Houdini's final escape ended in Detroit a century ago today

Harry Houdini could not slip out of the trap that closed on him in Detroit. The escape artist died on Oct. 31, 1926, a hundred years ago today, after rupturing his appendix in Montreal and then performing a Detroit show anyway. He was under contract and doctors had told him to rest, but he refused to cancel the dates.

Houdini performed in Detroit 19 times between 1894 and his final show in 1926. In 1906 he jumped 24 feet from Belle Isle Bridge into the river wearing two sets of police handcuffs and came up fine. Reports at the time said the water was not frozen, though later movies showed him breaking through ice.

He built his act on escapes that others could not match. He hung upside down from office buildings and slipped out of straitjackets in public view. By 1914 he was performing the Water Torture Cell, lowering himself head first into a water-filled box as a curtain hid how he got out.

Dorothy Young toured with Houdini as a stage assistant beginning when she was 17 and watched the act many times. She said in a 2004 interview with NPR that Mrs. Houdini stood in the wings because the couple had a secret code in case he could not get out, and that she watched because it was very exciting.

Days before Detroit, Houdini was in a dressing room in Montreal when a college wrestler punched his stomach several times before he could tighten his midsection. He was in pain afterward. Doctors told him to rest, but he went ahead with the Detroit dates because he was under financial pressure to meet a contract, said Jeremy Dimick, a curator at the Detroit Historical Museum.

Houdini got through one performance. Dimick said he could not put on his own makeup, collapsed during intermissions, and was carried from the Garrick Theater back to his hotel. Doctors at Grace Hospital found a ruptured appendix. He had two surgeries and died a few days later, on Halloween.

Bess Houdini held séances for years afterward to try to reach him. She ended the effort at a Halloween séance ten years after his death and later appeared as herself in a movie reenacting that scene.

John Sherwood keeps a metal milk can from Houdini's workshop at the American Museum of Magic in Marshall, Mich., about 100 miles west of Detroit. Houdini climbed inside it filled with warm water and six Mastodon locks while a screen kept the audience from seeing the escape. Séances at the museum have surrounded the can and other artifacts, sometimes placing a lox and bagel sandwich inside to invite his spirit to take a bite. Sherwood is running another séance this Halloween.

The Garrick Theater, the hotel, and Grace Hospital are gone. The Hamilton Funeral Home where he was embalmed later became a girls art school, which also closed. Juanita Hammond led visitors to its locked storage room in 2004 and said some students told her they would not go to the kitchen because they might see Houdini.