The Secret Life of Houdini

by William Kalush

  Dr. Crandon responded to his letter the day he received it.

  What Tripp didn’t tell the Crandons was that he had been a Houdini imitator. In 1906, Tripp did jail cell and handcuff escapes and, according to Harry Kellar, was one of the most able magic innovators around. The fact that Carrington and Keating were her confidants and that according to The Boston Herald, Houdini’s rival and Spiritualist sympathizer Howard Thurston was “a friend of Dr. Crandon’s,” as well as Conan Doyle’s, suggests that Margery was getting tutored by some serious magical minds. In the next few years, Walter would perform standard card tricks and even do a version of the linking rings using wooden rings of differing grains.

  Margery’s mediumship took on new dimensions when Eric Dingwall arrived in the summer of 1924. According to Margery herself, when Dingwall arrived, “the first thing he told me was to take off my clothes.” His admonition was hardly needed. Mrs. Crandon would often sit in the nude, and routinely wouldn’t wear anything more than a kimono with nothing underneath. It was reported that she would sometimes sprinkle luminous powder on her breasts, creating a nice effect when the kimono slipped off her shoulders.

  During Dingwall’s sittings, Margery began to produce strange-looking ectoplasm that oozed out of a slit in her dressing gown and seemed to originate in her vagina. It was Walter’s idea to demonstrate the materialization of this ectoplasm, so while Walter laughed merrily and Margery snored in a trance, Doctor Crandon held a red light to her groin area while Dingwall observed what looked like a flaccid hand protruding from her vagina. Margery later boasted of giving Dingwall sittings where she was completely nude. Years later, Professor McDougall would charge Dingwall with having had improper relations with the medium.

  To counteract Houdini’s damaging anti-Margery lectures, Crandon rented a hall in Boston and announced that on January 31, Margery would rebut Houdini’s exposure by performing a public séance, duplicating the phenomena she had produced for the committee. Apparently she got cold feet and, at the last minute, Dingwall substituted for her with a boring lecture on her mediumship.

  With battles raging on several fronts, Houdini’s life seemed more frantic than ever. On January 19 he wrote Kilby three times in one day. In his first letter, he praised Kilby for determining who had brought Dingwall into the Margery picture. He also complained about his fellow committeemen. “Just to show you how matters stand, although I am still a member of the committee in good standing, in speaking to Dr. Prince yesterday he informed me that Margery had a new routine of manifestations, but he refused to tell me what they were. Can you beat this? And here I am giving them all the secrets that I possess, and they will not help me.” In his next letter, he asked Kilby to spy on the Margery camp. “If it is at all possible, I would like to get a report on what Margery will do at the séance on the 31st. I am told that she has changed her entire program since my expose,” he said in one letter. He also told him that despite Munn’s denials, he had in his possession page proofs of the September issue of Scientific American with Bird’s suppressed article on Margery.

  The third letter of the day was chilling. “I have just received warning letters of what Margery and the Spiritualists are going to do to me. Well, time will tell. I know I am right, and I will stick to my guns until I know that there is no hypocrisy in these manifestations, and then I will shout the truth from the house tops. Regarding Margery, I would very much like to get a report of what takes place at her séance on the 31st. If possible, can you engage a stenographer to go there and get a report? I will pay all expenses. Nothing surprises me about Margery. A woman who will drag her dead brother from the grave and exploit him before the public as a means of gaining social prominence, would do anything.”

  Houdini was not being an alarmist in taking these threats seriously. Spiritualists had dealt ruthlessly with their antagonists for years. In 1904, his good friend and partner in exposing Spiritualists, Joe Rinn, was forced to carry a gun for protection after several attempts on his life by phony mediums who had lost clients because of Rinn’s scrutiny. Mediums like Minnie Williams had thugs on her staff who routinely beat up anyone who tried to stem her cash flow. Madame Diss Debar, who had a long history of Spiritualist scams, was thought to have poisoned an art dealer named Samuel Loewenherz, after she received forty paintings from his gallery. After delivering the artwork, Diss Debar gave him some wine and cake. He then returned to his office, where he fell asleep. A few days later, he was found there comatose and he subsequently died in the hospital. Unfortunately an autopsy was never taken, so there was no proof linking her with the crime, although the administrator of Loewenherz’s estate did swear out a warrant for her arrest.

  Houdini himself had warned Rinn in his dealings with the Spiritualist crowd. “All materializing séances are fakes,” he told Rinn back in 1895. “You can get legal evidence to convict [medium] Rogers any time at his séances, but don’t try to do it alone. Those mediums are bad actors and would think nothing of putting you in the hospital or worse.” Sometimes the mediums employed the “spirits” to do their bidding. When a heckler would try to interrupt his séance, one medium insisted that a committee should bind him with rope to a chair and place the heckler in the cabinet with him. Under the cover of darkness, the medium would release his ties, beat the heckler with a blackjack, all the time singing a loud hymn, and then throw him out of the cabinet and fasten his bonds again. When the lights were turned on and the medium was seen fastened, the audience believed that the spirits had meted out justice to the troublemaker.

  Houdini had too long a history in the exposé game not to take these threats seriously. So on February 13, he sent his brother Hardeen a letter, along with a copy of the page proofs of the September issue of Scientific American. “I want you to save this in case anything should happen to me as evidence that the press was stopped and these pages thrown out.” He then gave Dash a background into Munn’s dealings with Bird and the rest of the committee. “Put these records away and I will mail things from time to time, to be filed for future evidence. Do not leave these photostatic copies out of your hands please.”

  February was the cruelest month for Margery and Walter. On the twelfth of that month, the Scientific American committee finally reached its verdict on her mediumship. By a vote of four to one, the men rejected her claim to the prize. Houdini was the only member who claimed that she was a fraud. The three academics merely argued that she failed to convince them that she produced her phenomena by supernormal means; what predisposed them toward her credibility was that she was a private, noncommercial medium who “had no history of association with magicians, mediums and jugglers who might teach her the art of mystification.” So much for the thoroughness of their investigation. Later that month, McDougall, who had finally glimpsed the ectoplasm that issued from Margery’s nether regions, claimed that it looked a lot like the lung tissue from an animal.

  Crandon immediately put his spin on the failure. “We dismissed them on January 20,” he told the press. “The effort today of the Scientific American psychic committee to save its face in the presence of the almost unprecedented psychic power of Margery has only two defects. It is three weeks too late and it is dishonest. We have done the dismissing, not they.” He also expressed relief that now Margery could travel to England, where the study of her supernatural powers could continue “unhampered by a handcuff king and his allies.”

  For his part Houdini was elated. “Houdini Sees Plot to Spirit Margery Away,” a New York headline read. “The implication that she cannot properly be investigated in this country is ridiculous. It strikes me she is just trying to get away from Houdini,” he said. Not so fast. Margery’s plans became more nebulous when Walter put his ectoplasmic hand down. Although the medium desired to travel to London, her dead older brother had so far failed to give her assurances that the London fogs would agree with him. He did seem like his usual feisty self, though, on February 21, when during a séance at Lime Street, he composed a spontaneous song
to the tune of “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More”:

  Oh Houdini won’t talk no more, no more

  He ain’t goin’ talk no more.

  What in the hell will the newspapers do,

  When Houdini won’t talk no more?

  Houdini won’t write no more, no more,

  Houdini won’t write no more.

  He writ so much that his arm got sore,

  Houdini won’t write no more.

  Crandon had a different way of expressing his defiance. On February 28, he wrote Sir William Barrett and claimed that McDougall’s final judgment on the case must have been “dictated” by the powers-that-be at Harvard who felt that no self-respecting university would have anything to do with psychic research. “We have only just begun to fight,” Crandon bellowed. “And we shall keep it up till their skins or ours are nailed on the wall.”

  23

  My Own Secret Service

  WALTER LIPPMANN, THE CHIEF EDITORIAL WRITER of The New York World, leaned into the circle of men in the corner of the room and whispered, “I’m thinking of Lord Curzon in the Foreign Office.”

  Hardeen repeated his statement for accuracy, wrote it down on a slip of paper, and handed it to Lippmann. Now it was Bernard Baruch’s turn. The Wall Street multimillionaire and wartime chairman of the War Industries Board stared at Hardeen.

  “Don’t give up the ship,” he said succinctly. Hardeen repeated the phrase and wrote it down for him.

  The other men looked to Dr. Edward Kempf, an eminent psychiatrist.

  “I’m thinking of Buffalo Bill’s monument in Wyoming that was designed by Mrs. Harry Payne Whitney,” Dr. Kempf whispered. Hardeen repeated the procedure. Now they were ready.

  This was the most prestigious committee that Houdini had ever assembled. Along with these three men, there was Ralph Pulitzer, the publisher of The New York World, whose father had established the prize for outstanding journalism that was named after him, and Arthur Train, a novelist who specialized in themes that bore on criminality. A blue-ribbon panel of New York’s power elite, for sure, but they weren’t assembled on the stage of the Hippodrome. They were congregated together in the parlor of Houdini’s home in Harlem to witness the magician give a demonstration of thought transference.

  In January 1925, Gilbert Murray, a professor and a member of the British Society for Psychical Research, reported that he was able to successfully read thoughts that had been announced aloud by his friend the Earl of Balfour, even though Murray had left the room and was thirty-five feet away at the time. Murray’s ongoing experiments had delighted Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who as far back as 1923 had written to Houdini claiming that this demonstrated the proof of telepathy. When Pulitzer got Murray’s latest report, he decided that the tests proved supernormal power. Houdini didn’t jump to the same conclusion and offered to replicate Murray’s experiment. “My only desire is to show that Professor Murray did not perform a supernatural feat,” Houdini told the press. “I would not expose any man who claimed he was doing a trick, but I feel that a claim of the supernatural is wrong and has driven people insane.” Houdini didn’t just plan on duplicating Murray’s experiment; he was, of course, planning on going it one better. Instead of just leaving the room when the committee decided on a thought, Houdini would have himself escorted to the third floor of his house, stripped naked, and locked into a box.

  That was the finale. The experiment began when the men and women of the committee gathered together in the parlor. Hardeen, Houdini’s brother, would play the role of the Earl of Balfour. Bess, to avoid suspicion, was banished from the room. Then Houdini walked up the stairs to a room on the third floor and closed the door. A member of the committee stood guard outside the door.

  After the three committeemen documented their thoughts, Houdini was brought back down into the room.

  Lippmann’s phrase gave him trouble. He was unable to receive Lord Curzon’s name. Then he turned to Baruch. He wasn’t getting anything at first, then he lowered his head and concentrated deeply.

  “I’m visualizing a huge body that’s heaving and swaying,” he said. “In fact, you’re thinking of an enormous body of water, and I can see a lot of shipwrecks.”

  The committee decided that was a hit.

  Now it was Kempf ’s turn.

  “I see a large plain. A great herd of black oxen. They appear to be stampeding. I see a man who is very hungry,” Houdini said dramatically. “He’s seated on a racing horse. He’s chasing these oxen—no, they are not oxen, they are buffaloes. They have their heads down, and they are going like a whirlwind. He is shooting at them—no, I am wrong. I see a great many people who are hungry. They are thinking of food. This man is supplying them with food. But you are not thinking of this man. This man has long hair and piercing eyes. You are not thinking of the man, though, but of the monument. It is Buffalo Bill. You are thinking of his monument in Wyoming and the sculptor—is that right?”

  Dr. Kempf was flabbergasted. “That’s amazing,” he said. “I had said nothing of Buffalo Bill’s activities but I did visualize him killing buffalo and feeding hungry railroad workers. That is absolutely astounding.”

  Now for the ultimate challenge. Houdini marched back upstairs accompanied by Pulitzer and Lippmann. He stripped off his clothes and was placed into a box that had been carefully examined by the newsmen. The publisher demanded that the box be taken off the floor, so Houdini suggested it be put upon a desk. Pulitzer demurred and they finally compromised by placing the box on top of a bench. The two men then stood guard over it.

  Downstairs, the rest of the committee decided on one thought: Mrs. John Barrymore’s portrait by the Spanish painter Ignacio Zuloaga. Houdini, who had paused to throw a large blanket over his shoulders, was brought downstairs.

  “I see Shakespeare, his home at Stratford-on-Avon,” he began. “There are large audiences. No, wait, it’s not England, it’s America. I know why I thought England, it’s an American theatrical family who came from England. You’re thinking of the Barrymore family, possibly Jack.”

  He missed the gender and he didn’t pick up the painting, but Houdini’s high percentage of hits had shocked his committee. He refused to tell them his secret, other than that it was done by perfectly normal means. What the distinguished guests didn’t know was that they were at that moment reposing in a house that had been surreptitiously wired from cellar to roof.

  Houdini’s house had been customized to enable him to astonish his visitors. It began with the front door, which didn’t open conventionally; when you turned the doorknob, the door would swing open from what should have been the hinged side. Once again, Houdini was paying silent homage to Robert-Houdin, who had loaded his house with wonderful little inventions. In Houdini’s home, there were secret panels and hidden passageways. One of those secret panels was in the library, where Houdini had fooled Doyle with his Mene Tekel effect. Houdini (or Ernst) had forced Doyle into putting the blackboard into a corner that covered a secret panel behind some of the books on the shelf. A hidden assistant then opened the panel, removed the books, and stuck a long rod with a magnet on its end. The cork ball Houdini had subtly forced Doyle to choose had a magnetic center so it could be controlled from the rod on the other side of the blackboard. All the hidden assistant had to do was trace out the phrase backward and it would magically appear on the front of the board.

  Crucial to Houdini’s method was his ability to hear the conversations of guests who were reposing in the parlor. That room had been completely wired so that every little whisper could be picked up by a series of hidden Dictaphones and transmitted to an operator concealed in the basement. Whatever was said could either be noted down or retransmitted to other parts of the house through an elaborate labyrinth of hidden wires that sometimes even terminated in induction coils under the carpet. For Houdini, on the top floor, to hear these transmissions, he only had to wear an electric belt that established an invisible connection via electromagnetic induction with the loops of wire un
der the carpet. The belt was composed of many turns of the wire and terminated in a miniature telephone receiver that could be hidden in his hand, the wires running down his sleeve to the belt. For this last test, when Houdini had voluntarily removed his clothing, he relied on a concealed coil that was built into the box. It was a real-life replication of the opening scene of Houdini’s The Master Mystery, where, as a secret agent, he eavesdropped on his corrupt boss via a hidden Dictaphone.

  Louis C. Kraus, a nephew of Houdini’s who worked for the Treasury Department, which oversaw the Secret Service, had originally wired the house. He may have gotten the idea from Feri Felix Weiss, who worked for the Treasury Department. Weiss was involved in investigating German espionage during World War I, and his article about the use of Dictaphone systems for spying was cut out and pasted by Houdini into one of his scrapbooks. By the time of Houdini’s thought transference experiment in February 1925, the entire surveillance system had been rewired and made more sophisticated by a brilliant, mysterious young magician named Amedeo Vacca. Vacca had established himself as a magician in Chicago when he ran into Houdini at Gus Roterberg’s magic shop in 1921. Impressed by his talent, Houdini wrote down his address and told Vacca that if ever came to New York, his services might be wanted. Two years later, Vacca showed up and Houdini immediately put him on the payroll. He wasn’t just another assistant, though. For the next three years, Vacca became the lynchpin for a side of Houdini’s life that was so secret, it was kept from even Bess and his brother Hardeen.