The Witch of Lime Street

by David Jaher

  Margery’s supporters considered the charges purely an invention of Houdini’s dark imagination; with each accusation of curses and covens, they heard the echo: Burn the Wretches! But Houdini had a way of witchmongering while denying that his enemies had real supernatural power: he accused Margery of practicing voodoo yet dismissed her ability to harm him. “This Boston group can’t even give me a pimple by sticking hat-pins through my photograph,” he promised. What worried him was the credit his enemies would take should something grisly coincidentally happen to befall him. Psychics had predicted his death dozens of times, he pointed out, and one day they were sure to guess right. “Can you imagine what these worthy Boston witch-doctors will claim for their dooms brewed in tea-leaves if, by chance, I start to cross Fifth Avenue next December 21st, and don’t get to the other side?” He dismissed all supernatural pretensions, whether to communicate with the spirits or to use spells to add him to the ranks of the departed.

  “All talk by Houdini that spirits are plotting his death within a year is not only false but absurd,” Margery retorted. “Why, I never heard of Black Magic. I regard his statements as a joke,” she scoffed. Flashing a knowing smile to reporters, she suggested he was “only seeking publicity.” Two days later Houdini arrived in Boston for the sole purpose of unmasking her before a local audience. “She is a fraud your honor,” he said to Mayor Curley while depositing $10,000 in New York bonds in his hands. He explained that half of the deposit was to go to the mayor’s favorite charity should Houdini fail to prove before an impartial committee of local newsmen, conjurers, and clergy that Margery was a cheat; the other half to Dr. McDougall—who had claimed to know more than Houdini about psychic deception—if the psychologist could reproduce any of the magician’s own feats. Then, in front of a burgeoning crowd at City Hall, he did his famous needle act and other tricks.

  Margery, on the other hand, had kept a low profile that December, but only because she was frequently out of town. The psychic had visited New York earlier in the month and performed there in Orson Munn’s Waldorf apartment. But she was in Manhattan for personal reasons rather than in pursuit of the publisher’s endorsement.

  For months Roy had been reaching out to friends in England, including the Doyles, who might be able to help him find another orphaned boy—of six to nine years old—whose parents were free of tuberculosis, syphilis, alcoholism, and insanity. One potential adoptee was found: a ten-year-old named Horace Newton, who lived in the National Children’s Home and Orphanage in London.

  Because Joseph DeWyckoff was a lawyer with connections in Washington, he helped to arrange the unorthodox adoption and accompanied young Horace on his passage to America. By the end of the year, the couple looked forward to the arrival of their new son, though Roy wondered if the Newton boy was young enough to mold into a Crandon.

  When, on December 10, Horace and DeWyckoff arrived in New York, Margery was there to greet them as they debarked the Aquitania. Horace was a feisty but personable child, whom the new parents renamed Edward Winslow Crandon. But something went wrong. Ten days after the boy arrived, Margery brought him back to New York and returned him to England on the Doric. Horace—then Edward, now once again Horace—hadn’t taken to Lime Street, preferring the orphanage.

  1925: The Fading Light

  The mercury had plummeted to the zero mark on the clear January morning when the Crandons walked down the Hill to where a shivering throng had gathered in Boston Common. They were there to witness what newspapers were calling the spectacle of the century—a sign of faith in the scientists who predicted it, since the event had yet to occur. In those same dailies were the warnings of the astrologers who feared it—at this time marriage and new business ventures were apparently not a good idea. Few really believed the expected eclipse was an omen, yet there was something primitive in the sight of thousands staring trancelike at the heavens. Vendors hawked smoky photographic plates and dark glasses through which to view the celestial effect, and it was eerie indeed, thought Margery, to see so many in the glasses usually worn by the blind beggars on Boylston Street. It seemed all of Boston had taken off work—spectators were jamming the roofs and esplanades. And the police were out in force; no one knew what lunacy was possible when the sun went out.

  Even in 1925, there were distressed reactions to the kind of phenomenon that once caused clashing armies to abandon the field, and had won Columbus—when he predicted the darkening of the sun—the fealty of native tribes. Recently sects of Seventh Day Adventists had quit their jobs in preparation for the Second Coming and the end of human life. But for most of those who lived along the path—from Minnesota to Nantucket—where the eclipse could be observed, the prevailing mood was one of reverence and excitement. That morning fleets of airplanes and dirigibles took flight, as if to diminish some of the 92 million miles that separated man from the glowing orb about to disappear. Every type of scientific instrument was pointed to the sky, and radio signals were said to be exceptionally clear and crisp.

  When it happened, the Man in the Street felt he had witnessed a “great show and right up to its advance notices.” The Herald-Tribune reported that New York was given “a thrill that no Broadway show could ever hand her, a sudden fearful impulse toward religious fervor no evangelist could ever stir within her people.” Prisoners about to be arraigned in court were led outside to witness the kaleidoscopic effect. Upon hearing the eclipse described over the radio by an army pilot speeding through the air at five thousand feet, blind inmates at a Harlem sanitarium were stirred to a rapture, their imaginations more powerful than anything working eyes could see. In New Jersey a blind man, happening to stare up at the sunburst just before the sky went dark, was reported to have suffered excruciating pain and then, hours later, his sight was miraculously restored. “And yet,” a Brooklyn street sweeper leaning on the handle of his shovel was heard to utter as he gazed skyward, “and yet there are people who say there is no God.”

  In Boston, the Crandons watched beams of light—rose, yellow, and orange-colored—dance around the sun. Almost no conversation was heard from the crowd peering from the steps, and the windows and verandas of the statehouse. There was only the sound of cameras clicking and awed outbursts as a white corona flared from the upper-right corner of the still-blazing disk. The wind suddenly shifted. The air grew appreciably colder, just as before the occurrence of spectral phenomena, thought Roy. “There she goes!” came a chorus of voices as the sun began to slowly vanish into what looked like a half-crescent moon. Struck by the fading light, the dome of the courthouse took on a greenish-gold color and the Common an unearthly bluish-green hue. In the daytime sky, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury were observed. Dogs began to bark. Confused by the encroaching darkness, pigeons on the Old South Church on Boylston went to roost, heads tucked under their wings. And when the sun finally vanished altogether, Margery could not help but wonder if it might somehow get stuck, never to reappear, and they would live out their days in this ghostly, twilight world.

  A Stormy Forum

  For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth,

  Action, nor utterance, not the power of speech,

  To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar

  As Symphony Hall began to fill, there was much glancing around to see who was present for the ballyhooed event. Many spectators were dressed in overcoats and sweaters, others in formal evening attire; there were the Back Bay types, university men, Jews from Brookline. Some had the look of mystics, while a few of the more casual did crossword puzzles, as if to say what few others felt: that Harry Houdini’s was just another lecture in the fancy hall—it was not as if he were going to make an elephant disappear that January 3 or free himself from some deadly snare. Yet Houdini considered this one of the most important evenings of his life, and he wanted the best in Boston, the Crandons’ peers, to turn out. Conspicuously present, though never confused with the upper crust, was the blustery mayor, James Cur
ley—waving from the first row with his wife and children. Next to them sat Anna Eva Fay, one of the most acclaimed psychics of the old vaudeville stage, and the only notable medium on good terms with Houdini, as she had admitted to him that she was a fake. Flanking the stage was the large event committee—the scores of newspapermen, ministers, and magicians whom the wizard and mayor had personally invited. But to Houdini’s disappointment, two of the most well-known people in Boston did not attend: the Crandons were not going to dignify a spook burlesque, they said. Despite their absence, the crowd was excited for the show to begin. Several times applause broke out as impatient spectators called for the speaker. Finally, as the Transcript observed, “Houdini comes on, muscular, curly-haired, bowing, smiling, his tread resounding firmly on the boards.”

  As he came to the footlights the crowd expected a nifty preliminary trick. Instead the magician paused for a moment, as if the right words were more difficult to access than the hidden picks he used in his escape work. The audience did not really know this Houdini, who had no sleight of hand to open his act, no needles to swallow, no torture cell to be lowered into headfirst.

  The speaker began by stressing that he was not there to attack anyone’s faith. In his four circuits of the globe he had witnessed the most peculiar kinds of worship, none of which he found harmful, he claimed. He had seen a Hindu suspended by a hook that ran through his bare back and still remembered the serene expression on the martyr’s face. He had watched devotees in India rolling through the streets—for none in this obscure sect were allowed to stand erect. He had met another mystic with fingernails grown through his hand, and saw nothing wrong in that ritual either. These beliefs did not threaten the public like the cult of spiritism did.

  So far as the forum at Symphony Hall, he had no set speech to give. He told them that he would say what came to mind, and invited the audience to question and challenge him whenever they wished—which reminded him that he wanted to withdraw his own challenge to Dr. McDougall, with whom he had made amends. The Harvard psychologist was a gentleman and a valued colleague, he said, as the audience applauded news of their rapprochement. Houdini smiled broadly. They had always cheered him in this town.

  “Perhaps some of you witnessed when I was engaged at Keith’s Theatre and was hung up by my ankles and drawn up to the top of the building in a straitjacket and came down—well, the whole town of Boston whirled around me,” Houdini recalled, “and Manager Larson stood there by me and I could not understand it. The town whirled around me. I said, ‘I will be all right in a moment.’ But my eye was the axis of the town.”

  His point was that spirit mediumship also distorted the senses, though he confessed that he himself had been seeking a genuine medium for thirty-five years. “If there is one, trot her out,” he urged. A million dollars had been spent on psychic research over the years. Where was the proven psychic? “Trot her out!” When no medium came forward, Houdini invoked the great hopes of the past. He dimmed the lights to show stereopticon slides—for all such gatherings expected spooky photographs—of Mrs. Crandon’s predecessors: the raven-haired, blue-eyed Fox sisters, who had mystified millions when they produced the seminal spiritist effect—their galvanizing raps on tables and walls. Then came another type of phenomena, psychic slate writing, and its accompanying cult of swindlers. Houdini called a volunteer from the stage committee to demonstrate “a regulation spirit slate writing trick” of the kind made famous by Henry Slade. “I want you to watch me carefully, ladies and gentlemen, because if things are right, this will be a very extraordinary experiment—if things are right.”

  In preparation for the séance, Houdini asked the volunteer to hold a blank school slate on his head. Whereupon he called on “the best known spirit in the world today to give me a sign of his presence.” When removed from the gentleman’s head and presented to the committee, the slate magically contained the message “My last photograph. Love to all, Walter”—and a gruesome photograph of a dying Walter Stinson crushed between railroad cars. A pall fell over the audience. Houdini explained that it was “just one of those coincidences of fate” that he was able to obtain the picture. While the photograph was genuine, he said the slate manifestation showed “what can be accomplished by trickery.” The magician who collected grisly pictures had somehow uncovered one of Walter’s annihilation—an image even the Crandons didn’t know existed. The committee was still gawking over it when he announced, “I think we had better have a Margery séance next.”

  ♦

  Seated near the stage, while keenly observing Houdini, was a man of many hats—none of which altered his donnish appearance. Eric Dingwall, curator of chastity belts and expert on ectoplasm, was a competent magician on good terms with the speaker. When Dingwall, perpetually lacking funds, had to withdraw from the Society of American Magicians because he could no longer afford the dues, Houdini had paid it from his own pocket. The two men were friends and colleagues. In London they had sat together with Eva C, whose phenomena both experts had dismissed. Yet as research officer of the English SPR, Dingwall’s current mission was to start a new investigation of the Margery mediumship.

  Because most SPR investigators did not endorse the spirit hypothesis—the belief in the objective existence of ghosts like Walter—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had abandoned the SPR; in particular he didn’t trust Dingwall, whom he found as skeptical as any investigator in England. Still, Houdini was uneasy about where Dingwall stood on the Margery mediumship, for he had tried phoning him four times without receiving an answer. In a subsequent letter to Dingwall, he confessed to feeling slighted and wished to get to the bottom of a disturbing rumor he could not credit: that Dr. Crandon was paying the Englishman’s traveling expenses.

  “Everything is now ready for the exposé,” Houdini announced. To simulate the séance darkness, he had just blindfolded two volunteers from the stage committee—and when he joined them in a circle, their feet controlling his feet, their hands his hands, they became the sitters and he Margery. To the delight of the crowd, Houdini, while entreating Walter to levitate the table, leaned his torso forward and raised it with his head—a maneuver he attributed to the Boston psychic. “That’s exactly how she performed the stunt,” he promised. “If it isn’t, I lose $5,000.” As the sitters were blind, Houdini described the brilliant lights zipping by them. Then he allowed one of them to verify, while still gripping the escape artist, that the spirit trumpet remained on the floor beside the sitter’s leg. “Walter, pick up the megaphone,” Houdini commanded. Instantly he deftly flipped the instrument onto his head, but told the volunteers it was “floating through the air.” He asked a sitter in which direction he wanted it to fall: “To the right?” As the crowd roared, Houdini deposited it there.

  Next came the bell box demonstration, the unveiling of Margery’s most convincing scientific feat. To leave no room for mystery, Houdini showed how, with his hands and feet controlled, he could thrust himself toward the table and ring the bell box with his forehead. He rang the bell box while it was suspended on strings and far out of reach. He rang it inexplicably, from wherever he stood and whenever he pleased. He was able to ring it when audience members called for it. He could ring it while he, enacting what McDougall had done, carried it around the hall. But he did not expect the voice that called out: “Let me see that box!”

  “What’s that?” Houdini asked.

  “Will you let me see that box!”

  To Houdini’s consternation, it was his friend Dingwall making the demand. The SPR officer suspected, rightly, that Houdini was using a trick bell box rather than the model that Comstock employed. In attempting to reveal another magician’s trick, Dingwall was breaking the cardinal rule of the magic order in front of a full house at Symphony Hall! Houdini looked incensed. He had always been “extra kind to Eric Dingwall,” thinking no less of him for collecting pornography. He had given him inside information on the Crandons, even kept him in good standing in SAM. Nonetheless, there he was, trying to embarras
s Houdini as few magicians ever had—it was as if Dingwall had informed the audience that the irons from which the Handcuff King had just escaped were fixed.

  “Well, Dingwall,” Houdini responded, “you here and challenging me when you know that any secret I have in Spiritualism is yours simply for the asking? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You know everything I do is trickery.”

  Turning to the audience, Houdini announced that Dingwall, a representative of the Crandons, was trying to subvert a fellow conjurer’s work. Those who didn’t find the challenge sporting began to hiss and jeer. “Dingwall, this is not cricket,” Houdini stormed. Someone urged the Englishman to step onstage and speak, but Dingwall thought better of scrapping with the Wizard of Locks and Chains in front of his fans. “Kindly address your remarks to the lecturer,” he snapped as he sat back down.

  Houdini explained that while Dingwall had rebuffed him as a friend, he felt that he was an honest man. Unlike Carrington and Bird, he was sure the SPR agent would expose Margery if he ever caught her in fraud. Then he proceeded with the séance that Dingwall had disrupted, though the bell the researcher wanted to examine rang no more.

  Following his clash with Dingwall, Houdini’s assistant hauled out what they called Margery’s black box—the very one “that finished her.”

  “This is the box that she objected to,” Houdini claimed, pointing out the armholes for ventilation and other features that made it humane. Once again Dingwall suspected that this was not the actual device the SciAm judges had used, but he held his tongue while the magician climbed into the cage. Calling for more volunteers, Houdini asked them to hold his hands. “It will not be as nice as holding her hands,” he quipped while demonstrating “exactly what she did.”