49. CAN NIGHTINGALE ESCAPE HOUDINI’S ACT

What Harry Houdini bring to the party:

HARRY HOUDINI

Escapologist

Born (aka escaped from womb)

March 24, 1874 in Budapest

Died

October 31, 1926 in Detroit

Arrived in USA on July 3, 1878 aged 4

Harry Houdini (real name Erik Weisz) initially became known as ‘The Handcuff King’ and he challenged local police, wherever he was touring, to restrain him with their shackles and lock him in their jails. Inevitably, by the following morning he had freed himself.

His acts of escapology became increasingly daring as his career progressed including escaping from a straitjacket while dangling on a rope from a tall building and the Chinese Water Torture Cell in which he would hold his breath for three minutes shackled upside down by the ankles in a tank overflowing with water and emancipate himself.

He was the highest paid performer in Vaudeville and his daring, life-threatening challenges captured the mood of the time with its high octane pursuit of thrills.

In the 1920’s he started to debunk psychics and mediums, using his experience with magic to expose the many frauds played on an unsuspecting public desirous of making contact with the many loved ones who had perished as a result of the Great War and the Spanish Flu epidemic.

Before his untimely death from peritonitis in 1926, the consequence of being struck in the stomach at an unguarded moment by a student backstage,he told his wife Bess that if he was able to communicate after death he would and he would use a code word ‘Rosabelle Believe’ their favourite song. Seances were held for the next ten years but to no avail. Harry Houdini was unable to escape the ultimate confinement.

Suggested Tactics

Houdini should use his escapology talents to greatly dishearten Florence Nightingale by freeing himself easily from the toughest of her wheel clamps.

Test Mission 1 Rating 1/5.

New York City, 1965

His mission was to steal a wedding dress from Macy’s Store for Miss Gwendolyn Forbes. Unfortunately she told him she was a medium (meaning in dress size) and he lost his rag saying that she was a fraud and left the building.

Mission 2 Rating 3/5

Indian, 1974

Houdini’s mission was to attend a party where he would emerge from a huge cardboard birthday cake. Instead, he sat amongst the audience. When the cake was cut open hologram handcuffs and hologram leg irons were found to show that he had been at one stage confined there. So that had to suffice.