Who was Harry Houdini? From King of Cards to escape legend

Harry Houdini was born Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874 and grew up in the United States. He started out as a card magician billed as the “King of Cards,” became world famous for escaping from handcuffs, a water-filled milk can and his Water Torture Cell, and spent his last years exposing fake spirit mediums. He died in Detroit on 31 October 1926, aged 52.

Where was Houdini born, and what was his real name?

He was born Erik Weisz on 24 March 1874 in Budapest, then part of Austria-Hungary. His family emigrated to the United States in 1878 and settled in Appleton, Wisconsin, where his father was a rabbi. In America the family name became Weiss, and the boy grew up as Ehrich Weiss. In 1887 he and his father moved to New York City.

His birthplace is a good reminder to check old magic books. Henry Ridgely Evans, in The Old and the New Magic (1906), gives his birth as April 6, 1873, in Appleton, Wisconsin. Modern references give Budapest and 1874, so treat the Appleton version as part of the legend, not the record.

Was Houdini a card magician first?

Yes. His professional career began in 1891, and early on he billed himself as the “King of Cards.” He took his stage name from the French magician Robert-Houdin. In The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin (1908) he wrote that a fellow performer told him adding an “i” to Houdin’s name would mean “like Houdin” in French. Our post on who Robert-Houdin was tells the rest of that story, including how Houdini later turned on his hero.

He worked in a double act called the Brothers Houdini. Sources differ on his first partner: PBS names a friend, Jacob Hyman, while Wikipedia names his brother Theodore. In 1893 or 1894 (sources disagree on the year) he married Wilhelmina Beatrice “Bess” Rahner, who joined him on stage, and the act became “The Houdinis.”

His card skill was real. T. Nelson Downs’s The Art of Magic (1909) includes “Houdini’s Torn Card Trick” and says “Mr. Houdini performs the conventional two hand shift noiselessly and invisibly.” The two-hand shift is the classic pass, a move card magicians still practise today.

How did he become the Handcuff King?

By the mid-1890s he was escaping from handcuffs in public, but the act wasn’t making him rich. The turning point came in 1899, when theatre manager Martin Beck saw him in St. Paul, Minnesota, advised him to concentrate on escapes and booked him on the Orpheum vaudeville circuit.

If you want those lean years in his own words, Escaping Obscurity: The Travel Diary of Harry Houdini, 1897 to 1899 is a full-colour, 373-page book by John Cox, with 260 photographs. It annotates Houdini’s travel diary and reproduces Beck’s telegram.

In 1900 he sailed for Europe, where he became widely known as the Handcuff King. T. Nelson Downs, in Modern Coin Manipulation, wrote that Houdini was “styled the ‘King of Handcuffs,’ and justly too.”

What were Houdini’s most famous escapes?

We’re sticking to what audiences saw, not how any of it worked.

When	Feat	What the audience saw
1890s	Handcuff escapes	Houdini freeing himself from handcuffs, often in front of police
1908	The Milk Can	Houdini locked inside a large milk can filled with water, billed with the line “Failure means a drowning death”
1912	The Water Torture Cell	Houdini lowered upside down into a tall tank of water with his ankles locked into the lid. Its first public performance was at the Circus Busch in Berlin on 21 September 1912
1910s and 1920s	The suspended straitjacket	Houdini strapped into a straitjacket and hung by his ankles from a tall building or crane, in front of crowds in the street
1918	The vanishing elephant	An elephant named Jennie vanishing from the stage of the Hippodrome in New York

The Water Torture Cell is often called the Chinese Water Torture Cell, though the billing varied over the years. The elephant was part of the 1918 Hippodrome show Cheer Up, and the same year he made his first film, the serial The Master Mystery.

Why did Houdini fight spirit mediums?

Houdini set out to expose mediums who claimed to contact the dead. He served on a Scientific American committee that offered a prize to any medium who could demonstrate genuine powers, and nobody won it. His best-known target was the Boston medium Mina Crandon, known as “Margery,” whom he sat with from 1924 and believed was a fraud.

The campaign cost him his friendship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Houdini told the whole story in A Magician Among the Spirits (1924), his account of the mediums he sat with, the methods he uncovered and his falling out with Doyle. It’s public domain and a free ebook download from us.

In February and May 1926 he testified before a congressional subcommittee on a bill to make fortune telling for money an offence in Washington, D.C.

How did Houdini die?

He died in Detroit, Michigan, on 31 October 1926, aged 52, of peritonitis linked to appendicitis. His funeral was held in New York on 4 November.

What is Houdini’s legacy for magicians today?

• He built up the magic community. He was president of the Society of American Magicians from 1917 until his death.
• Escapes became their own branch of magic. His brother Theodore performed as Hardeen, an escape artist in his own right, and escape acts are still performed today.
• He was a collector and a writer. Our free The Expert at the Card Table scan comes from a 1905 printing that carries his bookplate and the note “Bequest of Harry Houdini April 1927.” Browse more classics in our downloads collection.

There are lessons in his story for anyone performing now:

• Find your one thing. He was a capable card magician for years, but the career took off when he focused on escapes.
• Make the stakes visible. A crowd could understand a man in a straitjacket in seconds. Your audience should know what the challenge is before the magic happens.
• Keep it honest. Take his side of the line: present mysteries as entertainment, never as real powers.
• Learn the history. Houdini researched the magicians who came before him and wrote books about them, and several are free to read today.

If you’d like a small taste of escape magic, Escape Artist is a beginner’s escape trick: a volunteer locks your wrists together with a steel chain and padlock, and you free yourself in an instant. It’s recommended for beginners aged 13 and up.

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