American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, Harry Houdini was noted for his escape acts. In 1904, the London Daily Mirror newspaper challenged Houdini to escape from special handcuffs that it claimed had taken Nathaniel Hart, a locksmith from Birmingham, five years to make.
Houdini accepted the challenge for March 17 during a matinée performance at London’s Hippodrome theatre.
Harry Houdini’s cause of death: What happened to Harry Houdini?
The renowned magician’s official cause of death was diffuse peritonitis, Witnesses to an incident at Houdini’s dressing room in the Princess Theatre in Montreal speculated that Houdini’s death was caused by Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead (1895–1954), who repeatedly struck Houdini’s abdomen.
The accounts of the witnesses, students named Jacques Price and Sam Smilovitz, generally corroborated each other. Price said that Whitehead asked Houdini “if he believed in the miracles of the Bible” and “whether it was true that punches in the stomach did not hurt him”.
Houdini offered a casual reply that his stomach could endure a lot. Whitehead then delivered “some very hammer-like blows below the belt”. Houdini was reclining on a couch at the time, having broken his ankle while performing several days earlier.
Houdini’s funeral was held on November 4, 1926, in New York, with more than 2,000 mourners in attendance. He was interred in the Machpelah Cemetery in Glendale, Queens, with the Society of American Magicians crest inscribed on his grave site.
