Harry Houdini
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Harry Houdini (March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926), whose real name was Ehrich Weisz (which was changed to Erich Weiss when he immigrated to America), was a Hungarian magician, escapologist (widely regarded as one of the greatest ever), stunt performer, as well as a skeptic and investigator of spiritualists, a film producer, actor, and an amateur aviator.
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Debunking spiritualists
In the 1920s, after the death of his beloved mother, Cecilia, he turned his energies toward debunking self-proclaimed psychics and mediums, a pursuit that would inspire and be followed by later-day conjurers Milbourne Christopher, James Randi, Martin Gardner, P.C. Sorcar, and Penn and Teller.
Houdini's magical training
Houdini's magical training allowed him to expose frauds that had successfully fooled many scientists and academics. He was a member of a Scientific American committee, which offered a cash prize to any medium who could successfully demonstrate supernatural abilities. Thanks to the contributions and skepticism of Houdini and three others (there were five in the committee), the prize was never collected. As his fame as a "ghostbuster" grew, Houdini took to attending séances in disguise, accompanied by a reporter and police officer. Possibly the most famous medium whom he debunked was the Boston medium Mina Crandon, also known as "Margery." Houdini chronicled his debunking exploits in his book, A Magician Among the Spirits.
Fraudulent "spirit photographs"
Arthur Conan Doyle
These activities cost Houdini the friendship of Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. Doyle, a firm believer in spiritualism during his later years, refused to believe any of Houdini's exposés. Doyle actually came to believe that Houdini was a powerful spiritualist medium, had performed many of his stunts by means of paranormal abilities, and was using these abilities to block those of other mediums that he was 'debunking' (see Doyle's The Edge of The Unknown, published in 1931, after Houdini's death). This disagreement led to the two men becoming public antagonists. Gabriel Brownstein has written a fictionalized account of the meetings of Houdini, Doyle, and Margery in The Man from Beyond: A Novel (2005).
The Secret Life of Houdini
The book The Secret Life of Houdini has an account of Doyle's involvement with the camp of "Margery" and presents personal letters showing that Doyle and Mina's husband strongly believed that revenging spirits (not persons) would soon kill Houdini for hiding the "truth." The book further proposes Doyle's campaign to hijack Houdini's legacy when a Spiritualist minister friend of Doyle, Rev. Arthur Ford[2], conspired with him to bring messages from Houdini and his mother back from the grave in séances, including one on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel, that would further the Spiritualist's agenda. According to the book, Houdini's wife felt so depressed that she actually tried to commit suicide on the eve of the séance. There is no mention of the fact that, twelve days after the séance, Bess Houdini wrote a moving letter to Walter Winchell, the columnist, that was published in the Graphic, denying the words she received from her deceased husband were given to Ford by herself, denying the charge Bess and Ford had conspired together to perform a publicity stunt to further their careers in the entertainment industry. She trusted Ford's reading.[3][4] Neither is there any mention of the fact that the Houdini code was already widely known by the public months before the séance. (See Arthur Ford)
Death
The most widespread account is that Houdini's ruptured appendix was caused by multiple blows to his abdomen from a McGill University student, J. Gordon Whitehead, in Montreal on October 22.
How it happened
The eyewitnesses to this event were two McGill University students named Jacques Price and Sam Smilovitz (sometimes called Jack Price and Sam Smiley). Their accounts generally agreed. The following is according to Price's description of events. Houdini was reclining on his couch after his performance, having an art student sketch him. When Whitehead came in and asked if it was true that Houdini could take any blow to the stomach, Houdini replied in the affirmative. In this instance, he was hit three times, before Houdini protested. Whitehead reportedly continued hitting Houdini several times afterwards, and Houdini acted as though he were in some pain. Price recounted that Houdini stated that if he had had time to prepare himself properly, he would have been in a better position to take the blows. After taking statements from Price and Smilovitz, Houdini's insurance company concluded that the death was due to the dressing-room incident and paid double indemnity.[5]
Houdini’s last performance
When Houdini arrived at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit, Michigan, on October 24, 1926, for what would be his last performance, he had a fever of 104 degrees F (40°C). Despite a diagnosis of acute appendicitis, Houdini took the stage. Afterwards, he was hospitalized at Detroit's Grace Hospital.[6] Houdini died of peritonitis from a ruptured appendix at 1:26 p.m. in Room 401 on October 31 (Halloween), 1926, at the age of 52.
The blow aggravated existing appendicitis
Despite this, modern medical knowledge gives no reason to believe Houdini's acute appendicitis was caused by any physical trauma. McGill University's archive supported this idea:
Harry had apparently been suffering from appendicitis for several days and refusing medical treatment. His appendix would likely have burst on its own without the trauma.[7]
Suspected poisoning
Some people have suggested the possibility that Houdini died of poisoning. Houdini attempted to debunk the work of a group of psychics known as the 'Spiritualists', and members of this group, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, were clearly at odds with him in the later part of his life. There is evidence suggesting that one or more supporters of the Spiritualists murdered Houdini, possibly by poisoning his food with arsenic or another deadly substance. In 2007, some of Houdini's descendants and several notable forensic pathologists tried to gain permission to exhume Houdini's remains and search for evidence of poisoning. Dr. Michael Baden, who chaired panels re-investigating the deaths of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., pointed out an oddity in Houdini's death certificate: It noted that his appendix was on the left side, rather than the right.[8]
If Houdini believed spiritualists had cursed him this could have made him accident prone. Houdini may have denied Doyle’s threat consciously while fearing that threat subconsciously. That also could have made him accident-prone. His refusal to seek medical treatment for appendicitis could have been part of this.
Funeral
Houdini's funeral was held on November 4, 1926, in New York, with more than 2,000 mourners in attendance. He was interred in the Machpelah Cemetery in Queens, New York, with the crest of the Society of American Magicians inscribed on his gravesite. To this day, the Society holds its "Broken Wand" ceremony at the gravesite on the anniversary of his death. Houdini's wife, Bess, died in February 1943 and was not permitted to be interred with him at Machpelah Cemetery because she was a gentile. Bess Houdini is interred at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.
Will
In Houdini's will, his vast library was offered to the American Society for Psychical Research on the condition that research officer and editor of the ASPR Journal, J. Malcolm Bird, resign. Bird refused and the collection went instead to the Library of Congress.
Code words
Fearing that spiritualists would exploit his legacy by pretending to contact him after his death, Houdini left his wife a secret code—ten words chosen at random from a letter written by Doyle—that he would use to contact her from the afterlife.[9] According to "The Secret Life of Houdini," this fear of the spiritualists was well-founded: Arthur Conan Doyle's campaign to hijack Houdini's legacy came to a head when a Spiritualist minister friend of Doyle, Rev. Arthur Ford[10], conspired with him to bring alleged messages from Houdini and his mother back from the grave in séances, including a highly publicized one on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel. "The Secret Life of Houdini" alleges that Bess Houdini was seduced by Ford in order to further the Spiritualist agenda and that Bess may have conspired to assist Ford in creating the impression he had contacted Houdini's spirit. The book also states that Houdini's wife felt so depressed that she actually tried to commit suicide on the eve of the Knickerbocker séance.
Conflicting statements
At the séance, Ford claimed to have contacted both Houdini and his deceased mother via Ford's spirit guide "Fletcher", and stated that the message received was in the pre-arranged code worked out by Houdini and Bess before Houdini's death. A brief letter supposedly signed by Bess Houdini appeared, which read in full: "Regardless of any statements made to the contrary, I wish to declare that the message, in its entirety, and in the agreed upon sequence, given to me by Arthur Ford, is the correct message pre-arranged between Mr. Houdini and myself." On January 10, 1929, New York Graphic reporter Rea Jaure filed a story entitled "Houdini Message a Big Hoax!" stating that Ford had confessed in an interview to having paid Bess Houdini for her cooperation, but Ford later claimed the interviewee was an imposter. Further muddying the waters were Bess Houdini's conflicting statements about the success of Ford's experiments; she is alleged to have written an impassioned letter to the famed columnist Walter Winchell initially defending Ford, and a New York Times article from January 15, 1929 has her responding to rumors that the code had been "leaked" in advance by stating that, "No one but her husband and herself could possibly have known the details of the code. Neither overtly nor covertly could it have been gleaned... To this argument she clung." But by March 18,1930, both the New York Times and Bess Houdini had modifed their stance. "Numerous attempts to convince Mrs. Houdini that her husband is communicating through a medium were made," the Times said, "but she steadfastly denied that any of the mediums presented the clue by which she was to recognize a legitimate message."
Yearly séances
Bess Houdini held yearly séances on Halloween for ten years after Houdini's death, but Houdini never appeared. In 1936, after a last unsuccessful séance on the roof of the Knickerbocker Hotel, she put out the candle that she had kept burning beside a photograph of Houdini since his death, later (1943) saying, "ten years is long enough to wait for any man." The tradition of holding a séance for Houdini continues by magicians throughout the world to this day and is currently organized by Sidney H. Radner [1]
and others, including Dorothy Dietrich [2] at the Houdini Museum in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Adapted from the Wikipedia article, "Harry Houdini" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini, used under the GNU Free Documentation License.
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