Houdini had given a lecture at the university a few days earlier and had invited some students to see him in his dressing room on October 22 at the nearby Princess Theater.Īs HISTORY recounts: “At some point, a student named J. We know that at the time of the incident, Whitehead was a student at McGill University. However, surprisingly little information is available about J. You would expect that, nearly 100 years later, the man who allegedly dealt the abdominal blows that killed the world’s most famous magician would be infamous, with his life examined as closely as those of Lee Harvey Oswald or Mark David Chapman. In this publicity photo, professional boxers Jack Dempsey (left) and Benny Leonard (right) prepare to deliver a punch to Houdini (center). Houdini claimed he could resist hard punches to his abdomen. Some say the puncher was a professional boxer (he wasn’t), while others suggest he was a hitman hired by fraudsters or Spiritualists (there’s no evidence to support this). However, the identity of the person who delivered the fatal punches isn’t widely known, which has led to many myths and fabrications. You might have heard the simplified version of how Houdini died: he was unexpectedly punched in the stomach. And they got two versions: an explanation that implicated a mysterious man, and another that hinted at a sinister conspiracy. But early 20th century Americans craved a more sensational story, one that pointed a finger at a culprit. So, the official cause of Harry Houdini’s death was a ruptured appendix. However, as the Titanic Historical Society points out, the reality is quite different: “The truth was Ismay helped with loading and lowering several lifeboats and acquitted himself better than the behavior of many of the crew and passengers.” Bruce Ismay, the highest-ranking White Star Line official to survive the ship’s sinking, was a coward who contributed to its fatal encounter with the iceberg. And the 1997 blockbuster Titanic perpetuated the false narrative that J.

O’Leary’s cow for starting the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, even though it was officially cleared of any wrongdoing in 1997. The Truth About Walt Disney’s Frozen Headįor example, we still blame Mrs.Someone, or something, had to be responsible, and this quest for accountability led to popular scapegoats. transitioned from the 19th to the 20th century, Americans often looked for clear-cut explanations for tragedies, preferring to pin the blame on a single “culprit” rather than accept the inexplicable. In the same way that a “volunteer from the audience” might search a box used in a sawing-a-woman-in-half trick for a trap door, people started to seek explanations other than the official cause of death to make sense of Houdini’s sudden demise.Īs the U.S. Just as audiences were amazed by Houdini’s incredible escapes and puzzled over the secrets behind his tricks, many found it hard to believe that a ruptured appendix could take the life of a man who so regularly seemed to cheat death on stage. Stone walls and chains do not make a prison-for Houdini, 1898.

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