A clairvoyant and a magician – a magical pairing you might say. For the celebrated entertainment duo Mystic Mora and Doc Rowe, it was a union that brought extraordinary success and fame, and a life full of exotic travels and uncommon adventures.

William Rowe was born in 1880 in Ballarat to Thomas and Alice (nee Holland) Rowe. In his youth he worked for ‘The Great Snazelle’ when the magician visited Ballarat on a travelling tour of Australia (Sporting Globe, 12 November 1938). Later, Rowe came to Melbourne where he became an assistant to the well-known English magician Carl Hertz. “He made a fortune out of the show business.” Rowe later recalled; “And he was the complete showman” (Sporting Globe, 12 November 1938). Rowe studied Hertz’s success well, and self-styled as ‘Doc’ Richard Rowe, he plied his trade as a performer of acts of magic, hypnotism and illusion for decades.¹ He was referred to as ‘the most outstanding showman’ of the 20th century by fellow magician Will Alma; one who despised the use of magical props relying instead on “sheer showmanship and uncanny dexterity”.²

Doc Rowe’s wife was Mystic Mora; born Alice Maud Fitzgerald in Hotham (now North Melbourne) in 1884. How she met her magician husband ‘Doc’ Rowe, we do not know. Perhaps she saw one of his shows and was intrigued. All accounts of Rowe are that he was handsome, charismatic and energetic. They appear to have married around 1910, and then commenced a professional partnership that spanned decades.

Alice first appears under her professional name Mora in 1910; The Age referred to her as “Startling, Mystifying, Weird, Mora, The White Mahatma”, (The Age, 9 February 1910) an epithet which she would use throughout her career (Mahatma meaning “great-souled” in Sanskrit).³ Described as a mystic and a mental telepathist, she claimed the ability to discern details of the past, present and future, including lucrative nuggets of information in relation to racing and mining (The Telegraph, 1 Feb 1913). Her success rate was apparently around 90%.(The North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times, 12 August 1915), and it was even claimed that she successfully predicted the date that the Great War would end, and that leading newspapers in India and the East had published this prediction in 1915 and 1916.⁴

She claims to have foretold the “Titanic” disaster, the winners of the Melbourne Cup 3 times, also the London “Daily Mirror” give her the credit of having told where Lady’s Hawkes’ jewels were to be found before the actual recovery of some by the police at Roma (The Cairns Post, 15 April 1913).

A program advertising the show, details the clairvoyant gifts that Mora demonstrated in a staged seance:

You may write any question concerning your past, present or future on your own paper or paper furnished you. You may write at home, if you so desire, in any language that you do your natural thinking. You may seal them in your own way, sew them up or solder them in tin cans or arrange them in any way you please. You may ask concerning business, changes, travel, mines, mortgages, deeds, whom or who is false, whether husband, lover, or sweetheart is true, also any questions concerning your own welfare.⁵

In one account, blindfolded and enveloped in yellow muslin on stage, Mora pointed to a woman in the gallery: “There is a lady in the right-hand corner of the gallery her name is Curtis. She asks when the money she is expecting will arrive. The answer is that it will come this week” (Table Talk, 10 February 1910).

In another account audience members would write numbers on a slate, which Mora would discern while blindfolded. One woman asked about the whereabouts of her father, who she believed dead. Mora disputed this and advised that he was working as a cook on a sheep station outside Charlesville. The woman was gratified and confirmed that her father was indeed a cook (The Bundaberg Mail and Burnett Advertiser, 10 March 1913).

Interestingly, Mora would attempt to answer any question at all EXCEPT one: “where if the answers were given correctly it would necessitate giving the name of some person who had committed a crime…”. Furthermore, Mora disclaimed “any affiliation whatsoever with the supernatural: a keen training and development of mind is claimed”.⁶

A cynic would note that Mora’s mystical abilities, by her own admission, manifested shortly after she wed her showman husband.

I was born in Australia, and before I reached the age of twenty I met Mr. Richard Rowe…and we fell in love and were married. It was soon after my marriage that I discovered I possessed a strange power of divination. I found I could read the past of people whom I met, and who were complete strangers to me, and I could also see in my own secret mind what was going to happen to them in the future. (The Woodend Star, 4 November 1922)

While it was Mora’s clairvoyant abilities that received the most attention, she was an equal partner in the show; unlike most magic acts, the duo did not use any assistants in their performances. Will Alma observed: “with their real ability they didn’t need them”.⁷ Mora performed acts and illusions with her husband Doc Rowe and exhibited a special talent for sleight of hand. Another celebrated skill was the creation of exquisite sand art. 

Their mystical abilities took the pair – and their two young children Buxar and Douglas – touring their act – The Mahatma Mysteries – around the world to many exotic locales including India, Asia and Africa, America and Europe where “rajahs and sultans and queens, and chiefs of strange and wild tribes … consulted her [Mora] and were astonished at her uncanny powers of divination” (The Richmond River Herald and Northern Districts Advertiser, 30 January 1923).

Mora and Doc Rowe remained active in the magic community into the 1940s. Their home in Toorak was part of the Como estate, and Will Alma observed that it was an open house for magicians.⁸ The pair established a business selling magic supplies and Rowe published a number of books about magic. Rowe was also the Dean of the Melbourne Magicians’ Club (The Sun News-Pictorial, 6 July 1931).

Whatever their ‘mystical’ ability, what emerges is the pair’s extraordinary talent for self-promotion. The duo were clearly both charismatic and accomplished performers, skilled at embellishing and spreading the narrative of their unearthly talents. They capitalised on the exoticism that their mysterious epithets and eastern garb inspired, with many in their audiences being utterly convinced by the genuine nature of Mora’s talents.

Mora is wasting her time on the stage – she should be in a land agency or stock-broking, the millinery business or in the mint – for she could coin money easily…its good fun – go see it. ⁹

While the hyperbolic claims about Mora’s abilities would elicit a healthy dose of cynicism in most of us, I did find one rather spooky instance of Mora’s mystical powers helping to find the final resting place of a missing person:

In connection with the finding of the body of McNeill the lengthsmen who was swept off the bridge at Torrens Creek in February last, a singular circumstance has arisen. When “Mystic Mora” was showing here [Charters Towers] recently a friend of the deceased, without mentioning his name ask the seer publicly in the hall, where the body would be found. “Mystic Mora” replied “about 300 yeard [sic] below the bridge, buried in the sand”. The answer proved to be absolutely correct for that is where and how the body was found yesterday”. (The Evening Telegraph, 14 June 1913)

Doc Rowe died in 1952, aged 71, and Mora died in 1965, aged 81.

References and further reading

See our Magic and magicians research guide to learn more about the W. G. Alma conjuring collection: https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/magic

Doc Rowe 1880-1952 and Mystic Mora (Maude Fitzpatrick) : magic file, W.G. Alma conjuring collection. Ephemera

Cooke K (2017) Kaz Cooke’s magic scrapbooks, vols 1-4, W.G. Alma conjuring collection. Ephemera, ALMACF ; 793.8 K1891K

Cooke, K (2017) Ada: Comedian, dancer, fighter, Penguin Random House, Melbourne

1. The earliest mention of him as a performer appears to be in 1899, where he is mentioned in The Age, 26 July, 1899, p 5
2. Alma, W, 1976, ‘Doc Rowe – A brief history’, Magic Circle Mirror, vol 6, no 5, p 76, cited in Doc Rowe 1880-1952 and Mystic Mora (Maude Fitzpatrick) : magic file (Folder 1), W.G. Alma conjuring collection. Ephemera
3. The ‘White Mahatma’ act was originally devised by American magician ‘Professor’ S.S. (Sam) Baldwin, who licensed it to other magicians. See Cooke, K (2017) Ada: Comedian, dancer, fighter, Penguin Random House, Melbourne, p 245
4. “The Latest”, Durban, 1 February, 1919, cited in Doc Rowe 1880-1952 and Mystic Mora (Maude Fitzpatrick) : magic file (Folder 1), W.G. Alma conjuring collection. Ephemera
5. Tivoli Theatre programme, Doc Rowe 1880-1952 and Mystic Mora (Maude Fitzpatrick) : magic file (Folder 3), W.G. Alma conjuring collection. Ephemera
6. As above
7. Alma, W, 1976, ‘Doc Rowe – A brief history’, Magic Circle Mirror, vol 6, no 5, p 76, cited in Doc Rowe 1880-1952 and Mystic Mora (Maude Fitzpatrick) : magic file (Folder 1), W.G. Alma conjuring collection Ephemera
8. As above
9. The Fielding Star, October 24, cited in Doc Rowe 1880-1952 and Mystic Mora (Maude Fitzpatrick) : magic file (Folder 1), W.G. Alma conjuring collection. Ephemera