Ironically, Houdini later learned from his Boston informant that Margery, who was now reduced back to Mina Crandon and who was drinking herself to death, admired Houdini’s ability to see through her act and his determination to stand his ground.
Houdini’s Anti-Spiritualist Campaign
After the committee’s verdict, Houdini became more aggressive in his efforts to discredit mediums. Not only did Houdini disagree with opportunistically tricking vulnerable and uneducated people out of money, he also espoused the popular theory of the time that Spiritualism could lead people to become insane and/or to commit crimes and pointed out that sexual assaults on women happened under the cover of the séance proceedings.
Houdini essentially opened his own anti-fraud, anti-Spiritualist police force. He advertised in papers that anyone who had been robbed by a medium could write to him for help. He trained the New York Police on tricks used during séances. He also hired his own undercover investigators. Houdini still attended séances and exposed mediums on the spot, often testifying against them later in courts of law. He retained open the $10,000 reward that he had held out to Margery, offering it to any medium who could perform an act that he himself could not duplicate. Mediums who attended his shows were likely to be called out, challenged, and then booed out of the theater, sometimes in tense situations that threatened rioting and violence.
Two of Houdini’s most useful informants were Robert Gysel and Rose Mackenberg. Gysel was a magician who lived and performed in the Midwestern states. Gysel used extreme measures to expose mediums, including harassment and prosecution. Mackenberg was a young, non-descript Jewish woman from Brooklyn who traveled around to mediums under various identities, receiving advice and predictions about nonexistent children and husbands. She reported back in writing to Houdini what she learned.
Houdini used Mackenberg to publically humiliate a reverend of the Spiritualist faith, Charles Gunsolas from Indianapolis, who had written to Houdini with a veiled threat that Gunsolas could reveal all of Houdini’s methods of doing tricks if Gunsolas wanted to. Houdini sent Mackenberg for some readings with a fictional story of having lost an infant, and Gunsolas provided his medium services to her. When Gunsolas showed up at Houdini’s show in Indianapolis, Houdini called him up on the stage and revealed his detective work and the evidence that he had of Gunsolas’ fraud.
Houdini scoffed at Spiritualists who called themselves ministers and reverends, pointing out that ministers of other faiths had to undergo years of intensive training, whereas all one had to do to be a Spiritualist leader was to claim psychic powers. To prove his point, Houdini had Mackenberg travel the United States becoming ordained as a Spiritualist minister many times over. Houdini also sent Mackenberg to Massachusetts to purchase the charter of a Spiritualist church, which she was able to do with ease, although Houdini was later court-ordered to return the charter.
Houdini became a hated name among Spiritualists, who attempted to organize themselves to stop his crusade. During his Chicago run of HOUDINI, Houdini and his agents claimed to have exposed nearly eighty cases of medium fraud in the Chicago area. Several mediums brought lawsuits against Houdini for slander and libel, with the amount Houdini was sued for totaling almost a million dollars between the many plaintiffs.
In the mid-1920s, Houdini took his activism against Spiritualism to Congress. A U.S. representative from New York had sponsored a bill banning fortune telling in the District of Columbia. Houdini arrived in Washington, D.C. to testify for four days of hearings in front of the House of Representatives and the Senate. As usual, where Houdini went, drama and entertainment followed. The hearings were packed with angry Spiritualists who booed and heckled Houdini, calling him a liar and a fake. Houdini, as always thriving on attention, took center-stage to cross-examine witnesses, warning mediums that he would find them out and presenting testimony from his investigators, including Mackenberg. An especially juicy scandal erupted when Mackenberg testified that a medium had told her that many members of Congress and the President and his family themselves practiced Spiritualism, provoking the White House to print a denial of these claims. In the long run, the proposed bill did not pass because it violated First Amendment guarantees to freedom of speech and religion. For the first time, perhaps, Houdini reflected that his efforts might have been more effective if he hadn’t made the hearings into a one-man Houdini show, thus distracting Congress from the work of passing a bill.
In Houdini’s Words
Houdini’s book Miracle Mongers and Their Methods is dedicated to discussing the kinds of fraudulent mediums Houdini seemed to despise. The first chapters discuss the “fire eaters” of bygone days, and his summary of them not only reveals his contempt for the Spiritualists of his own time, but something of his intimate understanding of how performers depend on trends.