![]() ![]() When he returned he was able to command fifty times the price he first asked for his act. Almost at once he turned his attention to the business of opening locks without keys.Ī handcuffed prisoner brought into Appleton by a Sheriff who had lost the keys to the handcuffs was the occasion for the discovery of the trick opening of handcuffs which Houdini said was known only to him, his wife and the prisoner.Īfter an unsuccessful attempt to appear in vaudeville, Houdini, scraped together enough money to to to Europe, where he made his reputation. Because of his mother’s objections he was brought back home and apprenticed to a locksmith. His first appearance as a public entertainer was at the age of 8, when he performed on the high trapeze with a circus troupe. He aided the police of New York City in putting a number of mediums out of business and gave a course at the Police Academy here on the discovery of frauds. He wrote a book to expose “Margery,” the medium who won the award of the Scientific American, charging that the committee which made the award did not take proper precautions. He kept an untiring attack on spiritualist. He never was called upon to pay the reward. He exposed hundreds of professional mediums and offered $10,000 to any medium who could produce phenomena which he could not reproduce by relying solely upon his muscular strength and agility, his physical endurance and his knowledge of mechanics. He held that the phenomena produced by professed mediums of various kinds, hypnotics, mesmerists and fakirs all were spurious. Houdini came before the American public as an exposer of frauds perpetrated by so-called spirit mediums.
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