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OTD in early British television: 20 April 1937

20th April 2025

John Wyver writes: On what from production photographs looks like a rainy Tuesday afternoon on 20 April 1937, the fledgling Television service at Alexandra Palace, ever in search of noteworthy elements to broadcast, elected to screen as a local OB from the Park a demonstration of fire-walking. This was arranged by Harry Price (in the hat, second from right), of the (unofficial) University of London Council of Psychical Investigation, and was undertaken by Indian magician Ahmed Hussain and British amateur fire-walker Reginald Adcock.

As the Programme-as-Broadcast form recorded, during the 21-minute broadcast, for which Freddie Grisewood (on the right, talking to Price) was the commentator, both men ‘walked without injury over the red-hot embers of a wood fire laid in a trench 12ft [roughly four metres] long.’ In an article in August that The Listener described as ‘considered judgement’ on the substance of the broadcast, Price declared that, ‘We have solved the mystery of fire-walking.’

An expert self-publicist, Harry Price made his name exposing fradulent spirtualist mediums, working from 1920 onwards with the Society for Psychical Research. But after disagreements with their methods, he founded the rival Council for Psychical Investigation, and it was this group that supported his first explorations of fire-walking with Kuda Bux, the Indian magician who was also featured on pre-war television (and who was the focus of a recent OTD).

Price claimed that Kuda Bux’s fire-walking demonstrations, which he undertook with no signs of burning, were reported around the world. They supposedly prompted another ‘magician’ (Price used the inverted commas in his Listener piece), Ahmed Hussain, to offer his services for a further series of experiments. The first two tests took place in early April in a private garden in Carshalton, where Hussain demonstrated how he could avoid injury, while several volunteer students also walked the walk and sustained minor burns. The occasion can be seen here:

The culmination of the series took place before the television cameras on 20 April. A 12 foot long trench was dug for the embers, and this was filled four tons of oak logs. The fire was set going at 7am, and by 3pm the heat at its surface was measured (Price was always very precise about scientific details) at 800 degrees Centigrade. As Price wrote,

This was the hottest fire we managed to produce at any test, and the stiff breeze which fanned the trench accounted for the high surface temperature, which was again measured by the Cambridge Instrument Co., Ltd.

Hussain walked first, taking four steps in 1.6 seconds, and remained unburned, and then an undergraduate volunteers, Reginald Adcock, who had walked on a previous occasion, took 1.8 seconds to make three steps. He too remained uninjured, and afterwards told Price that with the practice he had had, he felt perfectly confident, and stepped onto the embers without the slightest hesitation.

Price was particularly impressed that Adcock surpassed Kuda Bux’s previous demonstration, both because the surface temperature at AP was nearly twice that when Bux walked and because Adcock was 40lbs heavier than the Indian. Overall, he concluded,

And so ended our scientific and controlled experiments, and the mystery of fire-walking was soiled at last. The secret is (a) the short contact-time of each foot with the embers; (b) the low thermal conductivity of burnt or burning wood embers; (c) confidence in walking. The experiments proved once and for all that no occult or psychic power, or a specially induced mental state, is necessary in a fire-walker.

Intriguingly, Price also noted that with the help of Mr S.J. Worsley he took some 200 photographs of the tests, along with slow-motion cine-film of each demonstration, shot from both the front and the rear. Where might these images and this footage be today?