The Magician and the Medium Margery (episode 244)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:04] Welcome to hub history, where we go far beyond the freedom trail to share our favorite stories from the history of boston, the hub of the universe.
This is episode 240 for the magician and the medium Margery Hi, I’m jake.
This week I’m going to be talking about a magician and not just any magician, but one of the most famous of all time.
Harry Houdini when he wasn’t busy escaping from locked jail cells and underwater saves the great Houdini made it a personal mission to unmask fraudulent mediums.
In the early 20th century mediums, spiritualists and psychic practitioners of all kinds were undergoing a massive boom with all the tragedy and death associated with the great war and the global flu pandemic.
The public was desperate for a message from the other side.
There are plenty of practitioners who were willing to sell it to them.
The practice of spiritualism was so widespread and accepted that the journal Scientific american was on the brink of giving it the stamp of scientific legitimacy.
The leading contender for their approval and their large cash prize was a Beacon hill medium who went by the stage name Margery and she might have gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for that meddling magician.

[1:21] But before I talk about Houdini and Margery I just want to pause and thank everyone who supports the show on Patreon.
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Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[2:42] If you listen to our last episode, you might remember that I asked about mary Todd Lincoln’s involvement with mediums and spiritualists and laura Keys who portrays mary Lincoln got a bit defensive for a split second.
I think she expected me to say something like how could such an accomplished woman believe in something so obviously absurd when in fact the opposite is true at that time.
And for many decades afterwards, spiritualism was an entirely accepted part of american life.
Here in boston there were storefront psychics, faith healers and a thriving industry and spirit photography where ghostly images supposedly of dead relatives of the center would appear in photographic portraits.
In fact, Mary Todd Lincoln can be excused for a belief in the supernatural when you realize that as late as 1925, well into the scientific era and a full 20 years after Einstein first published his theory of special relativity.
The journal Scientific americans seemed to be on the brink of awarding a large cash prize to a boston medium for scientifically proving the existence of her psychic abilities.
That boston medium was at first known only as Margery which she spelled with a G.
Because she held her seances in a house at 10 lime Street, a narrow pretty street that runs parallel to Mount vernon in the flats of Beacon Hill.
Her detractors sometimes called her the Witch of lime Street.

[4:09] Believers in her powers, described witnessing incredible phenomena during her seances, where she’d call on the spirit of her dead brother,
in the language of Spiritualism, the presence of medium contacted on the other side was known as A Control And an associated press article from August 26, 1924 identifies Margery Control as her brother.
While also identifying Margery as Mina Crandon.

[4:35] Boston’s mysterious margery the psychic medium who entered the contest for the $2500 prize offered by a national magazine for authentic proof of psychic power, has been revealed as mrs Leroy Kramden, wife of a prominent surgeon.
Her control, whom she had styled Chester is now said to be walter. A dead brother of Mrs Kramden.
Tests were held at her home and the experts declared that she had done some remarkable things.

[5:03] A 2013 article by Robert. Love for mental floss enumerates some of the remarkable things that believers witnessed saying that Walter rapped out messages, tipped tables and even sounded trumpets,
even by ghost standards, walter was unfriendly answering questions and quoting scripture in a gruff, disembodied voice.
Margery by contrast, was charming and attractive, at least when she wasn’t showing off her most convincing psychic talent, extruding a Slithery viscous substance called ectoplasm.
From her or offices, photos show this otherworldly substance flowing from her ears and nose, but mostly it emerged from beneath the sheer kimono like a string of entrails and rectum or fake hand that walter used to carry out his commands.

[5:52] Walter franklin. Prince wrote a summary of the Margery case for the Journal of Psychology in june 1926 laying out the stakes for scientific american and the scientific community more broadly.

[6:05] In May 1923 there blazed out the most brilliant star in the firmament of alleged psychic mediumship that America has seen in 50 years, Margery the wife of Dr L.
R. G. Crandon, a boston surgeon at hundreds of sittings, it’s claimed ectoplasmic limbs extruded from her body and afterwards re absorbed.
Have performed various acts, such as touching persons seated nearby in the darkness, shoving, lifting and throwing objects overturning a small table, ringing the bell in the box, activated by a contact cover producing bus fluorescent lights, etcetera.

[6:42] The establishment of these claims would have a profound interest for science, since they imply the exercise of energy in a manner present, unknown to physics and modifications of the human body, revolutionary of present physiology.
If it be a fact that the vocal and whispered utterances and the whistling sounds that are so frequent in accompaniment are independent that is not produced by the vocal organs of any living person,
and yet requiring the presence of a peculiarly constituted person.
The fact has deep significance for physics. Psychology and physiology,
also the appearance of live pigeons and flowers, either by special creation or by passage through matter, if actually established, would considerably enlarge the domain of either biology or physics.
Many other phenomena are alleged, and they all purport to be manifestations of the spirit always or nearly always walter mainly exercised by the materialization of organs and limbs for the purpose.

[7:45] These phenomena had convinced one member of the committee that was elected by scientific american to investigate claims of the paranormal and award the cash prize for a real media J.
Malcolm Byrd had written several articles in the journal, implying that she had all but one, and the only thing left was to make it official.
Another member of the committee was unconvinced, writing in his own account of the case, that he responded.
If you give this award to a medium without the strictest examination, every fraudulent medium in the world will take advantage of it.
I will forfeit $1,000 if I do not detect her if she resorts to trickery.
Of course, if she is genuine, there is nothing to expose. But if the scientific american by any accident should declare a genuine and she was eventually detected in fraud,
we would be the laughingstock of the world, and in the meantime, hundreds of fraudulent mediums would have taken advantage of the error.

[8:42] Prince’s overview of the Margery case in the june 1926 edition of the American Journal of Psychology identifies the rest of the scientific american panel.

[8:51] The committee formed by the scientific american. The study cases brought to its attention consisted of dr William McDougall Harvard psychologist and then president of the American Society for Psychical Research.
Dr D. F. Comstock, formerly professor in the massachusetts Institute of Technology, interested in psychical research.
Mr H Carrington, author of books dealing with psychical research, DR W. F. Prince, then research officer of the Spr and Mr H. Houdini magician.
Yeah, that’s right. Harry Houdini, the stage magician, an unparalleled escape artist, was a member of the panel investigating spiritualism and he quickly gained a reputation as the most skeptical of the bunch.
In the 1925 article, Houdini wrote about his enthusiasm for investigating psychics and spiritualists.

[9:46] The public wants to know whether there are such things as spirits, whether it’s possible for one man by mere exercise of his will to transfer his thoughts intelligibly into the brain of another man and so on and so on.
And as a servant to the public which every public performer undoubtedly is, I consider it my duty to never let a chance slip of obtaining authentic data on the subject’s regarding which the public is looking constantly to me for information.
He had already exposed other mediums as fraudulent by detecting and revealing their sleight of hand techniques so he was confident that he could do the same thing again.
What he didn’t know was that Margery may have been the medium where the magician met his match.

[10:30] Harry, Houdini arrived in Boston on July 23, 1924. To begin his first audience with the famous spiritualist.
The rest of the committee had witnessed many of our seances 4050. Some sources even say 90 of them for each session. Margery would sit in a wooden chair in front of a trifled room screen, what she referred to as a chinese screen.
The members of the party would sit with her in a circle and hold hands. This was supposedly to allow her to channel her brother walter spirit more easily, but it also allowed her audience to be sure that she wasn’t rapping messages, tipping tables, ringing bells and blowing trumpets herself.

[11:11] These elaborate preparations were necessary because at least according to the medium, all seances had to be held in total darkness so the Spirit would not reveal himself.

[11:23] Dr Leroy Kramden Mina or marjorie’s husband always sat on our immediate right.
So, you know, there was no chance for funny business there.
Houdini took the other side writing. I sat on the left of Mrs Kramden and held her left hand with my right.
My right foot was placed against her left foot, pressing against her ankle.
Her husband, we suppose, was pressed similarly on her other foot.
This arrangement was to make sure that she couldn’t manipulate anything in the room with either hand or foot, and in this case one of the objects in the room was an electric bell meant to be operated with a sort of foot pedal, which Houdini described,
inside the box with the bell were dry batteries which rang it whenever a certain pressure at the top of the box completed the circuit.
In previous seances. When this box had been placed in front of mrs Kramden and the center’s supposed they had her perfectly controlled, held by hands and feet so they could detect any emotion.
The bell had been rung repeatedly, and the explanation given was that walter, the medium’s dead brother had closed the circuit.
Not only had the bell been rung, but it had been used with a code and answered questions on the evening in question. The bell box was placed between my feet with my right foot between it and mrs Kramden is left foot.

[12:44] Now this is where Houdini skills as a magician came in handy.
He knew about the art of misdirection, and he knew how subtle movements could be mist covered up or explained away.
So we laid a trap for Margery suspecting that Margery was using nearly undetectable movements in the dark room, and knowing that she had fooled many skeptics in the past, Houdini found a way to give himself an edge,
anticipating this sort of work I would have to do in detecting the movements of her foot.
I had rolled my right trouser leg up above my knee all that day.
I had worn a silk rubber bandage around that leg just below the knee,
by night, the part of the leg below the bandage becomes swollen and painfully tender, thus giving me a much keener sense of feeling and making it easier to notice the slightest sliding of mrs Kramden Zankel, or flexing her muscle.

[13:37] Once the lights went out, the preparation began paying off with Houdini Later writing,
as the seance progressed, I could distinctly feel her ankle slowly and spasmodically sliding as it was pressed against mine while she gained space to raise her foot off the floor and touch the top of the box,
to the ordinary sense of touch.
The contact would seem the same while this was being done at times, she would say, just press hard against my ankle so you can see that my ankle is there.
And as she pressed, I could feel her gain another half inch when she had finally maneuvered her foot around to a point where she could get at the top of the box the bell rang began, and I positively felt the tendons of her leg flex and tightness.
She repeatedly touched the ringing apparatus.
There is no question in my mind about it. She did this.
Then, when the ringing was over I plainly felt her legs slide back into its original position with her foot on the floor beside ma with that Houdini was sure that Margery was as much a fraud as any other medium heat examine.

[14:43] However, as the evening wore on he became convinced that she was getting help and she might be getting it from more than just her husband Bird.
The scientific american writer who had all but already endorsed marjorie’s talents had been seated with dr Crandon on the mediums right.
At one point the supposed presence of walter in the room caused a megaphone to levitate, and the magician realized that bird had allowed her to get her right hand free and caused the phenomenon,
Houdini was even more shaken when Bird and another member of their party stayed at the Crandon home while they were all in boston writing,
it is not possible to stop at one’s house, break bread with them frequently, then investigate them and render an impartial verdict.

[15:28] Margery gave another since for the group the following evening and between the two performances, Houdini caught her lifting the table with their head and claiming it was levitating, kicking over a cabinet and blaming walter for it,
ringing the bell with barely disguised lunges of her feet and much other trickery.

[15:46] After two sittings, Houdini was ready to call off the prize, but scientific. American was worried that the case would be seen as his word against marjorie’s unless they could offer more concrete proof.
So, Houdini came up with the idea for the Margery box.
The magician had little patience for mediums whom he referred to as swindlers, who prey upon the credulous, the grief stricken in the trouble.
An article in Smithsonian magazine says for Houdini a man who made a living suspending disbelief with skillful innovative illusions.
Spiritualist mediums transgressed both the ethos and artistry of his craft.
Houdini rejected others, claims that he himself possessed supernatural powers, preferring the label of mysterious entertainer.
He scoffed at those who professed psychic gifts yet perform their tricks in the dark, where as further insult to his profession, it is not necessary for the medium to even be a clever conjurer.
Worse still, was the violation of trust as the troubled or grief stricken viewer never learned that the spirit manifestations were all hocus pocus, Houdini had more respect for the highway robber who at least had the courage to prey upon his victims out in the open.

[17:06] I think that Houdini the expert performer and consummate sleight of hand. Artist was also just offended by people he saw as lesser practitioners.
Evidence of this can be found in his earlier book, Miracle Mongers and their methods, which promises to unmask the secrets of performers who claim to have actual supernatural powers as described in the 1921 ad for the book.

[17:31] In his long career before the public, this famous Mystified has come into personal contact with many a miracle monger,
fire king, the sword swallower, the man with the elastic skin and the three legged boy he knows their secrets, and those are the man who dances on broken glass or ascend the ladder of keen edged swords with naked feet,
As well as those of the little lady weighing less than £90, who successfully resist the combined strength of several men.

[18:01] Unmasking sideshow like performers was just a side gig for Harry Houdini Who reserved his true investigative talents for mediums as he described in the 1925 article.

[18:13] For 35 years during my whole career as a professional magician, I’ve been studying and investigating so called Psychic phenomena.
Spiritualism, Occultism, Clairvoyance, Mysticism, telepathy, and similar manifestations of apparently supernatural origin.
My investigation has been literally continuous. I have never dropped it for so long as a day.
The practice of my profession has taken me to virtually every country on earth.
My travels have enabled me to observe and study the psychics of many lands, and my interest in the subject is more keen, if anything today, than it was when it first engaged my attention.
This probably is because my interest in psychic phenomena is personal. Rather than professional.
I have pursued my investigations because I have found them a fascinating kind of scientific research, not merely because seeking to explain the mysteries produced by others may seem to bear some relation to the work of one who is himself, a professional, mystify, rare.

[19:15] In regard to spiritualism.
I am not a skeptic, although I have found no genuine physical phenomena medium by which I mean, one who does not produce his effects by purely natural means that any trained magician can duplicate.
I have still an open mind.
I am willing to be convinced even to believe if a medium can demonstrate to me that he possesses actual true psychic power.

[19:41] In the case of Margery however, Houdini was convinced to the contrary, he was certain that her phenomena were nothing more than cheap tricks and assistance from confederates, possibly including one of his own committee.
Now we needed to convince the public and the editors of Scientific American in his book about the Margery case.
Houdini wrote following the Seances of july 23rd and 24th 1920 for dr Prince dr comstock and mr Q.
D munn asked me to construct some sort of a comfortable restraint for the medium, which would prevent her from using any of the tactics which I detected, such as moving her hands and feet.
This was agreed to by the whole committee and I said to making a cabinet box which is entirely enclosed except openings for the medium’s neck and arms.

[20:32] The resulting Margery box was a sturdy piece of oak cabinetry.
Imagine a speaker’s podium or a secretary desk, but with a human head sticking out of the top but an arm sticking out either side.

[20:45] This device would keep the medium from suddenly moving her legs in a way that a less savvy investigator than Houdini might miss.
It would keep her from bending over and levitating the table with her head and it would hopefully at least keep her from withdrawing one of her hands either by fooling one of her auditors or simply through placing her husband on her right side.
Margery agreed to be tested with the box indicating a truly wild level of confidence in her abilities, or those of her confederates to defeat the mechanism.
The committee scheduled three more sittings with her in late August 1924 and Houdini planned to bring his box to Boston.
In the meantime, Houdini and Margery were keeping up a cordial relationship,
between his examination of her in july and their scheduled meeting in august, Houdini wrote to Margery enclosed some photos he had taken during their sessions at her house, offered to make copies of the snapshots and closed by saying,
I did enjoy my trip to boston.
It was indeed very interesting and I look forward to the forthcoming trip, which I believe you are kind enough to have take place on the 25th or the week there of.

[21:58] A few days later on August 19, Margery replied, asking the magician not to use his photos publicly, but also taking him up on his offer to create duplicates.
She also made a suggestion for the upcoming test writing.
I’ve been hearing some very nice things about you lately, so I’m glad to be able to say.
I know the great Houdini I planned to go to Maine during the last week of august, I somehow got the idea that the sitting to be held in september.

[22:28] I think the only solution to the whole matter is red light phenomena then there can be no question about control.
Don’t you think that’s a good idea the next day, the magician wrote back again assuring Margery that it was open to a red light test where the room would be dimly illuminated with a red light bulb, rather than completely dark.
As long as he was permitted to make sure that the controls were in place and up to his standards of objectivity.
After getting that settled, Houdini responded, I would like you to please remember that. I am honestly not a skeptic and sincerely trust that we will get dependable results.
I know that with your willingness, you are ready to try any of the various controls and assure you that I will be agreeable to anything where eventually no one can question the control at no time.
Would I permit the committee to harass or put you to any inconvenience of physical discomfort?
Harmony must reign, but the control at all times should be satisfactory to all present.

[23:33] Interestingly I couldn’t find a clear record of whether the next series of seances which were held starting on August 25 at the Charles Gate Hotel were done in complete darkness or with a red light.
I’m guessing they must have been done in darkness. Or Margery is blatant cheating would have been even more obvious in the moment.
On the first evening she simply broke out of the box with Houdini Writing.
The box with the bell was placed on a table in front of the cabinet. As the lid of the cabinet was only fastened with two thin brass strips.
Mrs Kramden, by lifting her shoulders was able to force the lid and ring the bell with her head.
They tried to make it appear that walter had forced open the cabinet box, which of course was simply an effort to hide the fact.

[24:22] The magician had an assistant reinforced the box with iron strapping and multiple hasp sand pad box, and the next night they win again, this time.
Houdini had a hunch that the medium had smuggled some sort of device into the box with her, and he and his committee held her arms fast as the seance began.
They exchanged sharp words with the media, and shortly afterwards he wrote walter appeared in the circle, saying Houdini You are very clever indeed, but it won’t work.
I suppose it was an accident. Those things were left in the cabinet.
What was left in the cabinet? I asked. Pure accident, was it?
You were not here. But your assistant was walter went on and then stated that a ruler would be found in the cabinet box under a pillow at the medium’s fee.
The box was opened and a two ft long folding ruler was found within Margery insisted that Houdini was trying to discredit her by planting the ruler inside the box.
Houdini on the other hand, was sure that she meant to hold it with her chin and use it to sound the electric bell while her hands were restrained.

[25:31] Needless to say nothing supernatural happened that night Nor any other night when Margery was restrained within Houdini’s box, with an ap report on August 28 stating,
the latest series of tests to determine whether Mrs Leroy G.
Kramden, who has been known as Margery to the world of psychic students, could induce phenomena that would warrant award to her of the scientific american’s Prize for such genuine feats ended last night.

[25:59] In a big black box fashioned out of inch thick oak in the manner of an old time pillory.
The medium was said to have failed to invoke proof in another box somewhat similar, but with more freedom results were positive bells being wrong and messages transmitted.

[26:16] The tests, though still incomplete, have resolved into a trial of the two types of boxes.
The oak box is the property of Harry Houdini, the magician who is a member of the committee.
It’s understood, however, that the committee has not accepted. This box is an official test, because the committee as a whole has not had an opportunity to examine it.
The second box is the committee’s standard cabinet evolved for such tests with the medium under padlock restrictions, the bells can find beyond ordinary reach and safeguards and started to prevent fraud.

[26:52] From our modern perspective, it’s pretty obvious that those safeguards were not up to Houdini standards.

[27:00] Fearing that scientific american might declare Margery genuine,
despite his own debunking Houdini published a book that october titled Houdini exposes the tricks used by the boston media Margery to win the $2500 prize offered by the Scientific american.
And this book is where a lot of the quotes I’ve used from. Houdini so far have been pulled from in it.
He published detailed descriptions and illustrations showing how Margery used misdirection to simulate supernatural phenomena and he included photographs of the Margery box with himself inside.

[27:34] The biggest defender of Margery or rather Mina Crandon was Dr Leroy. G. Crandon.
Dr Crandon wrote any number of newspaper articles and gave public presentations defending his wife’s authenticity and slandering Houdini The magician responded by throwing down a gauntlet On December 31, 1920.
For the Boston Herald published a large photo showing a grinning Houdini holding $10,000 in bearer bonds with the accompanying challenge.
Neither Dr Leroi G Crandon nor William McDougall Professor of Psychology at Harvard will answer the challenge backed by a $10,000 guarantee which was made yesterday by Houdini the magician,
that he can detect and repeat any phenomena shown by Mrs Kramden.
The famous media Margery that he can prove to an unbiased committee that he knows more about mystery than the Harvard psychologist.
Margery as legions of defenders and believers heckled Houdini during performances and attacked him in the press.
Aside from dr Crandon, Margery is leading advocate was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Sherlock Holmes author was a leading proponent of spiritualism and his wife was a practicing medium.
In fact, Lady jean, Conan Doyle was one of the driving factors behind Houdini’s obsession with the bunking spiritualism.

[28:56] In an article in the Boston Globe in May 1925, the Magician recounted a story from a few years before when he was still close friends with Sir Arthur.
As for the charge that I am denying the evidences of religion, I shall tell you a story.
My mother had been dead for several years, so I met Lady Doyle who is a spirit writer.
She told me that she could produce a letter from her and I agreed to let her try to do it.
After some very painful hours of concentration. Lady Doyle produced a letter of 23 pages which she said she had written at the behest of my mother’s spirit.
It was a beautiful letter and written in perfect english. I neglected at the time to tell Lady Doyle that my mother was educated on the continent and spoke five languages, but that she had never in her life, spoke or written a single word of english.

[29:51] The group of people who had so ridiculed before me. My dead mother are the same, who accused me of being anti religious and yet I never claimed to have any supernatural powers and they are willing to say that they get their powers from God.
What do they use them for? To take money from poor, innocent, incredulous people?
They have even caused a good many cases of insanity. For there are many people on the borderland of sanity who need only a slight push to drop them over the cliff.
This is what I am fighting and shall continue to fight. I am working for the truth.
I would be delighted if I could find that spiritualism was true.
But there is not a medium today whom I cannot expose as a deliberate fraud.
There are only two classes of people in spiritualism, those who deceive and those who are deceived.

[30:45] It’s hard to know whether the great detective author was deliberately deceiving the followers of Margery but he sprang to the medium’s defense Publishing an editorial in the Boston Globe on January 26, 1925, which he claimed to have written on Christmas Day.

[31:01] In all the 90 sittings, there had never been one word attacking the honor of Margery It was only when these new personalities were present that the trickery became manifest,
far from exposing anyone.
Houdini left boston, a very discredited man. So far as psychic research is concerned,
his friends will hope that he will confine himself in the future to that art in which he is famous and leave a field for which his strong prejudices and unbalanced judgment entirely unfit him.
Thus the matter now stands, Houdini has pushed self advertisement and defamation to the point of issuing a pamphlet, explaining how his skill and his wonderful box had stopped all phenomena, with many entirely irrelevant pictures of himself in the box.
An inch of wood is always likely to stop phenomenon, just as an inch of porcelain would stop an electric current.
In each case, natural laws are involved. The investigator who imagines that he disproves phenomena by checking or stopping them only proves his own ignorance of the subject,
though in Houdini’s case that had already been amply shown by the innumerable errors in the book to which he has put his name.
The amazing thing to an outsider is that the committee consisting of honorable gentlemen. Should, without audible and public protests, have permitted this attack on the reputation of a lady who had entrusted herself into their hand.

[32:29] They had no fault to find, or they would have said so. Yet, knowing our complete innocence as they must do.
These american gentleman allowed a man with entirely different standards to make this outrageous attack.

[32:43] The next day, Houdini fired back in an article in the Springfield Union that paper he frequently contributed to Houdini said yesterday, he does not propose to let Sir Arthur get away with certain harsh remarks contained in the article,
he will have a retraction or communicate with his lawyer also.
Sir Arthur is a bit senile says Houdini and therefore easily bamboozled.
Houdini has been investigating the mediums for 35 years and he says he has never had a valid manifestation of communication with the other world.
Furthermore, he thinks that a bit of the sharpness containing Sir Arthur’s remarks may have been occasioned by the fact that he Houdini once expressed the belief that Lady Doyle was not a valid medium either.
There is not a word of truth in his charges against me, said Houdini Sir Arthur has been sadly misinformed Anyhow.
I fail to see how he being 3500 miles away qualifies as a judge.
I have posted $10,000 with mayor curly of Boston to be given to a charity if she makes good before a committee chosen by Mayor Curley!
The truth of the whole matter is that Margery in my belief is a social climber.

[33:59] There may have been some truth in Houdini’s charge. Mina Stenson had grown up on a Canadian farm, and when World War started, she was 20 years old and living in Boston.
She worked as a volunteer ambulance driver for local military hospitals, which is where she met dr Kramden, a surgeon in one of those hospitals.
A few months later she divorced her first husband and he divorced his second wife.
And the pair married soon after she was young, pretty and athletic.
He was an older, wealthy socialite, no longer practicing medicine, but still close with his colleagues at Harvard Medical.
Some writers speculate that Margery started giving seances to keep Leroy from losing interest in her and with his social connections, her customers were a who’s who of boston society.

[34:50] In the preceding decade, 20 million people were killed in the Great War and another 100 million or so died from the global flu pandemic.
Around the world untold millions of people were grieving while at the same time, spiritualists in europe and the US claimed that they could speak to the dead.
In 1922, Harry Houdini told the Associated Press why he thought this desperation for a connection with the departed was dangerous.
I have seen people who previous to the war, never concerned themselves with things psychic.
Now diving into it to the point of hysteria, it is conducive of more bidness brooding and melancholia.
It becomes an obsession very quickly and I would warn against it is threatening the health insanity of those who indulge in it.

[35:41] Maybe that sense that mediums were both fraudulent and dangerous is why Houdini went on the offensive after it became clear that Margery was not going to cease and desist!
As 1925 dawned, Houdini booked appearances Symphony Hall where they gave presentations explaining Margery Methods with the globe, reporting on January three.
It is all pure bunk as far as he’s been able to discover in the 35 years. He’s been studying the subject in the so called phenomena he regards as mere trickery.
Houdini gave a counterfeit presentation of a seance. He showed how the electric bell in the little box was rung.
The megaphone was levitated, passed through the air and how the table was lifted.
It all seems simple enough as Houdini explained and demonstrated it in his book about the Margery case. Who did? He admitted that Margery had more or less predicted this outcome.

[36:35] Being afraid that I was going to denounce her from the stage at keith’s theater, she said to me, if you misrepresent me from the stage at keith, some of my friends will come up and give you a good beating.
I am not going to misrepresent you, I replied. They are not coming on the stage and I am not going to get a beating.
Then it’s your wits against mine, she said slowly, as she gave me a furtive look.
Yes, certainly, that is just what it is. I told her,
She repeatedly told me of her boy 12 years old and said that she would not want to grow up and read that his mother was a fraud, to which I replied then don’t be a fraud.

[37:16] Later that spring, Houdini used his engagement at B.
F. Keith’s Vaudeville Theatre to expose the methods of mediums with the globe reporting again on May 12, 1925 Harry Houdini this week at keith’s theater, devotes his allotment of time to a discussion of spiritualism,
telling of his investigations and discoveries based on attendance at seances and general study of the work of mediums.
He illustrated table raising and the sounding of a bell in the box placed on the table, his hands clasped with other hands, those of volunteers.
He managed with his head to accomplish both of these things.
He also outlined another method of bell ringing and which one ft is dexterously used by merely slipping it out of the shoe on which rests the foot of others assembled around the table scouting communication with the spirits.
He goes into details explaining what he calls the tricks of other supposed phenomenon.

[38:16] By this time, the stage of B. F. Keith’s theater must have seemed like a second home to Harry Houdini, who had been performing there for decades,
Keith was one of the original Vaudeville theaters opening in the 1880s on Tremont Street across from the common and helping to create the Vaudeville art form.
Houdini began performing there almost immediately after he had honed his escape act far enough to take it on the road in the first decade of the 20th century,
he was even appearing at keith’s theater when he performed perhaps his most famous escape in boston photo taken on april 30th 19 oh eight shows, Houdini posing on the banks of the Charles River along Memorial Drive near the massage bridge,
the photos black and white, but press accounts assure us that the swimsuit he was dressed in was a lovely shade of pink.
His hands were cuffed behind his back and he was festooned with a number of padlocked chains wrapped around his arms and torso.

[39:13] When the moment came to jump, the Cambridge Chronicle reported Houdini attired in a light code, waited in his car until the police had cleared a small space on the north side of the bridge, and decided to make his jump from there into the draw channel.
Houdini stripped off his outer clothes and stood attired in a serous colored bathing suit.
As Houdini stood ready to leave boats began to crowd into the slip until there was a danger that he would land on a boat instead of the water.
The manacles were locked by officer griffiths of station two, and Houdini jumped, sinking with a great splash.
It seemed several minutes before he reappeared, but it was actually 31 seconds then Houdini dressed quickly, and was hustled back to his hotel.
That water was pretty cold, he said, with a shiver. I think I will wait till summer before I do it again.

[40:09] Despite everything, Margery retained a firm hold on boston psyche, her seances were popular, and her defenders were legion.
Looking back in 1926, William Franklin Prince’s article in the American Journal of Psychology, plumbed the reasons why Margery remains so convincing to so many people.
The uncommon hold which the Margery case retains upon public attention is, I think due to several reasons.
The ordinary difficulties of guessing in the dark, under traditional conditions, aided by a set of regulations, arbitrary beyond precedent,
uncommon cleverness on the part of the medium, both innate and consciously or subconsciously acquired,
superior technique, in accordance with the psychology of deception, exchanging one type of phenomena for another before the study of the first is complete and devising new types after a verdict has been rendered So that the medium always keeps one step ahead.

[41:08] The exclusion of investigators soon after, they begin to express doubts and reasons, therefore thereby limiting the number able to declare actual discovery of a fraud.
The personal charm of the medium, winning emotional advocacy, especially among men.
A persistent propaganda, persuading many by its very vehemence that his allegations must be true.
Positive response from the opposition to which the indignities of this kind of controversy are distasteful,
the indifference of the masses to dry logic and analysis and their instinctive gravitation toward the highly sensational Prince also reports on the attitudes and each scientific American judges conclusions about the margery case.
Although the journal didn’t fully put the issue to bed until the mid 1930s.

[42:01] Dr comstock rigid proof has not yet been furnished dr McDougall As long ago as November 1923.
I was inclined to regard all the phenomena and observed as produced by normal means.
Since that date, the inclination described above has grown steadily stronger in the main, in spite of some minor fluctuations and has now become well nigh irresistible dr Prince,
no sitting at which I was present was to me convincing.
In fact, I could write a chapter of indications which in the absence of contravening proof seemed to tell the story of normal and deceptive production.

[42:44] Mr Carrington. Many of the observed manifestations might well have been produced fraudulently and possibly were so produced.
But I am convinced that genuine phenomena have occurred here.

[42:57] Mr. Houdini everything which took place at the seances which I attended was a deliberate and conscious fraud.

[43:07] By the end of 1925. A year after Houdini joined the investigation into Margery a year after he and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle jousted in the press.
His favorite paper, the Springfield Union announced on December 14,
after nearly a year of investigations into Margery the boston medium, The scientific American’s Committee on psychic phenomena has returned the verdict that she has failed to produce the evidence of super normal phenomena.
Marjorie’s case was a strange one. She was the wife of a prominent man, did not give paid public settings, had no need of the Scientific american’s prize for manifestation of genuineness of phenomena produced,
and had announced that if she won it, she would not accept it personally.
Moreover, she was by all odds the cleverest of the mediums that have sought the prize, all of whom incidentally have failed to deliver the goods in a way to satisfy the committee.
For the investigators went on record as vetoing marjorie’s claim And one is believing are genuine.

[44:13] In the group of four was Harry Houdini who’s no mean mystifying himself, he not only was inclined to doubt marjorie’s observations called her a fraud.
Thus, as far as Margery is concerned, the scientific american regards itself as unconvinced,
the price still stands and providing Candy Harry Houdini remains on the committee with others showing the same degree of caution that they have exhibited the prospect that someone will win it soon is something less than enormous.

[44:47] Margery went on giving seances and people went on trying to debunk er,
Eventually biologists even figured out that the ectoplasm the phantom hand that supposedly admitted from her body and did amazing things in the seance room was actually a piece of animal liver stitched onto an animal trachea.

[45:07] While Houdini wasn’t actively involved with Margery after the initial investigation, he also didn’t let the subject rest only about a month before his death.
Houdini was the guest of honor at a meeting of the Advertising Club of boston, Where the September 22, 1926 Globe reports that he was introduced as the Great Houdini The article says that he retorted,
I am not great, I don’t want anybody to think that I believe I’m great.
Nobody can say that he is great while he lives because on the last day of his life he may well do something and then he’s all wet.

[45:44] The magician was in fine form that night asked about the generation of escape artists who took inspiration from his act, he said so far as I know, my only predecessor and escapes was ST peter,
and when one of the officers of the club said that Houdini himself was a great self promoter.
An advertiser, he snapped back, I’m not an advertiser, I’m news, as was often the case. However, the bulk of his comments were reserved for mediums in general and Margery in particular.
The article continues boston he charged is the place where the greatest of the tricks of the fraudulent mediums were invented, including spirit photographs and paraffin hands.
He ridiculed the mediums that hear voices and see forms, saying that the insane asylums are full of people who hear voices and see forms, but that doesn’t make the voices and forms actualities.
Houdini was quoted as saying nobody possesses occult power.
Nobody can read into the future if they could. Why didn’t they warn people of what was to happen at Miami?
That’s referring to a hurricane that had just devastated Miami, the great magician, then agreed to take questions from the audience, and modern comedians should sit down and take notes from the master of crowd work.

[47:09] Do you think character can be read? Do you think character can be judged from faces?
There’s nothing supernatural about that, said the magician. You go to a banker asking for a loan.
He looks at you and says yes or no. That’s all they asked him about authors who have believed kipling said he, he wasn’t interested, Doyle.
He’s only a writer of impossible detective stories. Lodge lodges. A chemist, who doesn’t know this subject?
He says that we shall all drink whiskey and ride in ford’s in Heaven. You may believe it. I don’t.

[47:47] What do you think of the hunch when you hit it? Right. It’s a good hunch. I’ve lost a half a million on a hunch. That’s how good I am.
Palm reading. Well, there’s a lot in that. You can tell a bank clerk from a bricklayer vibrations be specific, male or female auto suggestion.
Well, there’s a lot in that Send out two salesmen 1 east and the other west with the same line of goods.
One will come back a rich man and the other a good fellow.

[48:24] Then on Halloween 1926, Harry Houdini died.
Some people speculate that the college student who was blamed for causing the appendicitis that killed Houdini may have been in cahoots to the group of spiritualists since he reportedly asked do you believe in the miracles of the bible,
immediately before punching the magician repeatedly below the belt and possibly rupturing his appendix.

[48:49] Harry Houdini had a deal with his wife Bess saying that if he was wrong and spirits were real, he would attempt to contact her from beyond the veil.
That wasn’t quite enough for some of the spiritualists who had ridiculed in life with the ap reporting on November 9, 1926.
From London comes word that the spiritualists will attempt to communicate with the spirit of Harry Houdini, famous american magician and the afterlife.
Such an announcement is of great interest for Houdini was the arch enemy of faking in the attempt of mediums to communicate with spirits of departed persons.
Famous as a magician who admitted before the world that his magic was but a bag of cleverly executed tricks.
Houdini one even greater fame throughout the entire world because of his fight against the fake mediums.
Time after time he showed up the tricks of the spiritualist trade and now spiritualists will endeavor to communicate with Houdini from his place in the afterlife.

[49:50] Bess Houdini would host an annual seance on Halloween with a few friends honoring Harry’s memory and giving him a chance to prove himself wrong by communicating from beyond the grave.
She kept these up for a decade before announcing in 1936. Houdini did not come through, I do not believe that Houdini can come back to me or to anyone.

[50:14] Margery or Mina Crandon on the other hand, would keep up the pretense until her death,
Even though she outlived the spiritualism Craze which began dying out by the late 1930s, she would never admit to any tricks during her seances dr Crandon passed in 1939 and Mina declined quickly.
She died in the House on Lime Street on November 1, 1941.

[50:42] To learn more about Houdini and Margery check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 244, I’ll have links to all the newspaper stories I quoted from today.
Some letters between Margery and Houdini before the Margery box came along and photos of Margery Houdini in the box,
there will also be links to the American Journal of Psychology article by William franklin Prince and the slim book that Houdini wrote about the Margery investigation.
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Music

Jake:
[51:41] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.