Harry Houdini

Childhood

Wire of a Rabbi, Ehrich Weiss is born in Budapest. Its family emigrates with the the United States and settles in Appleton, in the Wisconsin in 1887.

Inheriting a book which proves to be the memories of Robert-Houdin, Ehrich adopts its style and takes the name of Houdini for glory, and transforms its first name, Ehrie, in Harry.

Career

It begins its career as magician in the fairs, accompanied by his Theodore brother, and it is at that time that it writes off The Unmasking Robert-Houdin ( Robert-Houdin uncovered ) where, as Robert-Houdin made it before him, it denounces trickery at the base of the Prestidigitation, this art of the magic of modern times.

In 1893, it meets his wife Béatrice Raymond, whom it calls Bessis. She joined the duet Houdini and they marry the same year.

Its best turns consist in escaping from a trunk filled with water, closed and connected, or of a metal can.

At the time when is born the Spiritisme, he seeks to uncover false médiums by traversing the country. Other scientists are also interested of very close with médiums, like the American Society for Psychical Research, or Pierre and Marie Curie, but it returns visit only to those suspected of imposture to try to uncover them.

This activity costs him the friendship of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes. After the death of his wife and some of her close relations, Conan Doyle had started to accept spiritism. He believed thus that Houdini had true capacities paranormaux, than he used to block those of the médiums which he confused.

This method enables him nevertheless to increase its notoriety. It keeps secret its best easy ways but takes the care to show that there is always a Truc in its turns, accessible to the common run of people, while recommending to the public not trained not to try them considering the danger which they represent.

Death

In 1926, it goes to Montreal. Houdini was accustomed to requiring of somebody in the public to inflict a punch in the belly to him, to prove that it was invincible. But during this spectacle, the selected person takes it by surprised: she strikes it before it is ready.

A few days later, he dies at 52 years, the day of Halloween, with Detroit, of a consecutive Péritonite with the rupture of the Appendice.

One of its descendants (in bond with the authors of a discussed biography of Houdini) claimed on Monday, March 26, 2007 with American justice an exhumation, to make practice an autopsy and to twist the neck, or not, with the rumor which always runs according to which the magician would have been assassinated.

He leaves with his death one larger collections of books on the magic with the Library of the Congress.

For Houdini, the only objective of the practice of the Spiritisme, even if it never reached that point, is to come into contact with the spirit of his/her mother missing in 1920, only proof for him that these psychic phenomena can exist.

Its biography was published by James Randi, a colleague conjurer and Sceptique.

Works

Miracle Mongers and Their Methods: In Complete (1920) Exposes
has Magician Among the Spirits (1924).

The news which is allotted to him, Prisonnier of the Pharaons , is in fact of the feather of Howard Philips Lovecraft.

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