It was 100 years ago today on Oct. 9, 1924, that Houdini kicked off his second Spiritualism lecture tour at the Pine Street Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Houdini began his talk by telling the crowd that he had first been to Williamsport during his 1895 tour with the Welsh Bros. Circus and that he had never seen a town that had changed so much over the years.
Today, Williamsport commemorates both his appearances with a historical marker erected by Dorothy Dietrich and Dick Brookz in 2016.
Houdini's second spiritualism tour, now called "Can the Dead Speak To the Living?" took him on a 9000-mile cross-crossing route through Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York. His two combined tours covered almost 12,000 miles during this single year.
For this occasion, I've created an interactive Google map showing the complete route of Houdini's two tours (as far as I know them). If you're a member of my Patreon, you can start the journey by clicking below.
Thanks to my patrons for supporting content like this.
*has a 1920s equivalent to a PowerPoint*
ReplyDeleteHaha. But correct! He used a set of glass slides. A few of these sets survive today.
Delete*Houdini turns off the lights and pulls down the projector screen*
DeleteOne kid in the back: “So… you gonna do some magic or what?”OoO
Houdini: 😒
Also with the glass slides. So cool!
DeleteThe Arthur Moses book on Houdini’s glass slides for these lectures is fantastic!
ReplyDeleteWhat’s the book called?
DeleteHoudini Speaks Out
DeleteThanks John! 😊
DeleteThese two tours must have accumulated serious spending on train tickets, cab fare from the train station to the hotel/venue, and overnights in hotel rooms. Was all this out of pocket for him?
ReplyDeleteKen Trombly owns the contract for this tour. Travel expenses were covered by the Lyceum circuit. Doesn't say anything about rooms, but I expect HH did a lot of sleeping on overnight trains.
DeleteOh I forgot! Overnight trains had sleeping bunks! I think you're right! With all of those stops on the tour, he must have crashed in those bunks. But hotels were needed for a shower and shave.
DeleteLet’s hope the fangirls don’t find him while he’s sleeping on the train bunk! LOL!
DeleteFascinating post as usual, but am I nitpicking when I see yet another reference, like on this beautiful plaque, to Houdini as a “magician and escape artist?” Isn’t being an escape artist, after all, just a facet of magic rather than a separate vocation? We don’t say “cobbler and shoe shiner” (shoe shiniest?) or “beaver trapper and beaver skinner,” or “card magician and Chinese linking ring manipulator.” Maybe in this context “magician and lecturer” would have been less redundant?
ReplyDeleteOr maybe in the future I should have my coffee after reading the Wild About Harry Weekly on Sunday mornings (which I greatly look forward to), rather than before?
-Steve Bingen
Good points, Steve!
DeleteI think it's okay to separate them because Houdini did. I don't have the quote in front of me, but early in his success, he said something like, "Don't insult me by calling me a magician. I'm an escape artist." Of course, later on he embraced the role of master magician, so maybe he came to feel differently. But not all magicians do escapes and not all escape artists do magic, so I do consider them separate but related vocations. It's when people say "magician and illusionist" that I nitpick as a redundancy.
Let's do Friday lunch at the Castle soon and catch up!