John Joseph Merlin he wheeled about himself, with great facility to any part of the room." At an event held by Teresa Cornelys in Carlisle House, Soho Square, Merlin appeared somewhat disastrously on roller skates of his own invention. By April 1783 Merlin was putting his musical instruments and his automatons on display at his own museum. Advertisements invited readers to visit his Museum of Musical Instruments and Mechanical Inventions at No. 2, Princes Street, Hanover Square, London. Well-off Londoners could meet their friends at Merlin's Mechanical Museum in the afternoon or evening, pay to see the exhibits, and drink tea or coffee
John Joseph Merlin for another shilling. Around 1785, Merlin unsuccessfully proposed the construction of an elaborate "Necromantic Cave", in which he would take on the persona of Ambrosius Merlin to entertain visitors with musical instruments and mechanical automata, alternating darkness and light in ways that may have related to aesthetic ideas of the Sublime. In November 1787, Merlin either moved, or expanded, to 11 Princes Street. Margaret Debenham has established that Merlin was married in 1783. An entry in the parish register of St. Saviour, Southwark indicates that Joseph Merlin married Ann Goulding on September 17, 1783. Both were listed as Southwark residents.