Harry Houdini
The greatest escape artist; he created the trade of stage celebrity
He was born Erik Weisz at Budapest on 24 March 1874. All his life he gave his birth as 6 April 1874 and his birthplace as Appleton. He invented both; the Budapest register is older and truer. His Catholic widow Bess was refused burial beside him by her own family.
He spent the last four years of his life exposing the spiritualist mediums who fleeced widows—and he pursued it with an evidentiary rigour a beit din would have envied. He died of peritonitis on 31 October 1926. It must not be printed that the Montreal student's punches killed him: he probably already had appendicitis, and the causal link is unproven. Still less that he died in the Water Torture Cell—that is pure film invention.
Sources
Scholarship
- The Budapest birth register; Wikipedia, “Harry Houdini” — 24 March 1874, Budapest — against the Appleton he invented
Basis: documents and evidence.