Houdini: A Life Worth Reading

by Higher Read

  In the presence of his collection I lost all track of time. Occasionally we paused in our work to drink tea which he made for us on his pathetically small stove. The drops of the first tea which we drank together can yet be found on certain papers in my collection. His wife, a most sympathetic soul, did not offer to disturb us, and it was 3:30 the next morning, or very nearly twenty-four hours after my arrival at his home, when my brother, Theodore Weiss (Hardeen), and a thoroughly disgusted physician appeared on the scene and dragged me, an unwilling victim, back to my hotel and medical care.

  Such was the beginning of my friendship with Evanion. In time I learned that some of his collection had been left to him by James Savren, an English barber, who was so interested in magic that at frequent intervals he dropped his trade to work without pay for famous magicians, including Döbler, Anderson, Compars Herrmann, De Liska, Wellington Young, Cornillot, and Gyngell. From these men he had secured a marvellous collection, which was the envy of his friendly rival, Evanion. Savren bequeathed his collection to Evanion, and bit by bit I bought it from the latter, now poverty stricken, too old to work and physically failing. These purchases I made at intervals whenever I played in London, and on June 7th, 1905, while playing at Wigan, I received word that Evanion was dying at Lambeth Infirmary.

  After the show, I jumped to London, only to find that cancer of the throat made it almost impossible for him to speak intelligibly. I soon discovered, however, that his chief anxiety was for the future of his wife and then for his own decent burial. When these sad offices had been provided for, he became more peaceful, and when I rose to leave him, knowing that we had met probably for the last time, he drew forth his chiefest treasure, a superb book of Robert-Houdin’s programmes, his one legacy, which is now the central jewel in my collection. Evanion died ten days later, June 17th, and within a short time his good wife followed him into the Great Unknown.

  XI. Houdini, the Crusader against Spiritualism

  Read It and Know It

  After reading this chapter, you will know more about

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The creator of Sherlock Holmes was a devout believer in Spiritualism.

  A Magician Among the Spirits: Houdini’s book sought to expose fraudulent mediums.

  Mina “Margery” Crandon: Houdini eventually exposed the famous Boston medium after a long and public struggle.

  Robert Gysel and Rose Mackenberg: These informants joined Houdini in his campaign to debunk Spiritualism.

  Spiritualism, a religion and movement born in the late eighteenth century, became very trendy after World War I. Spiritualists believed that the spirits of the dead could communicate with the living through mediums. They did so during séances, in which a group of “sitters” came and sat in front of a medium, holding hands in a darkened room while the medium summoned the spirits of the dead.

  Houdini had in the past scorned Spiritualism as fraudulent and manipulative of mourning individuals who had lost loved ones. At the same time, the loss of his mother left him yearning for the ability to reach her somehow. Whatever his real beliefs, he made a pact with Bess and several other friends to speak a certain word if summoned by a medium after death, in order to have final proof on the matter. Further, even at the height of his crusade against Spiritualism, he never claimed to attack the tenets of the religion itself; rather, he set out to expose fraud on the part of persons who claimed to be mediums.

  The worlds of magic and Spiritualism overlapped both practically and culturally; the popularity of Spiritualism ignited the public’s interest in magic, and further, magicians and mediums used similar techniques to perform their arts. Houdini’s fame as a magician and manic drive to expose all that threatened his trade put him on an inevitable crash course with the religion. The collision was played out in part through his friendship with the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

  Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most renowned for his authorship of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, was also an evangelical Spiritualist in his later days after having lost his son in Word War I. Well-known as a writer, Doyle was originally an eye doctor and belonged to a scholarly level of society that Houdini often seemed to ache to join. In addition, Doyle fit the role of an ideal man of the time; he was tall, muscular, athletic, wealthy, and cultured. He and Houdini shared a passion for the sport of boxing. When Houdini traveled to Europe in 1920, he mailed Doyle a copy of his book, The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin. Doyle read it and wanted to discuss Houdini’s representation of the famous Davenport Brothers, magicians whom Houdini had met. Doyle believed that the brothers were able to do their escape art because they were mediums, able to de-materialize and reconstitute their physical forms. In his eagerness to make friends with Doyle, Houdini didn’t contradict him. In fact, Houdini indicated to Doyle that he was interested in looking into Spiritualism with an open mind. Doyle believed that Houdini himself might be able de-materialize in order to do his tricks.

  Doyle sent Houdini to mediums Doyle trusted, one of whom performed the then-popular form of speaking with spirits by manifesting ectoplasm, a gooey substance in the shape of someone or something or that appeared to be a living substance. Houdini failed to be convinced by these demonstrations, recognizing the ways that such tricks could be arranged. However, his desire to be friends with Doyle, who he found intelligent and fascinating, led him to hold back from being open with Doyle about his doubts. Houdini attended many séances.

  Doyle and Houdini’s friendship began to fall apart when Doyle came to the United States to promote Spiritualism in 1922. At that time, Doyle was especially passionate about a new trend in Spiritualism called “spirit photography,” in which everyday photographs captured a spirit image. Houdini, who knew something about film development from his film company (see Chapter IX), recognized that the “spirit” images could be doctored into the photographs. He even hired a team of investigators to try to find out the methods of famous spirit photographers. Houdini became less enthralled with Doyle as he saw how naïve Doyle was; magicians well known to Houdini, the Zancigs, had convinced Doyle that they were clairvoyants during a private session. Similarly, Houdini tried to explain to Doyle how the spiritualist phenomenon of “spirit hands,” or hands that appeared in wax during séances, could be made by humans. Doyle refused to give Houdini’s explanations any weight. While in the States, Doyle saw a famous medium named Besinnet, with whom Houdini tried to gain a meeting through Doyle’s introduction. However, Besinnet refused to answer Houdini’s requests, probably wisely, as Houdini had done some research on her methods and had likely already concluded that she was a fraud.

  During the summer of 1922, Houdini and Bess joined Doyle and his family in Atlantic City for a weekend of fun and relaxation. During this visit, Doyle’s wife, who claimed to be able to perform “trance-writing,” a method of communicating with spirits by which the medium writes messages from the dead, summoned Houdini for a session. In that session, with Doyle present, she produced fifteen pages of writing supposedly from Houdini’s mother, Cecilia. While the Doyles thought that Houdini came out of this experience with unmistakable proof of his dead mother’s presence and Spiritualism as a whole, Houdini really emerged highly skeptical that his mother was involved with the writing. However, he said nothing of this to the Doyles, wanting to keep the peace.

  In October 1922 Houdini got into trouble with both the magician community and the Spiritualists when he published an article explaining a common trick of both, the placement of a radio transmitter inside a non-descript household object to create noises and voices seemingly from magic or spirits. The Society of American Magicians, of which Houdini was president, formed a special committee to make sure that neither Houdini nor other magicians exposed any more of their trade secrets. The SAM also criticized Houdini for writing a monthly column in a New York paper, teaching young readers how to do minor magic tricks. Houdini further clashed with Howard Thurston, his deceased mentor Keller’s protégée. Thurston was a
believer in Spiritualism and had attended séances with Besinnet. Thurston was also one of the few magicians what came anywhere close to Houdini’s skill and fame, the more likely reason for their rivalry.

  After Doyle returned to England, Houdini and his friend began to have disagreements by letter about various aspects of Spiritualism. In October of 1922, Houdini published an article in a New York paper essentially stating Houdini’s conviction that mediums and séances were fraudulent. Doyle was sent the article by someone, and for the first time the friends argued openly about Spiritualism. Houdini explained how the trance-writing session that he had endured with the Doyles in Atlantic City had left him convinced not of Spiritualism’s truth, but of its lack thereof. Doyle answered by explaining away each of the reasons that Houdini had found to disbelieve the truth of the session. Soon, Doyle and Houdini were fighting publically in an exchange of letters published in The New York Times. When Doyle returned to the United States for a second tour, the two men met up in Denver, Colorado. Despite efforts to patch their relationship, Houdini agreed to meet with a reporter who had written an article claiming that Doyle had dared him to come to a séance, where he would produce Houdini’s mother. This publicity put more strain on the friendship. After Doyle had returned to England, Doyle similarly reacted gullibly to a supposed jab by Houdini in a California newspaper. The two men finally dissolved their friendship.

  Houdini The Lecturer and Investigator

  By 1924, Houdini was becoming recognized nationally as an investigator and educator on the subject of fraudulent techniques used by mediums. He toured the United States, giving lectures at universities about the history of Spiritualism and the ways that fraudulent mediums produced their effects. Houdini also “tested” mediums. Most famously, he reproduced the powers of a renowned Spanish medium who called himself Argamasilla, who claimed to be able to see through metal. He also duplicated mediums’ use of telepathy, organizing a test at his house in which he went into another room while his guests selected topics at random, returning to the room to explain (correctly) what he had “telepathically received” from them while in the other room. He jokingly performed a “teleportation” of a writer to a benefit held by the Society of American Magicians, pretending that the speaker was communicating via radio, but concealing the man in the banquet hall, who emerged after announcing he was teleporting in for the event. During his push to expose fraud among mediums, Houdini wrote and published a book called A Magician Among the Spirits.

  The Scientific American Committee

  Houdini’s most longstanding battle in his fight against fraudulent Spiritualist mediums began in January of 1924, when he was nominated to an investigative committee put together by the magazine Scientific American. The purpose of the committee was to determine who, if anyone, would be the winner of two cash prizes offered to the first two individuals who produced a psychic object or photograph while working under the committee’s strictly controlled test conditions. The other members of the committee were largely academics and scientists, including two individuals from the Society of Psychical Research (the SPR), a United Kingdom-based nonprofit dedicated to objectively researching paranormal phenomena. J. Malcolm Bird, an editor at Scientific American, served as the secretary for the committee.

  With his large ego and longstanding need to prove himself as an intellectual, Houdini began clashing with his fellow committee members almost immediately. After the committee had tested a medium named George Valentine and found evidence of fraud, Houdini immediately told the press about the committee’s discoveries. Other committee members, especially Bird, objected to Houdini’s violation of the bylaw that none of the members speak to the press individually, for fear of discouraging future candidates from coming forward to compete for the prizes.

  Due either to Houdini’s indiscretion or to some other reason, no other viable medium came forth to try for the prize for six more months, until Nino Pecoraro, a young Italian medium, volunteered. Pecoraro was interesting to the committee because he claimed to be channeling the famous deceased medium Eusapia Palladino. Bird, perhaps intentionally, failed to tell Houdini about the first two test séances that the committee held with Pecoraro. However, by the third, Houdini had caught wind of the tests and arrived to evaluate Pecoraro. During his séances, Pecoraro seemed to make things appear and sounds occur while bound tightly. Houdini showed Pecoraro what it really meant to be bound, tying him intricately and knowledgably from his own years of experience as an escape artist. Bound thusly, Pecoraro was unable to produce the same effects as he had during the first two “tests,” proving that he himself, and not a spiritual force, had produced the noises and images in the prior séances.

  After Pecoraro, the committee took on the testing of a medium who called herself Margery. Margery’s real name was Mina Crandon, and she was the young, well-to-do wife of a surgeon and Harvard professor named Dr. Crandon. The aristocratic pair lived in beautiful four-story house on Beacon Hill in Boston and enjoyed an educated and cultured circle of friends and colleagues. Margery purported to produce messages from the dead in several languages and, most famously, to channel her deceased brother Walter, a young man who had been killed while working on the railroad. Margery had gained a large following of believers who praised her powers as a medium, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Again, Bird failed to tell Houdini about thirty séance tests that were held with Margery in the first half of 1924. Upon discovering that the committee was close to awarding a prize to Margery, Houdini intervened and insisted on evaluating her for himself. Bird, who had been staying with the Crandons, and who Houdini already suspected of aiding the couple in fraud in order to gain their friendship, was forced to agree.

  In July of 1924, Houdini and other committee members began a series of séances with Margery in Boston. Houdini quickly detected that Margery used her foot to ring a bell supposedly rung by Walter and that she used her head to move objects while her hands and feet were held by other sitters. Houdini tried to convince the committee to immediately publish his discoveries, but Bird convinced the group to sit with Margery for another series of séances before deciding. Houdini believed, probably correctly, that Margery and Dr. Crandon used their unusually close relationship with Bird to find out what Houdini knew about Margery’s methods.

  For the second round of séances, held the following month, Houdini convinced a Scientific American committee member named Walter Franklin Prince, head of the American Society for Psychical Research, to attend. Houdini and an assistant named Collins built a special cabinet for Margery to sit in. It was designed to prevent her from using her tricks to manipulate a bell and other items. In a very tense series of séances that stretched over two days, Houdini and Margery accused each other of planting various items in the box and in the bell, Houdini insisting that Margery was using a tool to ring the bell from far off and Margery insisting that Houdini was planting tools on her and blocking the bell.

  During these two tense days, Bird stepped down as secretary of the committee and Prince took over the post. Margery’s spirit brother Walter “cursed out” Houdini, telling him to leave, which amused Houdini, as he knew Walter was not really speaking but one of the Crandons. In earlier séances, Walter had revealed “his” anti-Semitic feelings towards Houdini, a sentiment that Dr. Crandon mirrored in his correspondence with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. By the last séance of the month, Margery failed to produce any communications or signs from the dead. Houdini triumphantly told the committee that her failure was due to the fact that she was restrained from performing her techniques by the box he and Collins and built and left Boston convinced that she was a fraud.

  The committee, never having all sat together at the same time for a séance with Margery, remained divided for a long time about whether to credit Margery with the prize or to denounce her as a fraud. The group polarized between Houdini and a committee member named Carrington, a writer of many articles of psychical research. Houdini insisted that he had already detected that Marg
ery was a fraud and that the public should know about her deception—and his role in discovering it—as soon as possible. Carrington insisted that Margery was genuinely communicating with the spirits. McDougall, a scientist and committee member who had never actually attended any of the séances, took no side but complained to the newspapers that Houdini acted like Houdini was the only one qualified to judge the matter, when he, McDougall, a professor and scientist, knew as much or more than a magician. This, as well as the fact that supporters of Margery publically declaimed Houdini as merely an ignorant magician, infuriated Houdini, who was sensitive as always to being classified as inferior to academics and aristocrats.

  When the committee failed to reach a decision after another round of séances with Margery, Houdini traveled to Boston to expose her himself and prove his worth to the world. In January of 1925, Houdini staged a show at Boston’s Symphony Hall, inviting Margery to come and perform, and offering her his own prize of ten thousand dollars if she succeeded in escaping detection of fraud. Predictably, Margery did not show up, but Houdini, not to be deterred from exposing her, put on a two-hour show replicating her tricks with some blindfolded sitters, while the audience had full view of how he perpetrated the phenomena. His program included tricks performed from inside supposedly the same cabinet that he had made for Margery, although it was later revealed that the cabinet was probably a replica.