Harry Houdini: Rescued by Library Books in Brooklyn, Part Two

After his mother's death, in 1914 Harry Houdini's grief was so great that he could not live in the Harlem home he once shared with his wife Bess, and his mother Cecilia. Harry and Bess moved to Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, living with his brother Theo and his family. Harry was overwhelmed with grief, but perhaps Brooklyn would rescue him once again.

Even in 1914, the large homes on Flatbush Avenue were slowly being replaced by apartment buildings.? Today, Theo’s home at 394 East 21st Street is the site of an apartment building, but just down the street are still a few homes like the original Weisz home. In one of these homes, lived a ten-year-old boy named Edwin Scanlan.? He was excited to discover that magicians were living nearby.?? Edwin first became friendly with Bobby the dog; Harry, and Bess’s dog.? Then he got to know Theo and Harry.? He made some money running errands for them.? Harry and Bess had no children of their own, and they came to really like having Edwin around.? Edwin was very interested in the large barn behind the house.? Harry and Theo gave him the job of sweeping out the barn and once he could be trusted, they even showed him the secrets behind some of their inventions.? Edwin loved learning from Theo and Harry.? Harry loved flying airplanes and he got Edwin excited about becoming a pilot too.?

It bothered Harry that he had made some amazing inventions, but because they were part of his act, he had to keep them a secret.? While in Brooklyn he decided to change that.? As a way to help overcome missing his mother, Harry decided to get a United States government patent for a special diving suit.? Harry had heard of tragic stories of deep-sea divers getting trapped in their diving suits underwater.?? He invented and built a diving suit that opened in the middle and allowed the diver to escape.? Harry tested the suit underwater himself with naval officers watching at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1917.? Then he had an inexperienced diver escape out of the suit.? It took two years of constant revisions, but in 1919, Houdini had a life-saving patent.?

Harry continued to perform to large audiences in Brooklyn’s theaters.? Many of them have been torn down, but three of them still exist in Brooklyn, as a furniture store, a high school, and the attic space of an apartment building.? World War One was being fought and many soldiers lost their lives.? Houdini was hung upside-down by his ankles from a crane while wrapped in chains and a straight-jacket for thousands of Brooklynites at the old Gravesend Race Track in Brooklyn.? He easily got free of the jacket and chains and escaped death once again.? His performance raised thousands of dollars to help widows and orphans of soldiers.? Harry raised thousands of dollars for the Red Cross and others in need during his stay in Brooklyn.? He created a group called the “Rabbi’s sons”, famous Jewish American performers who raised money for people in need as his family had once been.

Even after two years, Harry noticed that he was still suffering a lot from the loss of both of his parents.? Harry came up with a plan which might help mend his broken heart.?? He searched for and found the Jewish Rabbi who had bought his father’s religious and law books long ago.? The scholar kindly agreed to sell back the books. From there he began to create a library that would honor his father and all that his father stood for. This library would have books about Jewish mystics, as well as mystics from all over the world.? Harry believed these mystics often used science to create their magic as well and he wanted clues into their methods.? He collected books on magic tricks going back hundreds of years.? If he began to feel sad about the loss of his parents, he would head to his library and spend hours reading, studying and writing books about magic.?

While in his library, Harry discovered a new mission in life. He noticed that for too long magicians were giving spiritual or supernatural reasons for how they did their magic.? What they were really using was a mixture of science and art to fool their audience.? Houdini did not want to explain how he was creating his magic, but he wanted his audience to know that there was nothing spiritual about what they were seeing.? He was simply using science and art. He was determined from then on, to use science to debunk magicians who claimed they were using spiritual forces to do their tricks.? They were not communicating with long-dead President Abraham Lincoln, or Harry’s mother Cecilia, the dead were not making tables magically rise into the air.? Harry would uncover and expose their tricks. If magicians were stealing money by telling people they were speaking to the dead, Houdini would bring the police along to make arrests.? In one famous incident, Harry brought a flashlight and lit up a dark room to expose the fakers who spoke into metal tubes, pretending to be the voices of dead family members.? The police swooped in.

Harry also found time to make recordings of his voice introducing and describing some of his most popular magical acts. Theo, Harry, and Bess also made some home movies in the front yard of the house showing some of their rope magic tricks.? In front of Brooklyn’s Borough Hall, Theo was filmed performing Metamorphosis with his niece in front of a gigantic crowd.? Harry’s voice and image will live on for many years to come. They have escaped death, thanks to science and the libraries that preserve them.

Harry and Bess visited Coney Island each year on their anniversary and remembered the magical time when they first met. He was beginning to recover.?

Harry felt good about the library.? It was a monument to his father’s love of knowledge, and to the many ways a person could use science to create magic and escape death. Harry loved libraries so much that he contributed books to the Brooklyn Public Library in 1916 and wrote a will leaving all of his books to the Library of Congress in Washington DC.

He now had just one final task to help in his healing.? Nearby in Queens, Harry had a large monument to the Weisz built in a Jewish cemetery.? He had his father’s bones transferred to the new gravesite where they were placed beside his mother’s grave.? This seemed to bring Harry some peace at last.? He and Bess were ready to return home to Harlem.? Harry would bring the library home with him.? It took four twenty-foot-long vans just to move all the books in his library.? Brooklyn was where Harry and Bess Houdini met and where Harry found his purpose in life once again.