![]() ![]() He’s buried in an unmarked grave in a Montreal cemetery. Gordon Whitehead, the man who inadvertently caused Houdini’s death? After the incident, Whitehead dropped out of college and became a recluse, eventually dying of malnutrition in 1954. Likewise, Grace Hospital, where Houdini died, is no longer part of the Detroit landscape, having been demolished in 1979. The Garrick Theatre no longer stands but was located at 1122 Griswold Street, near the current site of the David Stott Building. A curtain prevented panicked audiences from seeing his struggle to escape, but escape he did, every time. One of his standards was the “Chinese Water Torture Cell” trick in which his feet were locked in stocks and he was immersed upside-down in a glass container filled with water. He adopted the name “Harry Houdini” in homage to two of his heroes: an American magician named Harry Kellar, and a French magician named Jean Eugene Robert-Houdin. Houdini was best known for his daring escapes from sticky situations. Houdini started life as Erik Weisz and immigrated to the United States from Hungary when he was four years old. ![]() Perhaps not surprisingly, especially given the fact that, in life, Houdini had insisted spiritualism was a fraud, she had no luck. To this day, fans of the paranormal gather every Halloween to commune with Houdini’s spirit. His body was taken to Queens, New York, where he was buried in Machpelah Cemetery.įor years afterward, Houdini’s wife, Bess, held seances on Halloween in an attempt to contact her husband. Though Houdini held out hope that he would recover, his injuries eventually got the best of him, and he died at 1:26 p.m. ![]() Eventually, Houdini acknowledged that he needed medical attention, and was rushed to Detroit’s Grace Hospital, where doctors discovered that he had peritonitis (an inflammation of abdominal tissue), likely caused by a ruptured appendix. By that time, Houdini’s temperature had reached 104 degrees, and he passed out while performing his act. He refused surgery, though, and showed up for his performance at the Garrick Theatre. By the time Houdini and his crew arrived in the Motor City, he was running a fever of 102 degrees and suffering from appendicitis. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |