Herr Martin Beaufort Tolmaque was a conjuror, escape artist, mesmerist, actor, anti-spiritualist, phrenologist and writer. He had some fame as a magician, but in Australia his main claim to attention was to have been incarcerated in the New Norfolk Hospital for the Insane at Hobart Tasmania, from which experience he wrote a series of blistering newspaper stories which resulted in his complaints being examined by official commissions of enquiry. We are fortunate to have not only Tolmaque’s ten chapters of ‘The Treatment of the Insane, or Nine Months in the Lunatic Asylum’ from 1885, but also thirty-eight autobiographical stories written under the heading ‘The Struggles of Life, or the True Adventures of Herr Tolmaque’ and nine more tales written for the newspapers. With an added history compiled from news sources and public records, this is the true history of the eloquent Herr Martin Tolmaque.