The Witch of Lime Street

by David Jaher

  That was why they had asked to see him, Munn acknowledged. They wanted Houdini to go forthwith to Boston.

  Bird tried to hide his displeasure at the magician’s war readiness. The other experts had worked with Margery for three months without detecting trickery. “He would now step in,” Bird wrote, “locate in two sittings the deception which had eluded them for fifty, and with one magnificent gesture would save the committee.”

  After Houdini left the journal’s offices, the editor had a private conference with Munn. The showman had just called his colleagues incompetent at best, and dishonest at worst; he had already formed the opinion that the medium was a huckster. Bird warned that Houdini was going to wreak havoc on the Margery tests. Recognizing that danger, Munn decided to accompany the magician to Lime Street, and ensure that he was “on his good behavior.” So on July 22, the day after the most positive Times story yet on Margery, Munn and Houdini traveled by train to Boston. Bird, who drove, had arrived there one day earlier.

  Upon hearing that Houdini’s visit was arranged, Margery became noticeably nervous and excited. Dr. Crandon wrote Doyle of the turbulent atmosphere on Lime Street.

  Tonight Houdini and Mr. Munn, owner of the Scientific American, sit with us for the first time and will stay for several days. I think Psyche is somewhat stirred by it internally because of Houdini’s general nastiness. She is vomiting merrily this morning. However, some of her worst days have given the best sittings.

  Dr. Crandon had received alarming reports on the magician whom Doyle called a clever liar and medium baiter. Sir Arthur wondered if Walter could “rise above” the trickster’s negative energy; whether Roy could work with him was just as uncertain. Even before Houdini came to Beacon Hill, something was shifting in the way Dr. Crandon dealt with investigators. Feeling that some of them were out to persecute his wife, he was not as cordial as the trials continued. On the verge, Roy sensed, of Margery’s winning the contest, he required that the committeemen sign copies of their notes after every sitting and leave them with him, so that if they later made statements inconsistent with their observations, he had the material “to crucify them.”

  The doctor was through “wasting any time in compliments or politeness,” he wrote Sir Arthur. “It is war to the finish and they know I shall not hesitate to treat them surgically if necessary.” If this was the way he felt about the investigators who shared some of his own metaphysical beliefs, then prospects for a civil relationship with an arch-skeptic did not seem likely. Houdini was an anti-Spiritualist who disdained the faith of the Crandons and Doyles. Roy, in turn, was no friend to Houdini’s religion.

  Like many in his circle, Dr. Crandon was wary of aliens—the immigrant wave that might turn the United States into an eastern European nation. At the Yacht Club he was known to make some pretty severe remarks about Jews, and he expressed, before he had met him, much the same hostility toward Houdini. “My deep regret,” he wrote Sir Arthur, “is that this low-minded Jew has any claim on the word American.”

  On the eve of the escape artist’s visit, Walter composed a poem that augured conflict. “Harry Houdini, he sure is a Sheeny, A man with a crook in his shoe. Says he ‘As to Walter, I’ll lead him to slaughter’ ‘But,’ says Walter, ‘Perhaps I’ll get you!’ ”

  A Dead Man Rising

  “LUCK, NOT MAGIC,” SAVED HOUDINI FROM DEATH

  —Boston Herald

  It was once the wizard’s role, as the wise man in his feudal shire, to ferret out witches and counter their spells. Yet in 1924, if the newspapers were to be believed, the Witch of Lime Street had the upper hand. HOUDINI THE MAGICIAN STUMPED flashed one headline. A showdown appeared imminent between Houdini and the medium who was receiving the kind of publicity for which he had always seemed willing to risk his life. When a younger Houdini had escaped a packing crate dropped from a barge into New York Harbor, Scientific American had called it “one of the most remarkable tricks ever performed.” Lately Orson Munn’s journal was praising another wonder creator—a magician in disguise, if Houdini was right.

  Margery’s challenge was to prove that her brother lived after death, while the Great Houdini’s feats were designed to persuade the masses that he faced annihilation if he failed his test. In every escape he was feared lost then rose again. Once, in California, they had trussed and buried him under six feet of sandy soil. Emerging bleeding, pale, and dazed, he was the “perfect imitation of a dead man rising.” Another time, in Australia, upon leaping manacled and chained from a bridge, he dislodged a corpse on the river floor that burst the surface next to him. Believing it part of the act, the spectators had applauded the Lazarus effect.

  Now Houdini and Orson Munn were en route to Boston, a city that had always presented the escape artist with even stranger and more macabre challenges. They caged him in an iron witch’s chair. They put him in a straitjacket outside Keith’s and watched as he dangled from the tower, one hundred feet in the air. Before the mayor and scores of other onlookers, he was rolled in two sheets by attendants from a Worcester asylum, strapped to a cot, and had a dozen buckets of ice-cold water poured on his body. He slithered out nonchalantly. Restrained in cuffs and irons, he was stuffed inside a dead, reeking 1,600-pound sea creature and dropped into Boston Harbor. He escaped like Jonah from a whale.

  When traveling in those days by train, Houdini used to do push-ups in the aisles or pull-ups between the cars. After returning to his seat, he would soon feel the urge once again to exercise or perform. This time he would not need his strength, so he decided to forgo such lighthearted gymnastics. His mission was to deliver a report to the committee, but he was not cut out to be a passive observer in the dark. His impulse was to do something more, to expose the medium that very night, even if Malcolm Bird was not inclined to write about it. When he and Munn disembarked at South Station, Bird was waiting to drive them to Lime Street. As they walked through the terminal, Munn saw passersby greet Houdini with amazed smiles, and he brightened as they called to him.

  Everything Lovely

  The arrival of Munn and Houdini was like another flare in the meteoric rise of Margery; for all of Roy’s reservations she was now receiving a new tier of guests—two luminaries in their respective worlds of publishing and entertainment. While Houdini’s presence made her understandably anxious, she was proud to receive him in her parlor. She had become aware of researchers like McDougall, Prince, and Comstock only within the last year, but the Great Houdini had been a star since she was a child. Moreover, he seemed, like her, a little out of his realm among intellectuals and scientists. The name McDougall had meant nothing to him, he admitted to her, until the Harvard professor had been chosen as a judge in the psychic contest. And it seemed that McDougall, like the other judges, was not eager to attend a sitting the magician was managing. The psychologist had not responded to Bird’s calls about this gathering. As for Carrington, he’d left Boston before Munn and Houdini arrived. Prince had pressing business in New York. Even the affable Comstock sent a proxy—his assistant, Will Conant—for Houdini’s first séance with Margery.

  Given Houdini’s boisterous reputation, Margery was pleased to find that he could be almost as polite as Carrington, as curious as Bird, and more enchanting than Keating. Before her husband arrived from the office, she gave her New York guests a tour of the neighborhood; and despite being on opposite sides of the Borderland, she and Houdini appeared to get on famously. Everyone believed they were of different social spheres, but Margery was more of an outsider to Beacon Hill than most visitors imagined.

  During their walk, Houdini discussed the loss that had driven him to explore the spirit world. While Bird had always found it maudlin when the magician spoke of his dead mother with adjectives such as “beloved” or “sainted,” Margery was sympathetic to Houdini’s frustrations with the mediums who had failed to contact his loved one.

  Everything was agreeable to Houdini. At dinner he did not appear to be the loutish medium baiter whom Roy had described. In
stead, Margery found him rather dignified; a feeling that, on the surface at least, seemed mutual. In his diary that night, Houdini praised the Crandons’ good taste and noted Margery’s beauty—which explained, he said, Bird’s glowing reports on her mediumship. Though determined to be the one investigator immune to the Boston Circe’s spell, Houdini seemed to be having a swell time at Lime Street. He was amused when Margery, who had heard it from Sir Arthur, asked him if he too were a medium. While denying that claim, he told her of the voice that guided him when he stood precariously on a bridge—how he awaited the guardian-like prompting before leaping into the abyss. He also seemed impressed with Dr. Crandon, who had proudly showed him the finest private collection of Lincoln memorabilia in Boston. Houdini, in turn, could boast of his holdings on Booth, the scoundrel who had assassinated him.

  After an inspection of the house, Houdini said that he found nothing suspicious. Accordingly, on that evening of July 23, Margery gave her first demonstration for him and the small circle that included Munn, Bird, Conant, and the husband who seldom left her side in the séance room. Roy was considered to be practically a second medium, Houdini was told, as Margery needed his presence on her right. Yet if ever a psychic were caught between opposing forces, one energizing and the other potentially depleting, it was Margery—since Houdini was on her left that night, controlling her extremities on that side. The dark gathering began with the usual disembodied whispers and whistles, then Walter confronted the publisher and magician. “Very interesting conversation you men had on the train. I was there. I can always be where my interests lie,” the voice taunted.

  Before the visitors could respond, Walter went straight for Houdini, warning him that he was directing contact onto his right leg. For the record, Houdini confirmed the touches there. Some time later, after an intermission and a reassembling of his circle, Walter called for “control!” At that moment, Margery shifted away from Roy and toward Houdini, so that he could control both of her hands and feet. With the medium thus immobilized, Walter announced that the spirit megaphone was floating in the air. “Have Houdini tell me where to throw it,” the voice said. “Toward me,” Houdini commanded. Instantly the trumpet landed at his feet. Walter then ordered Bird to guard the door against any intruders. Before he could obey, the cabinet was hurled “backwards violently,” Houdini reported. If Margery and the magician had met on agreeable terms, the ghost was having none of it. “You—Munn and Houdini—think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” Walter sniped while proceeding to assail the New York guests with his effects. The Victrola slowed and stopped. A luminous plaque that had been placed on the bell box rose, lowered, then oscillated back and forth. For the climax, the bell box rang—seemingly of its own accord—while Margery was clasped by the magician who felt, she imagined, every fluctuation of her pulse and twinge of the nerves in her extremities.

  Houdini had not sat idly while Walter was active. During the demonstration he had placed both of Margery’s hands between his knees and explored the bell box for signs of manipulation. When he later refastened his hands on hers, he ran them up to her shoulders to ensure he was indeed holding the medium. She sensed he was uncomfortable with more intimate contact. In one report, from a previous séance, it had been noted that “Carrington explored the medium’s lap,” but Houdini eschewed that kind of groping. Neither would he have been among those committeemen who had once lined up by the bay window to examine the glowing spots on Margery’s chest—as if upon her bosom lay the answer to the Lime Street mystery. But while Houdini was less invasive with the psychic, he had no compunctions about imposing his will on the proceedings. Earlier that night, when the red light was turned up, he exploded at Bird for releasing one of his hands from the circle. When a sitter breaks the chain, it is considered debilitating to the séance battery. Houdini had other reasons, though, for ordering the editor to keep his hands on the table and away from the medium.

  Aside from that flare-up, Margery had not found the magician to be a hindrance. Afterward, the Crandons were pleased with Bird’s impromptu report that mentioned good control and a steady production of phenomena. The document was signed by Orson Munn, his editor, and, without disputing it, Harry Houdini.

  The star expert made no statement when the sitting was over; he appeared pensive, as if mentally reliving what he had witnessed. The Crandons were therefore hopeful that he, like the magician Keating, had come to scoff and left believing. And leave Houdini did, at least for the rest of the evening. Unlike Bird and Carrington he considered it impossible to stay at the medium’s house, break bread with her frequently, and then “render an impartial verdict.” Nevertheless, Margery felt her demonstration had gone well, and anticipated a favorable response from him. What the Doyles had once tried to do in Atlantic City had passed to her; and that night she had delivered more than the stream of Victorian platitudes that Jean Doyle had once given him. Margery had displayed hard evidence—physical phenomena that would make her the equal, Keating once said, of great illusionists like Thurston (who came to believe in her) and Kellar, if she produced her effects deceptively.

  After the séance, Bird drove Munn and Houdini back to the Copley Plaza Hotel. No one got out of the car when they parked on Beacon Street, as this was where the sitters had agreed to hold their “postmortem.” Turning to face Houdini in the backseat, Munn demanded his opinion of Margery.

  Without hesitation, Houdini delivered his verdict: “All fraud—every bit of it.” He promised that at the next sitting he would expose everything, although there was still something he hadn’t worked out. “One thing puzzles me,” he admitted. “I don’t see how she did that megaphone trick.”

  Bird refrained from defending the medium. Rather, he offered one of Prince’s speculations: if she were cheating, Margery might have balanced the megaphone on her shoulder while it was supposed to be floating. “It couldn’t be in her lap,” Bird maintained. “This was open to exploration.”

  “It couldn’t be on her shoulder either,” Houdini responded, as he had checked there during the manifestation. Abruptly, as Bird recalled, “an expression of relieved triumph” spread over the magician’s face. Now he called it the “slickest ruse” he had ever uncovered. Margery did not have supernatural powers; she could not really have suspended the megaphone in the air—for Houdini that was a given. Neither could she have kept it on her shoulder. There was only one other possibility: the medium had balanced the instrument on her head, then launched it toward him.

  Bird found his scenario absurd. How could this society wife pull off a feat that would have challenged even a vaudeville conjurer? He wanted to know how she made the bell box ring, if everything was fraudulent. With her foot, Houdini insisted. He explained that he had worn a rubber bandage around his calf during the rail journey to Boston. By the time they arrived at Lime Street his calf and ankle, as he intended, were swollen and sensitive to Margery’s foot, which rested next to his during the séance. During the sitting he had noticed her pull her skirt up well over her knees. Every time she slid her ankle or flexed her muscle, he felt the subtle movement through her silk stockings; he felt this happen precisely when the bell box sounded. Margery, he said, was a cunning impostor. What about the stopping of the Victrola? Munn offered. That was easy, Houdini said: someone got up and stopped it.

  So it was not enough that Margery was balancing trumpets on her head, thought Bird, and ringing bell boxes with her feet while the star expert was supposed to be controlling them. Houdini now asserted that she had accomplices who broke the circle and darted over to manipulate the music player. It could not have been Dr. Crandon, Bird affirmed, for he himself was controlling Roy during the phenomena. At this remark, Houdini bristled. Why had Bird broken the circle? he inquired. “For exploring purposes,” claimed the editor who often seemed to have his hands on the medium, Houdini hinted, when it was unwarranted. As the meeting ended, he left a strong suggestion that Bird was Margery’s confederate. Hours earlier the two men had exchanged a cord
ial handshake at South Station; by the end of the evening they were open enemies. While Munn and Houdini checked into their hotel, Bird drove back to the Crandons’.

  ♦

  The next day Margery confronted Houdini about a conversation that—unless Walter was right when he said he was everywhere—she should not have been able to divine. Hurt and disappointed, she accused Houdini of making vile statements against her; it would only tarnish his own name, she warned, if he followed through on his promise to try to expose her at the séance that evening. Begging her not to attribute what she knew to her psychic sense, Houdini asked her which particular bird was whispering in her ear. After admitting that Malcolm Bird was her source, she made Houdini promise to keep quiet about it.

  Proceeding directly to Munn and Bird, Houdini accused the editor of compromising the investigation by informing Margery of the committee’s discussions. Bird denied that he was revealing anything to the Crandons. Who was calling him a snitch? he demanded. Reluctant to completely break his promise to Margery, Houdini said that he had put two and two together when he saw her and Bird talking privately. The former mathematics professor snorted at that deduction, telling the magician he had gotten his numbers wrong.

  ♦

  Photographs were taken that day, which Margery would urge Houdini to keep private. Outside her home she stands beside the white-haired, well-coiffed publisher; behind them, leaning directly over Margery (he had to stand atop something unseen to enter the picture), is Bird—lean, bespectacled, and somber. Next to Margery, and the focus of her enigmatic gaze, is Houdini—stout and graying, a little ruffled in his dark suit. After that, Houdini took a snapshot of Margery smiling primly in a doorway, her hands behind her back, her hair and white frock radiating sunlight. Then someone took an intimate picture of Houdini and Margery posing alone near her front door. Though known to be formal and demure with women, Houdini leans close to the medium. Standing almost in profile to the camera, he holds her hand and smiles at her affectionately—while she has turned to him as if expecting a kiss.