Houdini(24)
When the committee failed to reach a decision after another round of séances with Margery, Houdini traveled to Boston to expose her himself and prove his worth to the world. In January of 1925, Houdini staged a show at Boston’s Symphony Hall, inviting Margery to come and perform, and offering her his own prize of ten thousand dollars if she succeeded in escaping detection of fraud. Predictably, Margery did not show up, but Houdini, not to be deterred from exposing her, put on a two-hour show replicating her tricks with some blindfolded sitters, while the audience had full view of how he perpetrated the phenomena. His program included tricks performed from inside supposedly the same cabinet that he had made for Margery, although it was later revealed that the cabinet was probably a replica.
Committee members, including Prince, whom Houdini had trusted as an ally, and McDougall, whom Houdini had made up with after McDougall’s insults, reacted by publishing statements disapproving of Houdini’s show and asserting that Houdini’s replication of Margery’s tricks had proved nothing. Doyle joined the fray by publishing an article about his view of Margery’s abilities, aimed to discredit Houdini’s reputation as a serious investigator of Spiritualism. In addition, the publisher of Scientific American, Orson Munn, had become fed up by the way Houdini had changed the magazine’s scientific investigation into a Houdini-focused publicity stunt. Public supporters of Margery spread the news that many mediums predicted that Houdini would be dead within a year, a well-deserved punishment for his harassment of one of their revered leaders.
Enraged and betrayed, Houdini held a six-week show at New York’s Hippodrome Theater in which he continued to produce phenomena that supposedly only mediums could evoke through channeling spirits, including supposedly predicting two events before they happened (in reality, Houdini had journalist friends give him the information before it went to the press). The Crandons retaliated by holding a lecture in Boston, to which they invited professors from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and other academic elites, where they illustrated Margery’s abilities in a slide presentation. A researcher from the Society of Psychical Research named Eric Dingwall, a former magician whom Houdini had considered to be an ally, spoke, devoting considerable time to criticizing Houdini’s qualifications to judge Margery’s abilities, and recommending that Margery come for further study in England. McDougall chaired the lecture.
The committee’s deadlock was finally broken when the Crandons refused to continue to submit to testing unless Houdini was removed from the committee. Munn, the publisher of Scientific American, for all that he resented Houdini’s showmanship while serving on the committee, refused to remove Houdini, and the Crandons withdrew from the investigation. The committee members then voted four to one that there was no basis for believing that Margery’s skills came from supernatural sources. Prince and McDougall released separate, individual statements indicating that they had not been convinced that Margery had any paranormal abilities.
The Crandons attacked the verdict, saying that they had withdrawn from the test, not that the committee who had come to a decision. Houdini, infuriated by the weak language of the verdict, harangued Prince to release the truth to the public—that he, Houdini, had discovered not only a lack of proof of paranormal ability but also that Margery had engaged in several fraudulent tactics. Prince refused and resigned as head of the American Society of Psychical Researchers, exhausted and disgusted by the dramatic fighting. The American Society of Psychical Researchers was taken over by none other than Houdini’s original nemesis on the committee, Bird. Houdini immediately resigned from the American Society of Psychical Researchers.
Not one to submit to less than crushing his opponents, Houdini orchestrated the publication of a pamphlet denouncing an unnamed couple that fraudulently called themselves mediums. Shut out of Margery’s séances himself, he sent an undercover agent to infiltrate the goings-on and report back to him, continually replicating whatever stunts that Margery produced onstage so that the Crandons knew that he was watching them.
In 1925 Margery was discredited publically when she was studied by Harvard University’s Psychology Department, who discovered and published many of her non-paranormal techniques for producing “communications” from the dead. Houdini was beyond gratified when Walter Franklin Pierce, the committee member who had betrayed him, publically told the papers that he had been wrong and that Houdini had been right. Prince and Houdini re-established their friendship via mail. Houdini was even more thrilled by the timing of the Harvard report, as it gave him the opportunity to humiliate his old enemy J. Malcolm Bird, who had in the meantime published a book devoted to exalting Margery and disparaging Houdini. In 1926 Houdini showed up at a public address of Bird’s at a Spiritualist church in Philadelphia and traded bitter speeches with Bird about poor character and deceitful tactics.