The Strand of January 1907 presents these photographs of Mr. Leslie Pogson of Anwick, Sleaford, as “an executant on the piano under various strange and trying conditions”:
When exhibiting his abilities for the entertainment of his friends Mr. Pogson begins, as the first six photographs make sufficiently clear, by performing a difficult piece of music in attitudes with which most pianists are quite unfamiliar, going even so far, in one instance, as to dispense with the keyboard altogether and, removing the piano front, to play direct upon the hammers. An assistant then enters, and pretending that he wishes to write a letter, and that he is greatly annoyed by the musical solos, he shouts to the performer to cease playing. This having no effect, he throws two pieces of stick at the player, who picks them up and goes on playing with them instead of with his fingers, even when a table-cloth is spread over the keys. A quilt used in the same way fails to diminish the variety of his attitudes, and even when his hands are handcuffed and he is placed with his back to the instrument the flood of music still flows forth as volubly as ever.
One night Mr. Pogson was passing unobserved through the crush of his late audience when he overheard the somewhat loudly expressed opinion that ‘The whole thing was a fake, my dear. The man never played a note in his life; the piano is an automatic one!’ The photographer did not succeed in portraying Mr. Pogson at that stage of the proceedings.
