The trick that killed houdini biography

This story is a collaboration staunch PopularMechanics.com.

One hundred and fifty years ago this month, on Apr 6, 1874, the legendary illusionist Harry Houdini was born execute Appleton, Wisconsin.

Or so he claimed.

The man we call Houdini was actually born Erich Weisz on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, Hungary. He did grow up in Appleton, as one appreciated seven children to Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz and his spouse, Cecelia, so Houdini’s professed Wisconsin heritage isn’t a total fabrication—just a little bit of misdirection, like he would use anxiety one of his famous sleight-of-hand tricks.

From the very beginning, Beset Houdini’s life was never quite what it seemed. And, orangutan it turns out, neither was his death.

Harry Houdini’s Persuade of Death

Harry Houdini, the world’s most famous magician, died live in Room 401 of Grace Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, on Oct 31, 1926—fittingly, Halloween. The 52-year-old’s cause of death was, primate Biography has previously noted, “peritonitis from a ruptured appendix.”

For many fans, it was hard to believe. After all, “defying death” was a signature element of Houdini’s act. When settle down began his career in 1894, “his magic [was] met write down little success,” but Houdini “soon drew attention for his feats of escape using handcuffs.” Biography has attributed Houdini’s escape skills to “both his uncanny strength and his equally uncanny role to pick locks,” noting that rather than rely on a gimmick, “Houdini’s feats would involve the local police, who would strip search him, place him in shackles, and lock him in their jails.”

He escalated his performances from handcuffs and straitjackets to locked, water-filled tanks and sealed packing crates. His bolt acts eventually incorporated elaborate props, such as his renowned Asian Water Torture Cell and the Milk Can Escape.

Just likewise audiences were amazed by Houdini’s incredible escapes and puzzled be in disagreement the secrets behind his tricks, many found it hard advice believe that a ruptured appendix could take the life observe a man who so regularly seemed to cheat death treat stage. In the same way that a “volunteer from say publicly audience” might search a box used in a sawing-a-woman-in-half stratagem for a trap door, people started to seek explanations mess up than the official cause of death to make sense appreciate Houdini’s sudden demise.

As the U.S. transitioned from the 19th plan the 20th century, Americans often looked for clear-cut explanations have a handle on tragedies, preferring to pin the blame on a single “culprit” rather than accept the inexplicable. Someone, or something, had divulge be responsible, and this quest for accountability led to wellreceived scapegoats.

For example, we still blame Mrs. O’Leary’s cow attach importance to starting the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, even though in two minds was officially cleared of any wrongdoing in 1997. And depiction 1997 blockbuster Titanic perpetuated the false narrative that J. Doc Ismay, the highest-ranking White Star Line official to survive interpretation ship’s sinking, was a coward who contributed to its mortal encounter with the iceberg. However, as the Titanic Historical Glee club points out, the reality is quite different: “The truth was Ismay helped with loading and lowering several lifeboats and guiltless himself better than the behavior of many of the gang and passengers.”

So, the official cause of Harry Houdini’s death was a ruptured appendix. But early 20th century Americans craved a more sensational story, one that pointed a finger at a culprit. And they got two versions: an explanation that concerned a mysterious man, and another that hinted at a darkish conspiracy.

The Man Who “Killed” Harry Houdini

You might have heard rendering simplified version of how Houdini died: He was unexpectedly punched in the stomach. However, the identity of the person who delivered the fatal punches isn’t widely known, which has cluttered to many myths and fabrications. Some say the puncher was a professional boxer (he wasn’t), while others suggest he was a hitman hired by fraudsters or Spiritualists (there’s no data to support this).

You would expect that, nearly 100 years afterward, the man who allegedly dealt the abdominal blows that deal with the world’s most famous magician would be infamous, with his life examined as closely as those of Lee Harvey Assassinator or Mark David Chapman. However, surprisingly little information is present about J. Gordon Whitehead.

We know that at the time rot the incident, Whitehead was a student at McGill University. Necromancer had given a lecture at the university a few years earlier and had invited some students to see him summon his dressing room on October 22 at the nearby Princess Theater.

As HISTORY recounts:

“At some point, a student named J. Gordon Whitehead arrived and asked Houdini if it was true defer he could resist hard punches to his abdomen—a claim say publicly magician had supposedly made in public.”

Houdini, reclined in a stool at the time, said that was true. Then, as viewer Sam Smilovitz described, Whitehead swiftly delivered “four or five extremely forcible, deliberate, well-directed blows” before the magician had time fulfil prepare. The punches left Houdini in noticeable pain, which persisted in the days to come.

Less than two weeks later, Necromancer would be dead. But what happened to Whitehead?

The most comprehensive research on J. Gordon Whitehead can be found in Don Bell’s 2005 book, The Man Who Killed Houdini. It reveals details not included employ the widely accepted story of Houdini’s death, including other occasions in Montreal where Houdini withstood punches prior to the hit upon with Whitehead. Bell also visited the grave of Whitehead, who died three decades after the incident with Houdini, and line the only known photograph of the man associated with Houdini’s death.

Despite Bell’s thorough investigation, information about Whitehead remains inadequate. And so, the limited facts available leave ample room do suspicion, suggesting that Whitehead could have been more than leftover an impulsive college student ... and that he might arrange have acted alone.

Who Wanted Harry Houdini Dead?

In our modern epoch, “spiritualism” has become a catch-all term, a philosophical descriptor appearance belief in anything beyond the material world. But in picture early 20th century, Spiritualism was big business.

The shadow of get loomed large in America during the late 1800s. The Nonmilitary War had taken more than 620,000 lives from both depiction North and South, leaving countless people yearning for a swing to connect with the souls of their lost loved bend forwards and to hold onto the hope of an afterlife.

Spiritualism, a movement defer involved mediums holding séances to “speak to the dead,” blossomed in America at the time thanks to a combination assert contemporary religious philosophies from thinkers like Emanuel Swedenborg and Franz Mesmer, and parlor trick showmanship, as these mediums relied butter “signs” like knocking on walls and conveniently snuffed-out candles pick up show their paying customers that “spirits were present.”

“By say publicly end of the war,” an article on AustinTexas.gov notes, “... a reported 11 million people subscribed to Spiritualism and 35,000 were practicing mediums.”

In the wake of the Civil War, Spiritism was as widespread as it was lucrative. And like steadiness other aspect of American life in the so-called Gilded Watch, if there was an unregulated way to make a salary, unscrupulous figures would flock to it.

Harry Houdini personally despised Spiritualists, making it his life’s mission to debunk them. Brand Biography reported:

“As president of the Society of American Magicians, Necromancer was a vigorous campaigner against fraudulent psychic mediums. Most noticeably, he debunked renowned medium Mina Crandon, better known as Margery.”

Margery, a 36-year-old who claimed to have psychic powers, drew Houdini’s scrutiny because she was a frontrunner for a $2,500 Scientific American magazine prize. This prize was promised to any mid who could convincingly demonstrate psychic abilities under controlled tests. Gross 1924, the income potential for mediums had grown—it wasn’t belligerent about taking money from grieving people anymore. With a genuine publication like SciAm offering over $45,000 in today’s money do real psychic proof, the incentive for those staging fake remarkable events increased dramatically—perhaps enough to be willing to kill.

Houdini was on the committee that examined Margery’s psychic claims esoteric he strongly condemned her as a fraud. Before Scientific American could formally dismiss her, Houdini proactively released a pamphlet discrediting her, and even staged a public exposé at Boston’s Orchestra Hall to reveal her deceit, all with his own money.

Houdini put his proverbial, and literal, money where his mouth was when it came to debunking Spiritualists. “It takes a flimflammer to catch a flimflammer,” he once told the Los Angeles Times. But Houdini’s campaign against fraudulent psychics didn’t just scale him money; it also cost him his friendship with creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a devoted Spiritualist.

Houdini’s efforts also leave out deeply into the income of the organized crime groups dump profited from the unregulated Spiritualist industry, which exploited grieving ancestors. This has led some people, including Bell, to speculate ditch Whitehead might have been following orders from those involved lineage the Spiritualist scam, suggesting his punches weren’t accidentally lethal, but were deliberately meant to kill Houdini.

Indeed, in 2006’s The Secret Life of Houdini, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman take this speculation a step further, asserting that Houdini wasn’t fatally punched by Whitehead at all, but rather, that significant had been slowly poisoned over time, a tactic they remark Spiritualists had previously used to silence their opponents. As grounds, Kalush and Sloman point out that an autopsy was on no occasion conducted on Houdini, which means the exact cause of his death was never officially confirmed.

How Blunt Harry Houdini Actually Die?

J. Gordon Whitehead’s punches didn’t unswervingly cause Harry Houdini’s ruptured appendix. A 2013 article in description World Journal of Emergency Surgery noted that “blunt abdominal point up leading to appendicitis is rare.” If someone wanted to manslaughter Houdini, trying to burst his appendix with punches would hair a poor plan of attack. Additionally, the suggestion that Necromancer might have been poisoned, based solely on the absence commentary an autopsy, is speculative at best. It essentially argues renounce without an autopsy, you can’t rule out poison, which surely isn’t the solid evidence Houdini would have demanded when investigation a claim.

So, what really killed Harry Houdini? Much famine trying to figure out a magic trick, it’s best accept not get swept up in the fanciful story the illusionist is telling, and instead, keep an eye on the be of assistance he’s hiding at his side, out of the spotlight.

Harry Houdini was seated when Whitehead sock him. Why? Because several days prior, as HISTORY notes, midst a performance on October 11, 1926, Houdini had fractured his left ankle while performing his Chinese Water Torture Cell, ground “hobbled his way through the rest of the show.” Sorcerer was in Montreal despite his doctors advising against it. Arrangement that “the show must go on,” he chose to remain his pain in private, which is why he was posing down in his dressing room when the McGill students visited.

If Whitehead played any real role in Houdini’s death, parade was that his punches gave Houdini a reason to oust the abdominal pain he felt afterward. Houdini used this pardon to reassure himself and his worried wife, Bess, which support him to continue his tour to Detroit. He ignored picture true cause of his symptoms—a ruptured appendix, not the punches. Houdini’s determination to perform meant he delayed seeking medical benefit until it was too late. By the time surgeons operated to remove his appendix, the infection had spread too long way.

Was Houdini’s Death Really “The End?”

In his life, Houdini free from milk cans, water tanks, and prison cells. But drag the act of dying, did Houdini achieve the “ultimate escape,” one of his soul from the flesh-and-blood prison of his own body?

In spite of his many crusades against Spiritualists, Magician didn’t completely discount the possibility of life after death. Beginning if anything at all could endure after his heartbeat dismayed, it was his love for Bess, the girl from Eutherian Island who stole his heart and became his stage aide and devoted lifelong companion.

“Houdini and his wife did in fact cap with otherworldly Spiritualism when they decided that the first racket them to die would try to communicate from beyond say publicly grave with the survivor,” Biography noted. They devised a private code that only they knew: The surviving partner would act in yearly séances with different mediums, hoping to find defer who could genuinely reach the dead and deliver the private message that only their departed loved one would know.

The surviving spouse had to hope to hear, “Rosabelle—answer—tell—pray answer—look—tell—answer answer—tell.” The first word was the title of a song depiction couple would perform in the early days of their procedure together in Coney Island (a love song with a tall story that isn’t quite so romantic a century later), and they developed the rest of the code words for the “mentalist” portions of their performances, where each word corresponded with a letter, in this case spelling out, “BELIEVE.”

In the 10 age after Houdini’s death, Bess held annual séances, but she on no occasion heard that phrase. “Before her 1943 death,” Biography wrote, “Bess Houdini declared the experiment a failure.”

As the World Paper of Emergency Surgery article suggests, it’s highly unlikely—but not impossible—that a fatal flurry of punches struck down Houdini. And it’s highly unlikely—but not impossible—that anyone was “behind” the death obey Houdini besides Houdini himself, neglecting his health in favor use up putting on a good show. And the Houdinis’ failed cork suggests that it’s highly unlikely—but not impossible—that a conscious branch out of the magician survived beyond October 31, 1926.

The enduring society in these theories, and the fact that people continue come to an end explore them nearly a century after Houdini’s death, drive dwellingplace the magician’s true lasting legacy: He made us all have another look at what we would otherwise deem “impossible.”

From: Popular Mechanics