Dr's Casebook column with Dr Keith Souter: The spirit of Houdini at Halloween
At Halloween I usually write about some pumpkin experiment or another. This year I’m going to do something a little different, because this October 31 is the 100th anniversary of the death of Harry Houdini, the famous magician and escapologist.
You may be interested to know that every year since his death séances have been held by magicians in an attempt to communicate with his spirit. Indeed, for ten years after his death his wife Bess held an annual séance in the hope that a secret code she and Harry had devised would come across via a medium to test if spirit communication was real.
Magician, escapologist and crusader
Born Erich Weiss in Hungary, his family emigrated to the USA in 1879 when he was five years old. By the age of sixteen he was performing a simple magic act in the glory days of Vaudeville. Calling himself Eric the Great he performed a double act with his brother, later altering the stage name to the Houdini Brothers. This name was chosen in admiration of Robert Houdin, the foremost magician of the era.
At the height of his career he issued a challenge for anyone to construct a set of handcuffs from which he could not escape. Strait-jackets, trunks, underwater caskets, none of them could hold him. Indeed so adept was he at escaping that it was rumoured that he could dematerialise at will.
As well as being a magician he was also a tireless crusader against fraudulent spirit mediums. During the Roaring Twenties he forged a strong friendship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. However, Sir Arthur was a campaigner for spiritualism so it was inevitable that as Houdini exposed more and more fraudulent mediums their friendship cooled.
The show must go on
Harry Houdini died in Grace Hospital, Detroit on Halloween, October 31, 1926.
He always said that his abdominal muscles were so trained that he could withstand any punch. It is claimed that he was sucker-punched in the abdomen by one of three men, supposed admirers in his dressing room at the Princess Theatre in Montreal. He had apparently not braced himself for the blow and winced after he was struck. He then braced himself and invited another punch which bounced off his iron strong muscles. Yet, nine gruelling days of pain later he was dead.
The cause of death was peritonitis from a ruptured appendicitis. He should certainly have had the appendicectomy several days before, but show-biz professional that he was, he was determined that he should fulfil his commitments. The show had to go on.
The final unsolved mystery
Undoubtedly Houdini made many enemies from his public exposures of the way mediums manifested spirit hands, received messages and made objects levitate in dark room seances. There have been theories and books written that suggest he was killed by a hitman on behalf of the spiritualist profession. The truth we will never know.