Things came to a head after an October 20 performance at the Princess Theater in Montreal. But Houdini dismissed claims of the supernatural as so much quackery that cruelly played on the hopes of those who had lost loved ones.”īut how did he finally die? Houdini apparently had been suffering from appendicitis for weeks before his death on Halloween of 1926, but hadn’t sought out treatment.

Spiritualism had an upsurge after World War I as populations that had suffered horrendous loses sought ways of coping. “Amidst the sensation,” says Ward, “what is not as well known, however, is that Houdini also spent much of his career debunking and exposing charlatans and con-men who used aspects of magic, especially séances with the dead, to dupe a credulous public. In it he was suspended upside-down in a locked glass and steel cabinet overflowing with water. His 1912 underwater box escape in New York’s East River was proclaimed by Scientific American magazine as “one of the most remarkable tricks ever performed.” And Houdini continued his string of legendary stunts, debuting his legendary Chinese Water Torture Cell later that year.

Houdini escaped from a wide variety of objects, including items suggested by his audience: straitjackets, boilers, wet sheets, milk jugs and supposedly even the belly of a preserved “ 1,600-pound sea monster” that had washed ashore in Boston. Houdini performing the Chinese Water Torture Cell.

Houdini chinese water torture cell