In 1932, Eleanor Hoffman, Dr. Prince’s secretary, cultivated a friendship with Margery and began filing confidential reports to Dr. Prince. Some of their conversations pertained to the Houdini-inspired investigation by the Secret Service and the British M.P. Harry Day into the disappearance of young boys in the Crandon household. Margery’s statements affirm that there was at least one additional boy other than Horace Newton who came over from England. According to her account, this boy’s parents were still alive, although poor, and Crandon’s sister Laura took the boy from a home and brought him to Boston. They kept him all summer and wanted to adopt him, but according to Margery, the family would not allow the adoption so they returned him to England. Before he was allegedly returned, Margery said that “the poor little fellow had adenoids and had to be circumcised,” so Crandon performed the operation at home. After the operation, “the little fellow sat up in bed and looked at himself and said, ‘I aren’t pretty anymore,’ and John told him that was all right, he looked like that too.”
When the little boy left, according to Margery, “people wrote asking his whereabouts, and the prime minister of England cabled to ask where he was and demanded a cable reply. Why people even said Dr. Crandon committed illegal operations on little children and murdered them,” she told Hoffman. Doyle seemed worried, too. In an undated letter during Day’s investigation, he wrote Crandon, “Concerning that blessed boy—was he lost on the way back? This answer reached me today. I have to know the details of the affair in case I have to meet any question.”
On the same day that Margery related the circumcision story, she opened a closet door to put away some fingerprints Walter had produced and showed Hoffman a “whole rack of pictures of little children—most of them really lovely.” When Hoffman commented on the pictures, Margery told her: “Those are Dr. Crandon’s caesareans—aren’t they sweet? All caesareans.” As far as we know, Crandon was a surgeon who was not noted for delivering babies, naturally or by Caesarean. There were much more than one hundred pictures of young children in Crandon’s closet.
When Houdini received the blows to his stomach in Montreal, the prime minister of Canada was Mackenzie King, a closeted Spiritualist who used to hold séances to commune with his dead mother and dog. King’s secret interest in the spirit world was only revealed to a shocked Canadian public in 1950, two years after he had finally left office.
A similar revelation might have transpired in the White House. Houdini had been intent on proving that his assertions about séances in the Coolidge family were correct. In 1929, in a letter to British psychic researcher Harry Price, Crandon informed him that a Theron Pierce, “a man long interested and active in psychical research,” had been formally delegated by the ASPR, which Crandon controlled by then, to represent that society during Margery’s London experiments. “You may further recognize him as a host…to the President and Mrs. Coolidge last summer for three months. Mr. Pierce’s estate was the summer White House.”
The Pierce family obtained their vast wealth through oil interests. Was Pierce close to Joseph DeWyckoff, another Spiritualist multimillionaire? Did their influence extend up to the White House?
The man who viciously assaulted Houdini in his dressing room remained a stranger to history until Montreal journalist Don Bell began a twenty-year journey to ascertain his identity. Bell’s groundbreaking book only added fuel to the notion of a conspiracy against the master magician. Joscelyn Gordon Whitehead was the son of a pool hall owner in Kelowna, British Columbia, a small town with a rough reputation. Although he wrote that he graduated from Kelowna High School on his McGill student card, Bell could find no record of Whitehead’s attendance there. What he heard from close associates of Whitehead was a different story. According to them, Whitehead’s father was a British consul in either Hong Kong or Singapore, and Joscelyn was believed to have had a proper English education before enrolling at McGill.
Bell discovered that after Houdini’s death, Whitehead became a virtual recluse, living in a dank apartment that was stacked from floor to ceiling with old newspapers. The only human interaction he seemed to have had was with various women who were interested in spiritual pursuits. One of these women happened to be Lady Marler, a wealthy heiress and the wife of Sir Herbert Marler, a long-time ally of the Canadian prime minister and a one-time ambassador to the United States. Lady Marler was said to be extremely close to the devout Spiritualist prime minister. How she got to be close to Whitehead was never determined.
A close examination of the depositions given by Whitehead, Price, and Smiley reveals some interesting facts. When Whitehead appeared at Houdini’s dressing room that fateful day, he had already had a prior relationship with the magician. He had come to return a book he had borrowed and Houdini was well enough acquainted with him to introduce him to the other two students. According to Whitehead’s deposition, he had several encounters with Houdini that week. In one, Whitehead claimed that the two had spoken about longevity and that Houdini had given him an advance copy of the November Scientific American. A perusal of the table of contents revealed that there was an article about longevity in that issue written by Houdini’s old friend A. A. Hopkins.
What’s curious about Whitehead’s account is that he claimed that he called upon Houdini in his room at the Mount Royal Hotel. Bell learned that Houdini’s troupe had been staying at the Prince of Wales Hotel that was adjacent to the Princess Theatre. In Houdini’s archives, there are several notes in Houdini’s handwriting, even one to Bess, written on Mount Royal stationery. Was Houdini maintaining a separate hotel room in a different hotel? Why would he do that?
We know that Houdini had double agents who had ties to the Spiritualist community. Could Houdini’s interactions with Whitehead have been an attempt to create another such agent? If Houdini was taking the threats on his life seriously, as we know he was, it would be prudent for him to maintain a separate hotel room away from the others in his group. Whitehead stated in his deposition that he had called on Houdini at the Mount Royal twice, one time leaving his card. They had obviously met before the punching incident on Friday, and in fact, Whitehead claims that they met twice after the incident. The later visits may have been intended to make light of his vicious attack on Houdini. What’s certain is that Whitehead’s line of interrogation in Houdini’s dressing room that fateful Friday is eerily reminiscent of Spiritualists who sought to engage people in discussions of the Bible to promulgate their claim that Jesus and His disciples were spiritualistic mediums who performed miracles.
Whitehead’s insistence on talking about the miracles of the Bible seemed to catch Houdini off guard. When he refused comment and suggested that he would have been considered a miracle worker in biblical days, Whitehead seemed disturbed by his answer. The assault took place just seconds later. According to Whitehead, Houdini invited the punches, but we know from the other two eyewitnesses that it wasn’t the case. Was the wry smile that crossed Houdini’s face after the pummeling a realization that the Spiritualists had gotten to him? Was the attack the fulfillment of Margery’s threat to have her friends beat him up? Was the bizarre assault in the lobby of the Prince of Wales hotel part of a Spiritualist plot?
There were hundreds of people at Grand Central Station on November 2, awaiting the train that would bring Harry Houdini back to New York for the last time. As his coffin was borne through the station, people wept openly and bared their heads. Two days later, more than 2,500 people jammed into the Elks Club in New York for the funeral. A far larger number of people thronged the streets outside, almost closing it off to traffic. All of Houdini’s siblings, including Leo, attended. Bess, wearing a veil and a black silk dress, was accompanied by Sophie Rosenblatt and collapsed when the coffin lid was permanently affixed. Rabbi Bernard Drachman eulogized Houdini, claiming: “He possessed a wondrous power which he never understood and which he never revealed to anyone in life.” Rabbi B. A. Tintner added: “He was exceptional, a unique personality, and besides that, he was one of
the noblest and sweetest of men.”
Mourners line up before Houdini’s coffin. From the collection of John Cox
After the ceremony, as the last strains of Chopin’s Funeral March faded, a procession of twenty-five cars tied up traffic as it made its way through the Manhattan streets and over the Queensborough Bridge. When they reached the gravesite at Machpelah cemetery in Queens, Bess collapsed again.
Newspapers around the country had extensive coverage, and the tributes to Houdini were plentiful. The New York World wrote, “Starting out as a magician, he developed so much that by the end of his career he had fairly earned the title of scientist.” The New York Times lauded him as “a man of wide reading, a collector both of books and of art.” The New York Sun lamented: “His death removes a great artist and a useful scientist, and he was both without impairment of the qualities of heart and soul that endeared him to his fellows of the stage and his unnumbered admirers in front of the footlights.” The New York Daily News headline seemed to sum up the outpouring of grief: “Wanted: More Houdinis.”
Heartfelt tributes came from all quarters. “Houdini was the greatest showman of our time by far,” the great humorist Will Rogers wrote. “I played with Harry at Keith’s Philadelphia over eighteen years ago for the first time. I was roping at my pony on the stage and was billed to close the show…. Harry was just ahead with his handcuff tricks. It was late when he went on. He held that audience for one hour and a quarter. Not a soul moved. He would come out of his cabinet every fifteen or twenty minutes, perspiring and kinder size up that crowd to see just about how they were standing it. Now, mind you, when he is in that cabinet there is not a thing going on. A whole Theatre full are just waiting. Now he had that something that no one can define that is generally just passed off under the heading of showmanship. But it was in reality, Sense, Shrewdness, Judgment, unmatched ability, Intuition, Personality, and an uncanny knowledge of people.”
“Harry Houdini was a picturesque figure,” his friend Charles Carter wrote in The Billboard. “He was much maligned and generally misunderstood. His life was unselfish and devoted always to the betterment of those he loved and those less fortunate. His deeds of charity were manifold. Indigent showfolk by the score he has relieved and made prosperous. So unostentatious was he in such acts that only his closest friends were cognizant of them. He made the long, long fight. He fought for a principle; this principle was the kernel of magic, its respectability. He fought everywhere—on the stage, in the press, in the home, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, in the church and, lastly, in the little back room of Martinka’s or wherever the meeting room of the Society of American Magicians happened to be. He stood as the greatest figure of usefulness to, and representative of, the conjurer in his generation. He was an institution, and we, the exponents of modern magic, owe his memory a debt that we can never pay. His name alone lent dignity to magic.”
At a memorial service a few days after the funeral, the movie star Eddie Cantor, in the midst of eulogizing his friend, broke down and had to be helped off the stage.
In Houdini’s will there was a provision for Hardeen to inherit Houdini’s props. It was meant to be a loan, not a bequest, for Houdini also stipulated that upon Hardeen’s death, the material was to be destroyed. Hardeen immediately resumed his career. He was booked to open January 10, 1927 at the Ritz Theater in Elizabeth, New Jersey. On that same day, William Matthews, the Ritz’s manager, revealed that threats against the life of Hardeen had been received and asked for police protection for the performer. According to Matthews, Hardeen’s life had been threatened because “he fell heir to certain of Houdini’s secrets.” It seems more likely that Matthews was referring to Houdini’s investigative files on the Spiritualists rather than his production of silks from a globe.
Fellow magician Charles Carter (center) wrote an eloquent eulogy for Houdini. From the collection of Sid Fleischman
Six months later, Scotland Yard detectives began investigating a breakin at the home of Colonel Harry Day. Day was concerned about the slashing of a painting that was given to him by Houdini in 1909. It had been inscribed “To Harry Day from his sincere pal, Harry Houdini.” Day told the press that he “could not imagine a motive for the vandalism.” Was the slashing of the Houdini gift a random act of vandalism or a symbolic message to Day? Or were the intruders looking for something hidden in the slashed painting?
A British newspaper clipping of the incident was sent to Crandon by the psychic researcher Eric Dingwall, who was still angling for sittings with Margery. “This is the man whom Houdini got to ask about your kid. You are revenged!” Dingwall wrote. Although it was hardly news to Crandon, the clipping and the note wound up in Crandon’s scrapbook.
Also in the scrapbook was a copy of the letter that Crandon sent Doyle on July 6, two weeks after the Day breakin.
Dear Sir Arthur:
Did you notice June 22 that the apartment of Harry Day, M.P., was robbed and destroyed by Vandals? If we were superstitious, we might be inclined to say that old John G. Nemesis were on the job. Consequent but not because of unfair treatment of Margery, the following events should be noted:
1. Dr. Walter Franklin Prince loses his job at the American S.P.R.
2. Dr. Comstock has mysteriously shutup.
3. McDougall was “promoted” from Harvard.
4. Code has left Harvard.
5. Foster Damon has left Harvard.
6. Marshall has left Harvard.
7. Hillyer has left Harvard.
8. Houdini is dead.
9. Dingwall has left the S.P.R.
10. Harry Day, M.P., is a victim of Vandals.
We hope you and Lady Doyle are thinking well of a possible visit to us. It would mark a new peak in metapsychics. A book by you fully describing all the phenomena at Lime Street as observed by you yourself, ending up with the fingerprints, would do as much towards turning the world over as any one thing you could do. Our love to you all.
As ever,
L. R. G. Crandon, M.D.
On August 15, 1927, Hardeen, who had just returned home from a western tour, went to the Snider Avenue police station to report that his Brooklyn home had been broken into while he was on the road. A friend of Hardeen, who had been forwarding his mail, saw that the pantry door had been forced open and two panes in the door from the pantry to the kitchen had been cut away. While jewels, linens, other valuables, and $15,000 in Liberty bonds were undisturbed, the “thieves” had taken apart several pieces of Houdini’s apparatus, looking for something. The crime was never solved.
Sometime later, in the presence of Joe Hyman, Houdini’s old friend, Hardeen destroyed all of Houdini’s personal files by burning them in the basement furnace of his home. According to Hyman, Hardeen “incidentally almost burnt his residence down doing so.”
Hereward Carrington, who had been loaned a vital piece of evidence (Walter’s thumbprint) and was once the sole supporter of Margery on the Scientific American committee, had become convinced by August 1932 that she was a fraud. When he returned to his apartment after a day trip to Philadelphia, he was amazed to see that someone had entered his residence by forcing open a window. Writing to the owner of the thumbprint, he had an idea about who had engineered the breakin: “I spoke to several people about this incident, at the time, and was warned that certain people would stop at nothing in their attempts to obtain evidence, or destroy existing evidence. I was warned quite frankly that I was in a way dealing with the ‘underworld,’ and advised to act accordingly.”
Carrington was convinced that he had just had a visit from John G. Nemesis.
“I do not believe [Bess] will ever fully recover,” Frank Black wrote Kilby after Houdini died. “He was more to her than the average husband.” After the funeral, she began her recuperation with a trip to Atlantic City. Then she went back to the brownstone and began boxing up her husband’s books and going through his effects. One box that she opened was filled with love letters to Houdini, including some torri
d letters from Daisy White. When Bess raged at Daisy, the counter girl told her that the letters were just a put-on and somehow managed to mollify the widow. The other authors weren’t as lucky. Bess made appointments for them to visit her and when they arrived, all at the same time, the maid informed them that Mrs. Houdini was too ill to receive them and to send each one home with their love letters in a neat bundle.
Having disposed of her flesh-and-blood rivals, Bess wasted no time in banishing Houdini’s other true love—his numerous collections, with which she had been forced to share her home. It took Bess a few months to arrange her husband’s books, some of which were going to the Library of Congress. She sold the drama collection and gave away several of Houdini’s effects to his close friends. Then she sold the house at a loss and bought a smaller house, where she lived with her mother, niece, and sister. According to the magician William Frazee, before the move “she called in a junk man and he took several wagon loads of things away. if Houdini knew it he would turn over in his grave. Boxes of Hancuffs and thousands of keyes, faked mail bag locks, keys from cell locks from all over the world etc. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.” The very stuff of Houdini’s soul, his locks, manacles, and keys, were now just junk to be disposed of in the back of a junkman’s wagon. To Houdini, they were just as precious to him as trophies, and they didn’t even earn the dignity of winding up in a pawnshop window on the Bowery.
The Secret Life of Houdini Page 59