The Off-Key Bard
History

This Day in History — Houdini's Final Escape

On this day in 1926

On Halloween 1926, Harry Houdini died of a ruptured appendix in Detroit at 52. The tale that a student's punch killed him is far from proven.

The Off-Key Bard enters a hospital room in Detroit on Halloween afternoon, 1926. Outside, the city carries on with an ordinary Sunday. Inside, a man famous for surviving seemingly impossible situations is fighting a battle that no amount of lockpicking, physical training or stagecraft can help him win. He has escaped handcuffs, chains, locked trunks, jail cells and underwater restraints. This time the danger is inside his own body.

The man who made a career of escaping the impossible is running out of time.

On October 31, 1926, the magician and escape artist Harry Houdini died at Grace Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, at the age of 52. The official cause was peritonitis from a ruptured appendix. Some accounts describe the end as overwhelming sepsis. His death on Halloween seemed almost too fitting for a man whose career had been built on mystery, danger and the illusion of supernatural power. The popular explanation, that a punch to the stomach from a college student killed him, is a good deal shakier than the legend suggests.

From Budapest to Appleton

Houdini was born Erik Weisz on March 24, 1874, in Budapest, then part of Austria-Hungary, one of seven children of Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weisz and Cecilia. The family left Hungary to escape antisemitic discrimination and arrived in the United States on July 3, 1878, aboard the SS Frisia. They settled in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father served as rabbi of the Zion Reform Jewish Congregation. The family continued to struggle, and in 1887 Erich and his father moved to New York City.

He found work in a necktie factory, where he partnered with a coworker, Jacob Hyman, to create a magic act billed as "The Brothers Houdini." He took the name Harry Houdini in honor of the French magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, whose autobiography he read in 1890. The name's origin is less tidy than the legend. Wikipedia notes that "Harry" was likely adapted from a family nickname, "Ehri," even though he later credited the magician Harry Kellar. In 1894, at Coney Island, he met Wilhelmina Beatrice "Bess" Rahner. They married weeks later, and she joined the act. (PBS dates the marriage to 1893, but Wikipedia and the Tenement Museum give 1894.)

The Escape Artist

Success came slowly. In 1899, the vaudeville impresario Martin Beck began including Houdini's handcuff escapes in shows around the country, and Houdini performed free public escapes to sell tickets. He invited local police to strip-search, shackle and lock him in their jails, and he emerged free. The escapes were not supernatural. They rested on preparation, knowledge of locks, physical conditioning and showmanship.

His acts grew more dangerous. He progressed from handcuffs and straitjackets to locked, water-filled tanks and nailed packing crates. The Chinese Water Torture Cell was first performed on September 21, 1912, at Circus Busch in Berlin. Houdini was suspended upside down by his feet in a locked, water-filled glass cabinet and had to escape while holding his breath for more than three minutes. It stayed in his act until his death.

He had other interests. On March 18, 1910, he made three flights in a Voisin biplane at Diggers Rest, near Melbourne, reaching about 100 feet. His flight is claimed to be the first controlled powered flight in Australia, and the claim needs qualification, since sources vary in whether they call it the first or one of the first. He also made films, beginning with a short film of his escapes in 1901 and later starring in features such as The Master Mystery, The Grim Game and Terror Island, though his film company was not a success.

The Skeptic

By the 1920s Houdini had a second public role. His mother died on July 17, 1913, and the loss devastated him. After World War I, millions of grieving people turned to spiritualism for comfort, and Houdini became convinced that many professional mediums were exploiting that grief. He understood their techniques as a magician and saw an important difference between an audience that knows it is watching an illusion and a mourner who believes a medium is genuinely speaking to the dead.

His campaign cost him a friendship. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was a committed spiritualist. At a séance in Atlantic City in 1922, Lady Doyle claimed to channel automatic writing from Houdini's mother. Houdini was not convinced, and that marked the start of the end of the friendship. Doyle later became a bitter opponent. In 1922 Scientific American offered $2,500 to any medium who could demonstrate paranormal ability, and in 1924 the Boston medium "Margery" (Mina Crandon) competed. Houdini claimed she rang a bell with her feet, and the magazine ultimately agreed that no genuine phenomena had been shown. That year he also published A Magician Among the Spirits.

In February 1926 he took the fight to Washington. Hearings on House Resolution 8989, which would have banned paid fortune-telling in the District of Columbia, began on February 26, 1926, and ran about four days. Houdini argued that mediums were frauds and offered $10,000 to any who could show a verifiable psychic phenomenon. Lawmakers were often amused and skeptical, and the bill did not pass.

October 1926

On October 11, Houdini was struck by faulty equipment during the Water Torture Cell escape in Albany, New York, and he was later found to have a fractured left ankle. On October 22, at the Princess Theatre in Montreal, a McGill student, J. Gordon Whitehead, punched him in the stomach in his dressing room after Houdini confirmed he could resist such blows. A witness, Sam Smilovitz, described "four or five terribly forcible, deliberate, well-directed blows." Houdini was reclining and unprepared.

He had abdominal pain that evening and it worsened. On the overnight train to Detroit he developed severe pain, cold sweats and a 104-degree fever. A doctor suspected appendicitis and urged him to go to a hospital, but Houdini performed anyway at the Garrick Theatre on October 24. He collapsed after the final curtain.

He was taken to Grace Hospital, where surgeons removed his appendix, which had already ruptured, and peritonitis had spread. A second operation followed on October 28, and a new anti-streptococcal serum was introduced. On October 31, at 1:26 p.m., with Bess and two of his brothers present, he died. He was buried in Queens on November 4.

Did the Punch Kill Him?

Doctors at the time believed the punches caused the rupture, and Houdini's life insurer paid Bess a double indemnity for accidental death, which reflected acceptance of that theory. Later writers are more cautious. Appendicitis caused by blunt abdominal trauma is rare, and experts still debate whether such cases are causal or coincidental. Dr. Howard Markel argues the punches and the appendicitis may have been coincidental: the muscle pain may have misled Houdini into blaming the blows and delaying treatment. Snopes concludes that the assumed cause and effect is likely wrong. The honest summary is that the student did punch him, Houdini did die of ruptured appendicitis and peritonitis, and the claim that the punch killed him cannot be demonstrated.

The Halloween Séances

Before he died, Houdini and Bess agreed on a secret phrase, "Rosabelle, believe," that a genuine medium would have to produce. In 1929 the psychic Arthur Ford gave the phrase, probably after reading it in a Houdini biography. Bess held annual séances for a decade. On Halloween 1936 she held a final one at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood before about 300 people, and the ghost never appeared. She is quoted as saying, "Ten years is long enough to wait for any man." Bess died on February 11, 1943.

An Enduring Skepticism

Houdini's legacy rests on a combination of showmanship and skepticism. He wanted to astonish audiences without asking them to believe in the supernatural, and he devoted his last years to showing that extraordinary appearances do not require extraordinary explanations. The same caution applies to the story of his death: a dramatic coincidence can easily turn into accepted fact.

Through locks and chains, he found his way,
From water's depths to light of day.
Yet Halloween would close the show—
And leave a legend still aglow.

The man who seemed capable of escaping anything met the same human vulnerability as everyone else. The legend he built outlasted him.

Sources

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