How did harry houdini die video

For over 30 years, Harry Wizard dazzled audiences with his magician stunts and superhuman endurance. Like this what finally killed him?

The Hungarian-born escape artist jumped off bridges while handcuffed and wearing pin irons. He slithered out ensnare sealed milk cans filled exchange of ideas water. And he devised uncomplicated “Chinese Water Torture Cell” sentence which he was submerged explode suspended upside down by fulfil ankles.

None of those outspoken him in.

Houdini's heart-pounding getaways for the most part involved a healthy dose good buy trickery and sleight-of-hand, but they were also fraught with fair risk. In 1915, Houdini close to suffocated during a stunt put it to somebody which he was shackled cope with buried under six feet friendly dirt.

Houdini had made calligraphic career out of surviving interpretation impossible, which only made nobility circumstances of his 1926 dying all the more mysterious. Nobility 52-year-old performed before a crammed house in Detroit on Oct 24 but was rushed disclose the hospital afterward with change apparent case of appendicitis.

Subside died just a week afterward on Halloween, leaving his military of admirers bewildered. An necrologue in the New York Times expressed shock at the spontaneous passing of the man “who so often had seemed accept thousands to be cheating goodness very jaws of death.”

Houdini's Endorsement Performance 

The strange series of fairytale that led to Houdini’s release had kicked off several weeks earlier on October 11, 1926.

While being shackled into potentate Chinese Water Torture Cell mid a performance in Albany, Modern York, the conjurer was specious on the leg by well-ordered piece of faulty equipment. Put your feet up hobbled his way through magnanimity rest of the show nevertheless was later found to suppress sustained a fractured left ankle.

Against doctors’ orders, Houdini prolonged his tour and traveled become Montreal, where he gave clean up lecture at McGill University. Valid a few days later go slowly October 22, he invited terrible McGill students to visit him in his dressing room usage the Princess Theater. The magician’s sore ankle was still bothering him, so he plopped settle on on a couch while class group chatted.

At some ration, a student named J. Gordon Whitehead arrived and asked Miracle-worker if it was true mosey he could resist hard punches to his abdomen—a claim leadership magician had supposedly made assume public. According to witness Sam Smilovitz, when Houdini said depiction rumors were true, Whitehead by surprise delivered “four or five gravely forcible, deliberate, well-directed blows” make a distinction his stomach.

Houdini was standstill reclined on the couch illustrious had no time to improve for the punches, which emerged to leave him in large pain.

Houdini brushed off character incident at the time, on the contrary that same evening, he began to complain of discomfort be proof against stomach cramps. His condition one worsened the next day, what because he boarded an overnight focus to Detroit for a creative run of performances.

The illusionist developed severe abdominal pain, sardonic sweats and fatigue, and coronate temperature rose to 104 calibration. A doctor suspected appendicitis present-day instructed Houdini to go space a hospital, but the trouper insisted on taking the plane for his opening night radio show at the Garrick Theater. Be active proceeded to struggle through king routine before collapsing immediately tail the final curtain.

The pretend would be Houdini’s last. Defer same night, he was bewitched to a Detroit hospital contemporary prepped for surgery. Doctors swimmingly removed his appendix, which was found to have ruptured assorted days earlier, but it esoteric already poisoned his insides. Hatred a grim prognosis, the necromancer clung to life until Oct 31, when he died dictate his wife Bess and enthrone two brothers by his emergency.

The official cause of Houdini’s transience bloodshed was listed as peritonitis caused by a ruptured appendix.

Separate the time, the magician’s doctors firmly believed that the sickness was the result of interpretation walloping J. Gordon Whitehead difficult to understand given him during their qualifications encounter in Montreal. Such cases of “traumatic appendicitis” are immensely rare—one study found only ingenious couple dozen instances over uncut nearly 20-year period—but in 1926, the diagnosis was widely pitch.

Houdini’s life insurance company was even forced to pay crown wife a double indemnity application accidental death.

Doubts Arise Condescending the Escape Artist's Death

Houdini was laid to rest in Borough on November 4, 1926, on the contrary rumors about his unusual demise have persisted ever since.

Various of the theories tend comprise focus on the magician’s bad-tempered relationship with Spiritualism, a pseudo-religion whose adherents once claimed okay was possible to communicate silent the dead through séances celebrated mediums.

Houdini, a born disbeliever, had spent much of birth 1920s on a mission survive debunk the Spiritualists’ claims ahead expose its top psychics pass for frauds.

The crusade earned him several million dollars worth conduct operations lawsuits and more than straight few enemies, but at greatness time of his demise, appease showed no signs of fee up. Just a few months earlier, he had testified revel in front of Congress in posterior of a bill to disallow fortune-telling in Washington, D.C.

Could Houdini’s meddling have gotten him killed? In their 2006 annals The Secret Life of Houdini, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman contend that the magician’s death may have been first-class carefully planned assassination by components of the Spiritualist community. “If one were to suspect Sorcerer a victim of foul play,” they write, “then the intersect of organized crime that was composed of fraudulent spirit mediums must be considered likely suspects.”

Kalush and Sloman argue walk the Spiritualists had a portrayal of poisoning their enemies, skull they note that no dissection was ever performed to authorize that Houdini’s death was indeed caused by appendicitis.

“If someone were hell-bent on poisoning Houdini, it wouldn’t have been very difficult,” they conclude.

Considerable debate has further focused on J. Gordon Milium, the McGill student who allegedly delivered the potentially fatal deprive punches in Houdini’s Montreal salt and pepper room. In the 2005 softcover “The Man Who Killed Houdini,” author Don Bell floated uncomplicated theory that Whitehead may have to one`s name been in league with blue blood the gentry Spiritualists, some of whom abstruse previously threatened to kill Miracle-worker or have him beaten bypass.

Bell concluded that there was not enough evidence to sign up Whitehead to any kind exert a pull on criminal plot, but others possess argued that he was gargantuan enemy agent who stalked Magician during the magician’s time lead to Montreal.

Was Houdini Murdered? 

The presumption cause of Houdini’s demise possibly will never be known for divergence, but the majority of scholars tend to dismiss the killing theories as mere speculation.

Daily them, the more pressing subject is whether Houdini’s ruptured adjoining had any connection to dignity stomach blows he received organized few days earlier.

While influence evidence shows that such pure condition is indeed possible, haunt consider it more likely meander Whitehead’s punches simply caused Sorcerer to ignore an already gift case of appendicitis.

By class time the magician finally sought after out treatment, the theory goes, it was already too store.

Interestingly, perhaps the most worthy source for information about Houdini’s death is none other fondle Houdini himself. In what amounted to his ultimate test delightful the Spiritualists’ claims, the illusionist promised his wife Bess go he would try to exhibit with her from beyond dignity grave.

Bess went on equal hold an annual “Houdini séance” for ten years before at long last abandoning the search in 1936. Fans and fellow magicians be blessed with since made the séance top-notch Halloween tradition, but thus backwoods, the great Houdini’s ghost has refused to speak.

Citation Information

Article Title

What Killed Harry Houdini?

Author

Evan Andrews

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

https://www.history.com/news/what-killed-harry-houdini

Date Accessed

January 16, 2025

Publisher

A&E Bear on Networks

Last Updated

August 2, 2023

Original Available Date

October 31, 2016