their first meeting accepting women into the society, Ms Lloyd was kicked out.

“The Magic Circle was furious,” Miss Winstanley told CBC at the time. “They say it’s because she deceived them. But that’s exactly what magicians do, isn’t it?”

“It was so sad,” Ms Lloyd adds. “We had proved that women were equal to men in magic. It looked ridiculous that they were offended by what we did and that we were thrown out of a magic club for deception.”

Ms Lloyd spent about 10 years performing across the country as a magician before moving to Spain, where she took early retirement and has been involved in animal rescue work. Miss Winstanley went on to run a pottery firm in Norfolk, before she died in a car crash in 2004.

The Magic Circle started a search for Ms Lloyd last year.

“I felt it important that the Magic Circle should be able to recognise Sophie as the role model for women magicians, as well as show that we are now a completely open society,” says Laura London, the society’s first female chair.

Ms Lloyd only found out about the search for her when her sister sent her a link to an interview. Initially reluctant to join the society because of the amount of time that had passed, she eventually decided to do it to honour Miss Winstanley’s legacy.

Today, the Magic Circle is still heavily male-dominated. The society has around 1,700 members, of which 5% are women.

Ms Lloyd will receive her new membership certificate at an event at the Circle’s London headquarters on Thursday evening, which will feature performances by five magicians and be attended by both members of the society and the general public. The society says Miss Winstanley will also be recognised at the event.

“Jenny was a wonderful, passionate person,” Ms Lloyd says. “She would have loved to be here. It’s for her really.”