'Professor' John Henry Anderson (1814-1874), the Scottish magician and theatrical entrepreneur better known as 'the Wizard of the North', was the showman and philanthropist regarded as the first magician to raise magic from street performance to respectable theatrical entertainment through his flair for publicity and his expertise with astonishing illusions, including the bullet-catching act. Anderson began performing magic aged seventeen and started a travelling show in 1837, aged twenty-three. He was still in his twenties when he was performing this engagement at Tulley's Hall Gravesend, comprising a remarkable amount of tricks and proving so popular that Mr. Tulley extended his engagement. He settled in London in 1840 where he performed at the New Strand Theatre, and in August 1845 opened his own 5,000-seat theatre the City Theatre on Glasgow Green, for which from 8th to 19th September 1845 he engaged an operatic company headed by the well-known tenor Sims Reeves. The theatre burned down in November 1845, only four months after its opening, but through the assistance of friends Anderson started a new London company at Covent Garden Theatre in 1846 and went on to perform around Europe, and in 1849 for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

Tulley's Bazaar was a timber-frame building built in 1835 at 62, Windmill Street on the corner of South Street. Milton Hall was built on the site in 1874 where Mr. Arnold housed a Museum of Antiquities.