In an account reprinted in September 1884, a small teenage performer confronted some of Kentucky’s most prominent men on a Frankfort stage. Mattie Lee Price was said to move a chair against their efforts, prevent another chair from being pushed down and resist several men pressing on a stick. The report called her an electro-magnetic girl. It offered an impressive list of participants and even pulse readings, but no measurement of an electrical or magnetic force.
Price belongs to the nineteenth-century world of performers whose acts looked like extraordinary physical powers. She was a distinct person from the better-known Lulu Hurst, despite similarities in their billing and demonstrations. The Frankfort account and Harry Houdini’s later recollections provide two different kinds of evidence: an enthusiastic contemporary report of a performance and a fellow performer’s retrospective assessment of the act and its presentation.
A report with a traceable publication history
The principal source is the Supplement to The Theosophist for September 1884, printed page 126. It reprints an item credited to the Courier-Journal. The heading gives a variant first name, Maggie, while the body explicitly identifies Mattie Lee Price and her Bartow County, Georgia background. The item should be read across the two columns: its opening is near the bottom left and its continuation at the top right.
The reprint describes a performance at the Opera House in Frankfort, Kentucky, as having occurred the previous night. That wording belongs to the newspaper account being reproduced. It cannot safely be converted into a September performance date from the magazine’s cover date. The exact original issue and performance night have not been established in this review. The historical setting is secure; a precise calendar date would exceed the evidence examined here.
The writer describes a fourteen-year-old weighing about ninety pounds. These are reported particulars rather than independently checked medical measurements. The manager supplied an origin story in which Price had discovered her ability during Christmas play with chairs and tables. He also claimed she could assess people’s character. The article contains no documented test of that additional claim. A manager’s account of how an act began is different from an independent record of the event.
Chairs, sticks and prominent volunteers
The named audience included Governor Knott, Attorney-General Hardin, Auditor Hewitt and several other public figures and doctors. Their presence is an important feature of the report’s persuasive structure. Readers were invited to find the display more credible because respectable, apparently strong participants had tried and failed to overcome the performer. Their offices do not establish that the demonstration used controls capable of separating leverage, balance and coordination from an unknown force.
In the first chair episode, the attorney-general held a chair while Price touched it with open palms. The report says it moved him around the stage. Major Stanton then sat in the chair while other men pressed on it; the chair was reported to rise when Price applied her hands. Further participants were said to obtain comparable results. These descriptions record what the audience was told it had witnessed, without providing the precise hand positions, angles and timing needed to reconstruct the forces involved.
A stick demonstration followed, with two men reportedly dragged across the stage despite resisting. The account records applause, making the theatrical setting especially clear. It then gives a pulse comparison: the attorney-general’s pulse was said to have reached 140 while Price’s was 101. Even if those readings were accurately taken, they would show different levels of physiological exertion at that moment. They would not identify a magnetic field or show that ordinary mechanical forces were absent.
The report also describes two men unable to push a chair to the floor while Price maintained contact. In a final test, she placed an open palm at one end of an upright stick while several participants attempted to press from the other end. Their reported failure was presented as particularly persuasive evidence. The article supplies no force gauge, electrical apparatus or independently controlled replication. Its vocabulary of extraordinary power is the reporter’s interpretation of the stage events.
What Houdini could speak to personally
In Miracle Mongers and Their Methods, published in 1920, Houdini recalled sharing engagements with Price at Chicago and Milwaukee venues. His first-hand acquaintance with her as a performer gives this passage a different evidential basis from a later legend about a mysterious girl. He considered her exceptionally effective and credited much of her commercial success to the lecturer who presented the act, a man he remembered as her husband.
Houdini’s central point was the importance of showmanship. According to his recollection, a replacement lecturer could not maintain the act’s attraction even though Price’s performing ability remained. That observation concerns how audiences were engaged and how a performance was sold. It does not amount to a controlled investigation of the earlier Frankfort demonstration, which Houdini does not claim to have attended.
His recollection also needs chronological caution. The modern Etowah Valley Historical Society account by Price’s great-granddaughter, Donna Lee Dicksson, identifies her death as 1899, whereas Houdini reported having heard a later date. The disagreement is a useful reminder that direct professional acquaintance does not make every retrospective biographical detail exact. The modern account is used here for that qualification and Price’s identity, rather than substituted for the original performance report.
A mechanical explanation of the kind of act
Houdini places Price alongside Hurst and other magnetic or electric performers. In the same chapter he reproduces mechanical analyses of this class of demonstration, including work attributed to Nelson W. Perry. These analyses explain why several strong volunteers can be defeated without an unknown force: their effort may be directed inefficiently, their balance can be disturbed, and a change in the direction of pressure can exploit the resistance they are already applying.
One example is especially relevant to the Frankfort stick report. Perry described reproducing a stick-resistance demonstration while standing on a spring balance. Although the resisting men believed they were applying a large downward effort, much of their force was horizontal. The measured additional vertical load remained comparatively small. Another explanation describes how a seated person’s attempt to resist a chair movement can transfer weight to the feet, changing what must actually be moved.
These are documented ordinary mechanisms for superficially similar feats. They are more useful than a bare assertion that a small performer could never move a larger man. They are not a frame-by-frame reconstruction of Price’s hands at Frankfort, and an explanation demonstrated for another performer should not be relabelled as Price’s confession.
Assessment, place and related reading
The outcome is Possibly Explained. Published mechanical demonstrations provide a credible explanation for the type of chair and stick feats reported, while Houdini’s personal recollection confirms the act’s professional theatrical setting. The reviewed sources do not demonstrate which precise method Price used in each Frankfort test. They also do not establish an electromagnetic or other paranormal force.
The map uses a rounded Frankfort city reference from the US Census Gazetteer. It marks the approximate community associated with the reported Opera House performance, not a verified historic building position or a private address. The incident year is left unassigned because the exact performance date has not been traced; the 1884 magazine date is clearly identified as the reprint date.
The 1884 report and Houdini’s chapter twelve allow the contemporary claims and the later analysis to be compared directly. The related UKPX case of Lulu Hurst covers a separate performer’s account. Similar billing and shared principles do not make the two women interchangeable, nor do they turn accounts of public entertainment into independent proof of psychic power.