July 7, 2021

Something Good #26: A Séance for Houdini

One thing that can be good to do is to sift through ancient newspaper archives in search of stories and mysteries about your surroundings. I first discovered this when I became curious about a faded painted ad just down the block from where I lived. Looking up the company that originally painted it, I found an article about an armed hold-up that took place in their offices in 1961.

It’s not a story that holds any particular significance, and it has probably completely vanished from living memory. But, like the tales told in certain YouTube comments, it was important to somebody, sometime, and knowing it rendered visible a layer of my neighbourhood’s historical patina.

In my research, I’d discovered that Google News lets you extensively browse through the archives of hundreds of newspapers, many defunct. This presents some interesting opportunities.

One thing that many Montrealers are aware of is that the great magician and escape artist Harry Houdini, né Erik Weisz, spent a fatal final engagement in our city.

The story goes that Houdini was approached by a young bravo backstage after a performance. The man wanted to know if it were true that the magician was capable of tightening his stomach muscles such that he could take a blow without injury. Not giving him any time to prepare, he summarily sucker-punched him in the guts, and days later Houdini died of a stomach infection.

As local legend tells it, the assailant was a McGill student and the venue was backstage at what is now the Cinéma L’Amour, a former Yiddish theatre that has survived intact for more than a century as its contemporaries were torn down by becoming a porn cinema.

I wanted to see how Houdini’s arrival in Montreal, and death, were covered in the local press, so I dived into the archives of the Montreal Gazette for the week of October 18, 1926—during which Houdini was in town for multiple engagements.

It’s always a trip to journey back into the media of a hundred years ago. The headlines are alternately breathless—“TEARS FLOWED WHEN DEFENCE COUNSEL SPOKE”—and charmingly mundane: “RAILROAD MEN ON OUTING IN CITY.”

And then there’s my favourite from this particular week:

But the advertisements can be just as informative as the headlines. Here’s where I had my first breakthrough.

This ad tells us that Houdini was nowhere near the Cinéma L’Amour (then known as The Globe), but at the much larger, much more glamourous downtown Princess Theatre. This hung on in one form or another, finally morphing into a multiplex called Le Parisien, until a couple of decades ago. (Incidentally, the Impérial, advertised side-by-side, still manages to hang on, one of the last non-porn vestiges of this era.)

On the following day, October 19, there’s a report of the master mystifier’s first show.

“‘If you catch on to my tricks, it doesn’t mean that I’m bad, but that you’re good!’ Houdini tells his audience. And he then proceeds to keep them guessing.”

The next day, the paper featured a recounting of a talk Houdini gave at McGill University on the topic of “Spiritualism Frauds.” The great magician was well-known for his mission to expose the phoney would-be psychics of the day; at this talk, he took aim at Lady Doyle, widow of Arthur Conan Doyle. The Sherlock Holmes creator had been obsessed with Spiritualism and super-cringey, obviously fake photos of fairies—which is still pretty confounding when you think of how he invented one of the most coolly logical characters in all of fiction—and his widow claimed to have psychic powers of her own. (This must have been particularly vexing to Houdini, who had been close friends with Doyle before they broke over these matters. One of the weirdest and funniest details of this whole story is that Doyle refused to believe that Houdini didn’t have magic powers, even after the escape artist’s tricks were patiently explained to him1.)

Houdini appeared one more time in the Gazette before his death, in a final advertisement.

A week later, he would grace the front page.

The story makes a brief mention of the maybe-fatal backstage punch—and interestingly, puts it on October 19, at the McGill event. (Most sources have it occurring at the Princess on April 22).

This would make sense, as it would have been full of McGill students. The culprit appears to have been a student and amateur boxer named Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead.

Controversy still swirls about whether Whitehead’s punch was the cause of Houdini’s death. Some say that even if it didn’t cause the peritonitis infection that killed him, the pain may have masked its more serious symptoms. One theory has it that the insurance company’s lucrative double indemnity clause only paid out if there was evidence of foul play, which led his kin to push that explanation.

But the more interesting question to me is: who was J. Gordon Whitehead? We don’t know much. The official story has it that Whitehead visited Houdini while he was being sketched by another student, an aspiring artist named Samuel J. Smilovitch. This is all recounted in an affidavit Whitehead signed for the insurance claim, which offers precious few details about the man—his address (on downtown Drummond Street), and the fact that he worked in the McGill library. Smilovitch, writing under the name Sam Smiley, also wrote a recollection of the event, in 1953, that paints a strange picture of the young man.

…Out of a clear sky, Whitehead asked, “is it true, Mr. Houdini, that you can resist the hardest blows struck to the abdomen?” Houdini did not appear to be very proud of his abdominal muscles. In an apparent attempt to divert attention from his abdomen, he ignored the question and exclaimed, “my forearm and back muscles are like iron! Feel them.”
We did and found how near human muscles can approach iron in rigidity and strength.
Again Whitehead manifested interest in Houdini’s abdominal muscles. “Is it true that your stomach muscles can stand very hard blows?”
Houdini repeated, “my forearm and back muscles are extremely strong. They’re like iron.”
Once more Whitehead returned to the abdominal muscles, as if it were all-important to establish their power of resistance to external force.
“Would you mind if I delivered a few blows to your abdomen, Mr. Houdini?” he asked.

And he did.

The mysteries deepen. There are stories that Whitehead actually knew Houdini and was there to return borrowed books… that the magician had been accosted by a mysterious assailant earlier in the week…

Only one photograph, taken later in life, seems to exist of this strange character.

There is no evidence of where he came from or where he went. In the biographies of Houdini that I’ve read he comes and goes like a ghost.

Every year, on the anniversary of Houdini’s death—which happens to be Halloween—a séance has been conducted to try and summon the great magician’s spirit. The first 10 were conducted in the presence of his widow Bess, the rest, since, by fans and amateurs. So far he has not spoken.

In 1954, Whitehead died alone in Montreal, of malnutrition. How he fell from the relatively privileged position of studying at McGill and living in the city’s Golden Square Mile to literally starving in the streets will probably remain a mystery forever. Perhaps he had been pursued by Houdini’s otherwise silent spirit.

The places where these events occurred still exist in some form. I saw movies at the Parisien. I goofed off in the McGill library. I have probably walked past J. Gordon Whitehead’s Drummond address countless times.

And by diving into the faded scans of these old newspapers, I feel like I am conducting a séance of my own.

This week’s very excellent #nojacketsrequired comes to us from Geoff Siskind. Please send your dejacketed submissions to [email protected]—they just keep getting better and better.

Last night I was in Parc LaFontaine and it was full of fireflies. Therefore—

Bonus track:

Every Wednesday I’ll send you Something Good. This (not last week’s, which was woefully misnumbered) is #26, making this my newsletter’s half-birthday. Thanks to all who have read, sent in book covers or other kind notes. If you want to support this venture, I ask not for money but that you send your favourite issue to a friend.