Harry Houdini Died 100 Years Ago This Halloween: Was He Really Killed by a Punch to the Stomach?

This Hal­loween marks the 100th anniver­sary of the death of famed escape artist Har­ry Hou­di­ni. Today, most of us know more about the man­ner of that death than we do about any of the feats of escape artistry that made him famous in the first place. As the sto­ry goes, he’d mas­tered his own body to the extent that he could tight­en his abdom­i­nal mus­cles so as to with­stand even the hard­est punch to the gut. Or at least that’s the image he let cir­cu­late: tak­ing it as a chal­lenge, a stu­dent and ama­teur box­er turned up and offered his fist to Hou­di­ni as an unex­pect­ed test. A week and a half lat­er, the great escapol­o­gist was dead of peri­toni­tis.

It seemed that the blow he sus­tained had rup­tured Hou­dini’s already-inflamed appen­dix, and that remained the wide­ly accept­ed, if not med­ical­ly air­tight, expla­na­tion for near­ly a cen­tu­ry. Yet there was always some­thing too dra­mat­i­cal­ly neat in the tale of a man famed for defy­ing death being done in by noth­ing more than a thought­less young man’s suck­er punch. Gen­er­a­tions of enthu­si­asts have offered expla­na­tions of their own, some more plau­si­ble than oth­ers, but few inves­ti­ga­tions into this qua­si-leg­endary demise have been con­duct­ed as seri­ous­ly as the one under­tak­en in our time by retired urol­o­gist Lar­ri­an Gille­spie, author of Hou­di­ni: The Man Who Died Twice.

When she had the chance to exam­ine his death cer­tifi­cate, Gille­spie noticed appar­ent irreg­u­lar­i­ties that led her down the rab­bit hole to “a paper trail of mis­state­ments and actions by more than a dozen peo­ple close to Hou­di­ni, includ­ing rel­a­tives and employ­ees,” writes the New York Times’ Robin Pogre­bin, “includ­ing a con­spir­a­cy to change his offi­cial death date to Octo­ber 31st, fix­ing his mem­o­ry to Hal­loween.” Accord­ing to her recon­struc­tion of events, Hou­di­ni actu­al­ly died the day before: not of appen­dici­tis, and not as a result of the young man’s punch. “Rather, she argues, the cul­prit was a bow­el obstruc­tion, brought on by a fibrous mass of chop suey that Hou­di­ni ate on Oct. 28.”

Emer­gency surgery took place the next day, but it was too late. “Sep­tic shock set in, Houdini’s fever spiked to 105 and his rapid breath­ing led to mus­cle spasms and uncon­scious­ness.” He was oper­at­ed on again the day after, and “Gillespie’s research into the death cer­tifi­cates indi­cates that the magi­cian died that after­noon at 1:26 p.m.” Gille­spie argues that the lack of a prop­er autop­sy helped con­ceal pos­si­ble med­ical mal­prac­tice and allowed Hou­dini’s wid­ow to col­lect a dou­ble-indem­ni­ty pay­ment for what was treat­ed as an acci­den­tal death. Even if accept­ed, her the­o­ry prob­a­bly won’t erase the cul­tur­al link between Hou­di­ni and Hal­loween. But the the­o­ry does add a new dimen­sion of irony to his life sto­ry: the man who could sur­vive a Chi­nese water tor­ture cell proved to be no match for Amer­i­can Chi­nese food.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Hou­di­ni Escape From a Strait Jack­et, Then See How He Did It (Cir­ca 1917)

Har­ry Houdini’s Great Rope Escape (Cir­ca 1920)

Browse the Mag­i­cal Worlds of Har­ry Houdini’s Scrap­books

The Mys­tery of Edgar Allan Poe’s Death: 19 The­o­ries on What Caused the Poet’s Demise

How Anti-Chi­nese Immi­gra­tion Laws Unex­pect­ed­ly Led to a Chi­nese Restau­rant Boom in Amer­i­ca

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.