When Houdini came to town
suit” – a straightjacket - “that would be impossible to escape from”. Come the night, trussed up in a heavy stout sack suit, with ankles, knees and wrists strapped up, our hero endured a thirteen-minute struggle before eliciting a dramatic escape to rapturous applause from the audience.
■■1913
The 40-year old Houdini was now selling himself as “the world-famous self liberator”. At the peak of his fame, he was back performing at the Empire theatre.
As a publicity stunt, he also dived off a buttress on the Swing Bridge, into the River Tyne, with his hands handcuffed and manacled behind his back. Watched by a large crowd, he re-emerged in a matter of seconds with all his fetters removed.
Locally, Tyneside’s shipyards and armament factories were in full production a year before the Great War began.
Against this background, Elswick shipyard management believed they were capable of constructing an escape-proof box and threw out a challenge to the escapologist.
The challenge was accepted. On the night, to a roll of drums, Houdini entered the container. Elswick’s shipwrights nailed down the lid and double-wrapped the box with rope bindings. An incredulous audience - and even more incredulous shipyard workers- raised the theatre roof with applause as “the self liberator” again defied the odds and made his escape. ■■1920
Two years after the end of the war, Houdini was back in town, headlining at the Hippodrome theatre. Now a Hollywood star, he promoted the show by climbing the parapets of Newcastle’s Castle Keep. Houdini, on his final Tyneside visit was still the showman supreme.
But his death-defying life would come to a surprising end. An immensely strong man, it was a dressing-room demonstration of his ability to take a punch to the stomach that would be the cause of his downfall. A young student suddenly rained in punches with Houdini caught unprepared. He would die from peritonitis, following a ruptured appendix.
In 1926, the ‘handcuff king’ and ‘world famous self-liberator’ was dead, aged just 52.