It was put in place more than 70 years ago to protect citizens from the “dark arts” but now an old-fashioned law banning hypnosis and mesmerism has been overturned by a comedy hypnotist – and he did it without putting anyone under.
Robert Temple was due to perform his show Red Raw, described as “improvised comedy under the influence of hypnosis”, to an audience of hundreds at Bolton’s Albert Halls this Saturday.
However, he discovered his show contravened the Hypnotism Act 1952, a historic law that prohibits public hypnosis from being performed without local authority permission, affecting “hypnotism, mesmerism and any similar act which produces induced sleep or trance” which makes someone “susceptible to suggestion or direction”.
While most councils did away with the legislation in the following decades or chose to give perfunctory approval to hypnotists, Temple found that Bolton had taken the opposite approach – imposing a “blanket ban” on hypnosis in the 1980s that remained in place, preventing him from performing in the town.
Temple said: “Most councils will put a form on their website but Bolton didn’t have one, so we got in touch to ask for it. When they came back, they said: ‘It’s a blanket ban.’”
This meant the only way his show could go on would be for Temple to put an application before the council’s licensing committee to repeal the legislation entirely.
Temple, who has been performing for 20 years, said: “I talked about my proposal and what I’m requesting them to do going forward, which is to give me permission but then, as part of that, fairly immediately look at the process so that this is not just a one-off show that will never happen again, but so that I and other hypnotists can continue to work in town.”
His four-page application was granted on Wednesday afternoon.
During the committee meeting, the Labour councillor Sean Fielding put forward a motion to repeal what he described as the “rather dated and arcane” rule.
Fielding said: “I hope that we do not have to meet to consider hypnotist acts again, and we are able to rewrite the policy.”
Fellow Labour councillor Debbie Newall seconded the motion. She said: “There’s something about this that’s really quirky and old-fashioned, isn’t it, that in 1952, hypnotism – they talk about mesmerism as well – it was almost dark arts that had to be controlled and had to be looked at very, very carefully. Whereas now hypnotism really is just part of mainstream entertainment, isn’t it?
“So I agree that, although this kind of legislation has no place in modern life, there’s something – I don’t know if perhaps it’s because I’m old – there’s something nice to see these old-fashioned laws that we used to have.”
Speaking after his historic victory, Temple, from Sunderland, said: “It’s a big day for us actually. It seems like a really small, insignificant, weird little thing in the grand scheme of things, but yeah it’s nice to have a 40-year-old rule overturned.”
Temple’s show is “basically everything that people might like about stand-up comedy, sketch comedy and improv comedy, those three genres of comedy all rolled into one, except the people in the show rather than being a cast of professional actors are just a bunch of random people from the audience who want to volunteer and explore their own imaginations on stage”.
From being what he described as a “weird, shy kid” who was not good at sport, he learned to perform magic tricks, eventually switching from a magic act to stage hypnosis, which he has performed all over the world, including in the West End in London and Las Vegas.
“Touring’s my favourite thing in the world,” he said.” I want to bring it back to a mainstream audience in the same way that it was when I started doing it 20 years ago.”
His show is touring towns and cities across the UK until the end of March.
What are the dangers of stage hypnosis?
While the attitude to hypnosis among the general public is becoming more favourable thanks to its growing use in healthcare, the number of performers is lower than it has ever been.
Most councils have no problem with stage hypnosis being performed in their towns and cities as it is considered fairly low-risk entertainment.
In 1996, the government published a review involving psychology experts and hypnotists calling for the relaxation of guidelines around hypnosis after it was found to be no more risky than other types of performance.
“So for example, they went from saying ‘you need a million pounds of public liability insurance’ to ‘you need a suitable amount of public liability insurance’,” Temple said.
The art form has not been without its controversies though.
In 1998, 24-year-old Sharon Tabarn died hours after being hypnotised by a stage hypnotist in a pub in Lancashire. An inquest found there was not enough evidence to suggest hypnosis had played a part in the death of the otherwise healthy woman, who died after choking on vomit in her sleep.
However, her mother Margaret Harper launched an unsuccessful application with the attorney general for a second inquest into the death of Tabarn, who was pulled out of the trance she had been put in by the hypnotist’s suggestion of 10,000 volts of electricity running through her body.
Harper said her daughter had a “terrible fear” of electricity after suffering an electric shock as a child so powerful it had thrown her across the room.
Temple said hypnosis should always be carried out by someone who knows what they are doing and he was in favour of regulation.
“Hypnosis is only dangerous if it’s the wrong people and it’s used in the wrong way,” he said. “I’m all for regulations, and to make sure people are insured and are high-risk assessed, have got some sort of training and do know what they’re doing.”
