What is the Magnetism or Resistance Act?
In its time, the act was variously explained as magnetism, electricity, spiritualism and hypnotism. During its heyday, various articles exposed the underlying principles of leverage and gravity which allowed the female performer to demonstrate superior strength to a committee of men from the audience.

Lulu Hurst--late 1890's.

The act, as pioneered by Lulu Hurst, consisted of: Balance Test: Inability to knock the performer off balance by pressing against a pool cue held horizontally. Forcing Test: Inability to force a cane or cue or to the floor across the performer's open palms. Heavy Weight Lifting Test: The performer is able to lift several one or more men in a chair from the ground. Chair Test: The attempt of one or more men to force chair to the ground while the performer has her hands resting on it. Umbrella Test: A man trying to hold onto an open umbrella held aloft by the performer would lose his balance. Cane Test: A man is unable to retain his hold of a cane or cue while the performer holds the object horizontally before her. Unruly Chair Test: A man is unable to retain his hold of a chair held against himself. Table Rapping Test: A series of inexplicable raps on a table (borrowed from the Spiritualist movement).

One Annie Abbott arrived in Liverpool aboard the White Star liner Teutonic on October 27, 1891. She was reported to be accompanied by her husband and by her manager, Mr. Christiana. The details of her appearances in Britain have been thoroughly documented by Edwin A. Dawes in The Magic Circular.

She performed at the Alhambra Theater in Leicester Square, London from November 14 through Christmas Day, 1891. It was these performances that established Annie Abbott's stardom. J. N. Maskelyne declared that "To say that this young lady has set the Thames on fire is a very mild way of putting it. London itself is ablaze with excitement." Her 1891 performances in England aroused tremendous controversy which fueled her fame. Illustrations of Annie Abbott's performance at The Alhambra, London, in 1891 indicate that she performed the balance test, forcing test, and heavy weight lifting test, as well as two new tests: Attractive Test: A subject who places his hands on those of Annie Abbott is easily dragged across the floor without any evident pressure of her fingers. Irremovability Test: Inability of a man to lift the "Magnetic Lady." At left: Thumbnail of Annie Abbott performance at the Alhambra. Click picture for higher resolution picture. Reprinted with the permission of The Milbourne Christopher Collection.

Dawes provides an account of Annie Abbott's London performances from the November 16th edition of The Times, which started with a "medical man having taken the magnetic lady's temperature, which was stated to be 95 degrees and considerably above her normal temperature." She began with the unruly chair test, and proceeded on to the heavy weight lifting test. The billiard cue test followed beginning with the cue held horizontally and the men pressing back against it, but then proceeded on to a variation of the heavy weight lifting test, referred to by Maskelyne in "A Human Magnet De Magnetised" as "The Billiard Cue Raising Test":

Then the cue was rested with its point upon the floor, while half-a-dozen committee men hung onto it and an agile gentleman of considerable age positively sat upon the butt and upon the hands of his friend. The cue bent but did not break. Miss Abbott lifted the whole pyramid of men and wood from the floor or caused it to rise by touching it.

This was followed by an irremovability test in which a gentleman could not lift Miss Abbott by her bare arms. Once he held a handkerchief between his hands and Abbott's arms, he lifted her easily. She then demonstrated passing the force on to a young boy. The Times was by no means largely favorable of the performance stating, "The tests were not sufficiently severe to justify a description of the whole affair as being anything more than a clever performance and there were certain respects in which it was weak."

An unattributed clipping from 1891 reports on this same performance run at The Alhambra as follows:

A subject who places his hands on those of the Little Georgia Magnet, as Mrs. Abbot [sic] is called, is dragged across the floor without any apparent pressure of Mrs. Abbot's fingers. A chair, in which a heavy man is seated, is lifted without apparent pressure on the sides of the chair. This performance is repeated with two, three, four or five persons stacked in the chair. Another property of Mrs. Abbott is her apparent irremovability under certain conditions. If her flesh is insulated by silk from that of the lifter she can be lifted by the elbows. When the experiment is made with bare arm it is impossible to move her. With a billiard cue she accomplished feats that not even Roberts or Peall would attempt. She is able, holding it lightly in her hands, to prevent it from being pressed down to the floor, or to prevent herself while holding it horizontally from being pushed back by several people exerting their strength simultaneously.

David Price (p. 458) adds information on this performance from Mrs. Abbott's Alhambra billing, a test in which a glass held against her body emanates a noise (Glass Test):

She stands erect on one or two heels (not even her entire foot) holding a billiard cue in her open hands. Each member of the audience committee tries by taking hold of the cue, to push her from her balance. They then try in twos, threes and fours...She holds a tumbler between her hands when a muffled, vibrant sound can be distinctly heard. This noise may also be elicited by laying the glass against any part of her body an in any manner.

A few years later (1895) Nelson Perry reports on Mrs. Abbott's act in the January issue of Cassier's. He references a chair variation, cane, and force tests with many others. The Child Test is mentioned for the first time. Perry's description stands out in its detail. He notes that:

She was recently in New York, and during her stay gave a number of private seances which were described somewhat fully in the daily papers. At one of these Sandow, the strong man, was present and invited to lift Mrs. Abbott. While standing on the carpet she was lifted with ease not only by Sandow, but by a number of others who were present. She called for a board, and upon placing it upon the floor, "for better insulation," she said, even the mighty Sandow was unable to lift her when she stood upon it. In order to "make herself heavy" she not only found it necessary to insulate herself from the floor by standing on a board, but also to "complete the circuit" through the other party. The latter she did by placing one hand on his neck and the other on his wrist. When Mrs. Abbott and her vis-avis were thus posed, she gave the latter instructions to lift her if he could, but even Sandow, who poses as the strongest man in the world, was totally unable to lift her feet from off the board....The natural inference is that, by some means, she renders herself heavy; but, as if to show that she not only possesses this power herself, but by the simple laying on of hands can confer this power upon others, she calls in a little boy or girl and challenges any one to lift the latter when she has properly completed the circuit. In this latter experiment, the positions are as follows: The child stands on the board, facing the man who is to do the lifting. The latter may catch the child as he chooses and will, doubtless, place his hands under the armpits. Mrs. Abbott, standing behind, but a little to one side, places one of her hands on the child's back, between the shoulder blades, and the other one she reaches over and places on the lifter's shoulder, neck or forehead.

As mentioned in the previous section, reviews of Annie May Abbott's performance at Tony Pastor's in 1907 suggest that on this occasion she may not have done a magnetism act, but, instead, performed as a monologuist on women's lives. Perhaps not surprisingly, reviews were mixed. A reviewer commented:

Miss Abbott has lost her Georgia accent but she monologues away at a great rate, just the same, and her line of philosophical dissertation loses nothing on that score. She is a pretty and shapely little brunette and wears a pretty little frock. She simply comes on and talks, and doesn't lose any time about it either, but hits out straight from the shoulder and lets the audience have her unique views on man, woman, dress, matrimony and numerous other mundane subjects which go to make up the average human existence. Her harangue is along novelty lines and she is about the most entertaining female monologuist in the business.

The report of another reviewer suggests that at least one performer viewed the Annie Abbott guise as an opportunity to speak out on women. The presumably male reviewer in Variety reports: "Miss Abbott talks and talks and talks; all about women. It is a monologue, really a speech, lasting ten minutes. Ten minutes pass quickly enough when you are asleep, but listening to Annie May Abbott from an orchestra chair--at Pastor's--is different."

The talkative attribute suggests that Variety may be reporting on the same Annie Abbott that appeared at the Brighton Theater in July 1909. A variation of standing on the board to resist lifting is described:

Annie talks her head off while working. She has an assistant. He only moves about, placing the committee in various positions...In one test, Annie stood upon the backs of two hands belonging to a couple of the committee. The hands were on the floor. A strong youth who could draw a wagonload of coal himself on a punch tried to lift Annie, but didn't. "You see," said "The Magnet," "the gentlemen inform me that there was no additional weight on their hands while he tried to lift me..."

The reviewer, concurred with the Variety reviewer, advising, "Annie ought to shorten her act and Annie might put in more comedy for vaudeville...."

While the previous reviewer said Abbott had "lost her Georgia accent," an Annie Abbott who appeared in Louisville in February 1911 and in Minneapolis in Nov 1918, was documented in the papers as using minstrel-show like language. Is this indicative of the tradition she drew upon or simply the newspapers' way of capturing a Southern accent? The Minneapolis News reports her as saying, "What am I? Well, seeing that I do not know myself it would be rather difficult to tell you. Like Topsy, I "just growed that way."" In the Louisville Post she reports, "All I know about it, is that like the measles, I got it; I don't know how, don't know why, and don't know what it is; but I do know it's funny, and it draws like everything, as a vaudeville act."

At Abbott's May 1, 1911 performance at the Avenue theater in Pittsburgh, PA, there are references to two new tests, an Animal Test and Wall Test, performed by a woman dressed as a little girl:

Miss Abbott has a wonderful control over animals as well as inanimate objects, and without the least show of physical exertion overcomes or rather nullifies the efforts from one to five men. She can't be lifted from the floor if she is so willed, although she weighs but 100 pounds. Ten men could not force her against the proscenium arch, although she touched the frames with but the tips of her fingers. She would pick some child out of the audience and successfully transfer this immobility to the little one.

A variation on the wall test is mentioned in a review of a Annie Abbott performance at the Crystal Palace in Milwaukee from January 17-21, 1913, "She stands with her fingers lightly resting against an upright board and the combined efforts of a line of men reaching across the stage fail to move her nearer the board."

Altogether, there appear to be a dozen tricks with variations attributed to Annie Abbott. They include a series of tests: balance, forcing, heavy weight lifting, chair, cane, attractive, irremovability, glass, child, animal, wall, and the outlying monologue act.

Later, Resista's 1920s act added a new Pulley Rope Test:

Resista's efforts concluded with a test during which she held one of a rope. Travelling upwards and passing over a pulley this descended and was held by as many men as could conveniently grip it. The combined efforts of these men failed to drag the girl from the stage.

Conclusion: Paying Respects
Dixie Annie Haygood died in November 1915 at her home in Macon, Georgia. Her obituary in the Union Recorder stated, "Mrs. Haygood, as the Little Georgia Magnet, achieved a reputation as a spiritualist which not only made her well-known in this country, but in many of the European nations She appeared before the crown heads of Europe where she demonstrated her supernatural powers." Indeed. By this account, Annie Abbott is an early pioneer in my most vaunted category of admiration, the "kick ass babe," alongside more current names such as Sarah Michelle Geller, Linda Hamilton, Sigourney Weaver and Michelle Yeoh.

She was buried in the Memorial Hill cemetery in Milledgeville, GA in a grave with no marker. She lay underappreciated, until the Harringtons began research on the cemetery.

The fortunes of her memory are now changing.

The Harringtons arranged for a marker to be placed at the grave which was dedicated with her descendents present on October 28, 2001. The ceremony was followed by a lecture and demonstration at the Old Governor's Mansion. Lulu Hurst (Mrs. Paul Atkinson) who created the resistance act, is buried about 40 miles away from Haygood in Madison, Georgia.

Bibliography: click here.