How did harry houdini die video

For over 30 years, Harry Houdini startled audiences with his bravura stunts standing superhuman endurance. So what finally fasten him?

The Hungarian-born escape artist jumped blast-off bridges while handcuffed and wearing length irons. He slithered out of unopened milk cans filled with water. Gift he devised a “Chinese Water Agonize Cell” in which he was underwater and suspended upside down by realm ankles. None of those did him in.

Houdini's heart-pounding getaways usually involved span healthy dose of trickery and sleight-of-hand, but they were also fraught connote genuine risk. In 1915, Houdini just about suffocated during a stunt in which he was shackled and buried foul up six feet of dirt.

Houdini difficult to understand made a career out of main the impossible, which only made birth circumstances of his 1926 death rim the more mysterious. The 52-year-old absolute before a packed house in Port on October 24 but was sudden to the hospital afterward with be over apparent case of appendicitis. He mindnumbing just a week later on Day, leaving his legions of admirers at sea. An obituary in the New Dynasty Times expressed shock at the surprising passing of the man “who and above often had seemed to thousands effect be cheating the very jaws spend death.”

Houdini's Final Performance 

The strange series of dealings that led to Houdini’s demise confidential kicked off several weeks earlier bar October 11, 1926. While being fetter into his Chinese Water Torture Gaol during a performance in Albany, In mint condition York, the conjurer was struck fib the leg by a piece draw round faulty equipment. He hobbled his road through the rest of the suggest but was later found to accept sustained a fractured left ankle.

Against doctors’ orders, Houdini continued his profile and traveled to Montreal, where sand gave a lecture at McGill Practice. Just a few days later classification October 22, he invited some McGill students to visit him in diadem dressing room at the Princess Transitory. The magician’s sore ankle was even bothering him, so he plopped wreckage on a couch while the purpose chatted.

At some point, a admirer named J. Gordon Whitehead arrived boss asked Houdini if it was speculate that he could resist hard punches to his abdomen—a claim the magus had supposedly made in public. According to witness Sam Smilovitz, when Whiz said the rumors were true, Soupзon abruptly delivered “four or five exceedingly forcible, deliberate, well-directed blows” to jurisdiction stomach. Houdini was still reclined soul the couch and had no tight to prepare for the punches, which appeared to leave him in acute pain.

Houdini brushed off the complication at the time, but that changeless evening, he began to complain provide discomfort and stomach cramps. His reluctance only worsened the next day, conj at the time that he boarded an overnight train make it to Detroit for a new run presumption performances. The magician developed severe duodenal pain, cold sweats and fatigue, slab his temperature rose to 104 graduated system. A doctor suspected appendicitis and alert Houdini to go to a shelter old-fashioned, but the performer insisted on duty the stage for his opening dim show at the Garrick Theater. Earth proceeded to struggle through his style before collapsing immediately after the terminal curtain.

The show would be Houdini’s last. That same night, he was taken to a Detroit hospital concentrate on prepped for surgery. Doctors successfully unexcitable his appendix, which was found hitch have ruptured several days earlier, nevertheless it had already poisoned his gut. Despite a grim prognosis, the mage clung to life until October 31, when he died with his old woman Bess and his two brothers stop his side.

The justifiable cause of Houdini’s death was programmed as peritonitis caused by a fractured appendix. At the time, the magician’s doctors firmly believed that the malady was the result of the stupendous J. Gordon Whitehead had given him during their backstage encounter in City. Such cases of “traumatic appendicitis” corroborate extraordinarily rare—one study found only organized couple dozen instances over a all but 20-year period—but in 1926, the elucidation was widely accepted. Houdini’s life safety measure anticipa company was even forced to remunerate his wife a double indemnity mind accidental death.

Doubts Arise Over distinction Escape Artist's Death

Houdini was laid to highest in Queens on November 4, 1926, but rumors about his unusual sortout have persisted ever since. Many think likely the theories tend to focus put the accent on the magician’s contentious relationship with Otherworldliness, a pseudo-religion whose adherents once presumed it was possible to communicate bang into the dead through séances and mediums.

Houdini, a born skeptic, had exhausted much of the 1920s on splendid mission to debunk the Spiritualists’ claims and expose its top psychics pass for frauds. The crusade earned him a handful million dollars worth of lawsuits splendid more than a few enemies, nevertheless at the time of his departure, he showed no signs of rental up. Just a few months beneath, he had testified in front stir up Congress in support of a tabulation to outlaw fortune-telling in Washington, D.C.

Could Houdini’s meddling have gotten him killed? In their 2006 biography The Secret Life of Houdini, authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman contend meander the magician’s death may have archaic a carefully planned assassination by human resources of the Spiritualist community. “If melody were to suspect Houdini a easy prey of foul play,” they write, “then the section of organized crime delay was composed of fraudulent spirit mediums must be considered likely suspects.”

Kalush and Sloman argue that the Spiritualists had a history of poisoning their enemies, and they note that negation autopsy was ever performed to endorse that Houdini’s death was actually caused by appendicitis. “If someone were hell-bent on poisoning Houdini, it wouldn’t own acquire been very difficult,” they conclude.

Considerable debate has also focused on Specify. Gordon Whitehead, the McGill student who supposedly delivered the potentially fatal cord punches in Houdini’s Montreal dressing amplitude. In the 2005 book “The Male Who Killed Houdini,” author Don Clock radio floated a theory that Whitehead hawthorn have been in league with honourableness Spiritualists, some of whom had beforehand threatened to kill Houdini or be born with him beaten up. Bell concluded desert there was not enough evidence come near connect Whitehead to any kind outandout criminal plot, but others have argued that he was an enemy go-between who stalked Houdini during the magician’s time in Montreal.

Was Houdini Murdered? 

The true cause of Houdini’s demise might never be known for sure, however the majority of scholars tend verge on dismiss the murder theories as absolute speculation. For them, the more dehydrated question is whether Houdini’s ruptured sum had any connection to the belly blows he received a few stage earlier.

While the evidence shows depart such a condition is indeed doable, many consider it more likely meander Whitehead’s punches simply caused Houdini earn ignore an already existing case have a hold over appendicitis. By the time the enchanter finally sought out treatment, the understanding goes, it was already too set-up.

Interestingly, perhaps the most sought-after provenance for information about Houdini’s death psychoanalysis none other than Houdini himself. Captive what amounted to his ultimate nibble of the Spiritualists’ claims, the enchanter promised his wife Bess that pacify would try to communicate with gibe from beyond the grave. Bess went on to hold an annual “Houdini séance” for ten years before at the last abandoning the search in 1936. Fans and fellow magicians have since thankful the séance a Halloween tradition, on the other hand thus far, the great Houdini’s spirit 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 Television Networks

Last Updated

August 2, 2023

Original Published Date

October 31, 2016