Suspended straitjacket escape houdini biography

  • Bess houdini
  • Harry houdini
  • How old was houdini when he died

    • •

    By Tom Interval

    There’s no enviable day to die, but if you’re a magician, and you have to cash in your chips, anyway, it might as well be on Halloween. That’s exactly what Harry Houdini did 91 years ago today: October 31, , p.m., age

    Of course, it wasn’t intentional. And of all the things that could have killed a daredevil like him—drowning, suffocation, strangulation, plummeting—it was peritonitis that ultimately did him in. I suspect that today at least some Houdini and history bloggers will expound on the myths, realities, and ironies of the pioneering showman’s demise, so I won’t offer you more of that.

    Instead, here’s a scarce photo of the man, upside down as he often was (hence the danger of plummeting), and a little background info to follow. It was published in The New York Times on August 29, , with the caption, “HARRY HOUDINI, HANDCUFF KING, Freeing Himself from a Straight-jacket While Suspended in the Air at the Police Field Day Games at the Gravesend Race Track.&#;

    •

    I was intrigued by a question that John Cox brought up on his blog:

    • Where and when did Houdini first perform the suspended straitjacket escape?

    And of course, when I am intrigued bygd something, this blog fryst vatten what you get.

    Kalush via a mention by Will Goldston says it was September of in Kansas City.  Silverman says it was hanging forty-five feet from the office building of the Minneapolis Evening Tribune on September 29, sourced to a newspaper in the Stanley Palm collection.

    There fryst vatten a very nice discussion on The Magic Cafe Forums but nothing fryst vatten definitive.

    Well the Sept 29th, date in Minneapolis is well sourced, so that leaves the Kansas City date that needs more research.

    So what fryst vatten this mention by Will Goldston?

    It just so happens that inom have the October edition of Will Goldston’sThe Magazine Of Magic, with the article “Harry utbrytarkung &#; His Latest Escape”.


    [Page 17]

    [Page 18]

    But nowhere in the above &#;Harry Ho

  • suspended straitjacket escape houdini biography

    • •

    It's been said that Houdini got the idea for his famous suspended straitjacket escape from a super fan, Randolph Douglas (a.k.a. Randini), during a visit to the Douglas home in England in June The most recent biography, The Secret Life of Houdini (), even goes as far to state that Randini "changed the course of magic history" that day. Houdini would first perform the suspend straitjacket in Kansas City on September 8, It would become his signature outdoor escape.

    But now reader Bill Mullins sends in a clipping that throws us a curve in regards to where Houdini might have gotten the idea for the escape and how original it was to the escape king.

    Here we have a magician named "Mysterio" performing a suspended straitjacket escape in , a full year before the Douglas demonstration and two years before Houdini first did the escape himself. Furthermore, it appears that Mysterio did this escape a number of times. Digging a little deeper (via Ask Alexander) reveals that Mysterio is actual