March 21, 2025 • 41 mins
Harry Houdini finds an ally in his fight against spiritualism, a brilliant detective called Rose Mackenberg, who'll do whatever it takes to expose a fake. Together, the two head to Washington to try and get lawmakers to criminalise mediums. The hearing that follows will be violent, sensational and leave Houdini fearing for his life.
This is the second of a three-part series.
For a full list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. This is the second episode of a three part series.
You can enjoy it on a standalone basis, but if
you've not heard episode one, you might prefer to listen
to it first. The tearful young widow in a cheap
(00:37):
looking dress was desperate to get in touch with her
recently deceased husband. She explained to mister Herman Parker, one
of the leading spiritualist mediums in Chicago. Mister Parker could
help with that for a fee, of course. He settled down,
closed his eyes and went into a trance.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I am in touch with a man. Yes, it's your husband.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
He says.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
He is happy but misses you. I think he is
leaving us now.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Parker opened his eyes.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
He's gone. Oh, but I did so want to ask
him what to do with the money?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
The money, yes, the widow explained the settlement for his
death three thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Perhaps I can get your husband back.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Said mister Parker. He closed his eyes again.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I have your husband again. His spirit is standing by
your side. He says, to invest the money. He is
trying to give me the name of the company he
wants you to invest in.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Parker screwed up his face in concentration, then reached for
a pen and scribbled a name.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Though Wilcox's Transportation Company. Your husband says it is a
very sound company.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
I don't know how to thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Said The young woman, wiping a tear from her eye,
paid mister Parker the fee for his consultation, went back
to her hotel and placed a long distance telephone call
to her boss, Harry Houdini. For this young woman was
no naive Chicago widow with a chunky death settlement to
(02:28):
invest She was New York bachelor girl Rose Mackenberg, Houdini's
chief investigator of dodgy mediums. Harry Houdini's sellout shows now
consisted of three acts, Some Magic, some of the escapes
(02:49):
that made his name, and a new final section called
Do the Dead Come Back, where Harry would name and
shame fraudulent local mediums. On the stage of the Princess
Theater in Chicago, Harry invited Rose to continue the story
(03:10):
of herman Parker. She looked into the Wilcox Transportation Company.
It was, of course, both worthless and run by an
associate of mister Parker. But it couldn't just be Rose's
word against herman Parker's they needed to gather hard evidence.
(03:31):
Rose told the theater, I.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Took out my checkbook and I said, I'm afraid I
can't write very well. Mister Parker. Could you help me
fill out the check The.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Audience loved it. Billboard called this section of Houdini's show
as laughter provoking as it was educational. Chicago's police also
enjoyed this particular story. They took mister Parker and mister
Wilcox to court and got them both convicted. But did
(04:03):
the laws in America do enough to protect the vulnerable,
bereaved clients of his cynical mediums. Harry Houdini was not
convinced that they did, and so in early nineteen twenty six,
Harry and Rose went to Washington. I'm Tim Harford, and
(04:25):
you're listening to cautionary Tales. The committee room in Washington,
(04:58):
d C. Was packed. Three hundred people crammed the seats,
the aisles, and anywhere else they could find. Some were
simply there to enjoy what promised to be an entertaining spectacle.
The Great Showman Houdini was going to give evidence in
support of the Copeland Bloom Bill. Others there were spiritualists
(05:21):
and mediums whose livelihood and liberty were under threat if
the bill made it onto the statute books. The Congressman
called the session to order. What is your full name?
He asked. My name is Harry Houdini, and what is
your business?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I am an author, I am a psychic investigator for
the scientific magazines of the world, and then I am
a mysterious entertainer.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
It's a revealing answer about how Harry Houdini saw himself.
In his fifty second year, the famous escape artist put
mysterious entertainer only third on his list of occupations. Top
of that list was author. Houdini was proud of his book,
(06:15):
A Magician among the Spirits, partly a history of the
spiritualist movement and partly an account of his own dealings
with spiritualists, such as the seance at which Lady Doyle,
wife of the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had written
a lengthy letter that purported to come from Harry's mother.
(06:35):
Nearly four years had passed since that seance, and Houdini
had become more and more strident in his attacks on
those who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead.
In his experience, He told the assembled congressman.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
There are only two kinds of mediums, those who are
mental degenerates and those who are deliberate cheats and france,
I have never seen one genuine medium.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
But Houdini didn't just want to warn people off spending
their hard earned money on messages purportedly from the spirit world.
Now he thought it should be illegal to sell those
messages at all. That's what the Copeland Bloom Bill set
out to do. Cities around America had different laws on mediumship.
(07:31):
The laws in Washington, d c. Were among the most permissive.
They said that mediums, clairvoyants, soothsayers, fortune tellers, or palmists
conducting business for profit shall pay a license tax of
twenty five dollars per annum, and to get a license,
(07:52):
they simply had to apply to the Superintendent of Licenses
with letters from ten credible residents that he or she
is of good character. Not exactly difficult, as Houdini pointed out,
The problem was was that having a license seemed to
imply that the government was vouching for your skills. Fortune
(08:16):
tellers could proudly display their official certificate in much the
same way as properly qualified lawyers or doctors. The Copeland
Bloombill would go to the other extreme. It would ban
all together pretending to tell fortunes or unite the separated,
among other things. Some of the congressional representatives of the
(08:40):
hearing shared Houdini's skepticism about clairvoyance, soothsayers and so on.
Others were more credulous that palmistry is a science, said
one representative. Isn't it, No, it is not. Houdini was appalled.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
How can you tell anything from the lines of the hand.
You can tell whether a man is a bricklayer or
a bank clerk.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
The congressman continued, I understand astrology can bring out facts
that have been proven to be true. Houdini tried to
explain to him why you should never be too impressed
at discovering that an astrologist has predicted something accurately.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Where they make so many guesses, sometimes they make a
good guess. If you guess often enough, you're bound to
guess something right.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
The congressman moved on to spiritualism. If it really is
such an outrageous fake and fraud, why would that not
have been discovered by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who after all,
is an outstanding authority. Houdini snapped back.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Conan Doyle is not an outstanding authority.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
He is accepted as one of the best, the committee
member said.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
No, he is not accepted as one of the best.
He is one of the greatest dupes.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
The year's long friendship between Houdini and Conan Doyle had
become increasingly strained since that seance with Doyle's wife. For
a while, Houdini still optimistically addressed his letters my dear
Sir Arthur, Conan Doyle became more stiff.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Our relations are suddenly.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Curious, he wrote to Houdini.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
For so long as you attack what I know from
experience to be true, I have no alternative but to
attack you in return. How long a private friendship can
survive such an ordeal? I do not know.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
You can see the problem. Doyle's wife is a medium,
and there's Houdini breezily telling a congressional committee that every
medium he's encountered is either a deliberate fraud or a
mental degenerate. But there's another reason why Arthur and Houdini
had fallen out, and it's to do with the second occupation.
(11:13):
Whodini listed psychic investigator for the scientific magazines of the world.
The Scientific American magazine put up a cash prize for
anyone who could conclusively demonstrate psychic phenomena to their panel
of eminent academic investigators. The panel was on the cusp
(11:35):
of awarding the prize to a friend of Conan Doyle,
a medium called Marjorie, the wife of a Boston surgeon,
at whose seances the spirits rang bells and shook tambourines.
The academics were stumped if this was all a trick.
They couldn't figure out how Marjorie was doing it, so
(11:59):
it must be spirits. But when the magazine sent Houdini,
he watched closely and understood it was slight of hand,
highly accomplished and hard to detect, but slight of hand.
None the less, academics aren't smart enough for this kind
of investigation.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Houdini explained, it takes a flim flammer to catch a
flim flammer.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Because of Houdini, Marjorie did not get the cash prize,
But for Sir Arthur it wasn't about the money. The
approval of Scientific American would have been a major boost
for the spiritualist religion. Sir Arthur was furious with Houdini.
(12:48):
He was certain that Marjorie had genuine supernatural powers and
Houdini's expose a was unfair. For that matter, he was
sure Houdini had supernatural powers and was only pretending that
he didn't. When journalists asked Houdini about Conan Oyle, he
didn't hold back. Conan Doyle is getting a bit senile.
(13:14):
He's fifteen years Houdini's senior. The old man is easily bamboozled.
It's such a pity, Houdini, says.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Doyle thinks he is a messiah who has come to
save mankind. Instead of that, he is misleading the public,
and his teachings are a menace to sanity and health.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Houdini was on a mission. He now saw exposing frauds
like Marjorie as his sacred duty, and he couldn't do
it alone. Cautionary tales will be back after the break.
(14:03):
Rose Mackenberg was born in Brooklyn to Russian immigrant parents.
She started out as a stenographer at a law firm,
then became a private detective. She had just turned thirty
when she took on a new client who wanted her
to investigate a medium. The medium had given him bad
(14:24):
investment advice. Rose didn't know much about mediums, but she
did know someone who knew Harry Houdini. She asked the
mutual friend to set up a meeting so she could
ask for Houdini's advice on how to proceed. Coincidentally, Rose
had just spent an evening at a seance herself, invited
(14:46):
by a friend who said it would be good, clean fun.
It was certainly fun. Rose told Houdini the story. The medium,
an attractive young woman, was tied to a chair. Her
assistant switched out the lights, and in the darkness, she
called on the spirits to play various musical instruments, culminate
(15:09):
with a big bass drum in the middle of the room.
Her assistant turned on the light to reveal that the
medium was still tied to the chair and the big
bass drum was beating all on its own. Rose was
curious about how it was done, she told Houdini, so
(15:30):
she went back a few nights later in disguise. When
the lights were turned out, she quietly left her seat
and crawled towards the drum, stretching out her fingers in
the darkness until they encountered a child, whoever it was, froze,
(15:52):
so Rose felt them out further. No, not a child,
a dwarf, a very small dwarf. Rose crawled back to
her seat, her curiosity satisfied. When the lights came on
and the drum was sounding. This time she knew what
it was, the dwarf beating the drum from inside. Houdini
(16:19):
listened to the story, gave Rose the advice she wanted,
then offered her a job. Rose was tough, smart, and,
crucially for Houdini, open minded. She had no particular views
either way on whether it might be possible to make
(16:39):
contact with the dead. If she did happen to find
a medium who was genuine, sh'd let Houdini know. As
Rose later wrote.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Harry Houdini, from the bottom of his fine soul, wanted
passionately to believe in spiritualism. He would have sacrificed a
fortune if he had ever been able to convince himself
that there was actually such a thing as communication with
the dead. His relentless attempts to unmask for dudulent mediums
(17:10):
were devoid of malice, he thought, but one thing truth.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Houdini sent Rose around the country trying to find that elusive,
genuine medium while gathering material for his shows. When she
got to a new city, she had first hang out
in department stores to observe the local fashions. She had
decide on a persona the rustic school teacher, perhaps the
(17:40):
credulous servant girl, or the small town matron, should purchase
an appropriate outfit. Back at her hotel, she wrote.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
I'd remove the powder from my face, plaster my hair
down in the most unbecoming fashion, probably put on glasses
and sally forth.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Sometimes Houdini himself would turn up for the fun of
unmasking the fraud. Inland, Ohio, Houdini went to a seance
at a famous trumpet medium's house in a blond wig
and thick glasses, having given his name as mister f Road.
He had with him a photographer, a prosecutor, a flashlight,
(18:26):
and lampblack, a pigment used in boot polish. Trumpet mediums
claimed that the spirits move the trumpet around in the
darkness and whisper their messages through it. When the lights
went out, Houdini surreptitiously smeared lamp black on the trumpet.
Then mid seance turned on his flashlight. The photographer caught
(18:51):
the medium blackhanded. The prosecutor told him, you're obtaining money
under false pretenses. The medium was outraged. In forty years,
he protested, I have never been exposed. Well, said Houdini,
whipping off his blonde wig.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Why now?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
More often Rose would gather evidence herself, sometimes at grave
personal risk. She consulted a man about sixty years old
who ran his own spiritualist church. She casually mentioned that
she was interested in establishing a church herself. Her husband
had left her plenty of money. It was a way
(19:41):
to prove how easy it could be to set yourself
up as an authority in the spiritualist religion. The man
leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and began
to breathe heavily.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Your husband is right near you. He loves you. So
your husband tells me to tell you. You go into
this work.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
You'll be quite successful.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Can you ask my husband where I would find someone
to assist me.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
The man began to speak in a changed voice.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Ask the medium. The medium is very good. He can
give you a charter for your church. He can cure
you physically. You have to be purified before you can
(20:47):
do this.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
Work.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
The man stopped speaking, breathed heavily for a while longer,
then rubbed his eyes and spoke in his normal voice again.
Speaker 5 (21:03):
What did I say?
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Rose repeated the man's words back to him. Yes, he
agreed thoughtfully he could do that. He went into another
room and returned with a framed charter for a branch
of his church, the First Church of the Divine Light.
It would cost Rose five dollars to be ordained, but
(21:28):
as the spirits rightly said, she would first need to
be purified, and yes, he could purify her.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Now, have you any corsets on?
Speaker 5 (21:46):
The steel will interfere in the purification process?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Rose did not have any corsets on, She confirmed.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
I must get close to the body.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
He knelt in front of Rose's chair, made the sign
of the Cross over her face, then began to rub
her ankles and her thighs.
Speaker 5 (22:17):
Lord, please help me to show this new worker the light.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
He put his hand on her breast.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
You God, bring this worker closer to me.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Rose stood up, the man still on his knees.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
I feel purified already. Thank you, five dollars, did you say?
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Rose paid her money and made her escape from the
medium's house. Clutching her framed charter. She was now the
Reverend Florence B. Rush of the First Church of the
Divine Light. When Houdini went to Washington to give evidence
(23:06):
for the Copeland Bloom Bill, he sent Rose ahead. As
always suitably disguised, she went to visit two of Washington's
most prominent mediums. Houdini called Rose Mackenberg to testify in
(23:28):
front of the Congressional Committee. What is your full.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Name, Reverend Rose Mackenberg?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Rose explained that she's not just any old reverend. Note
she's been ordained six times as a spiritualist minister under
various silly names. She has full rights to baptize, to marry,
and to bury. She explained too, that the previous day
(23:58):
she had made appointments to see two of the best
known Washington mediums, Madame Marcia and Missus Coates.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Why are you dressed differently from what you are today.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Whodini asked, entirely different.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Madame Marcia and Missus Coates were both in the committee room.
They got up and started to shout.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
I'd demand the right to defend myself.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Rose related the typically vague reetings she received Missus Coates.
She says told her.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
The spirits tell me that you are going to take
a trip very shortly and going to meet some person
and be placed in a different environment.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Could she be more specific? No. As for Madame Marcia,
she said a spirit was trying to communicate with her
by the name of.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
So or maybe G.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Anyway, said Rose. I then engaged them in conversation about
these hearings and this bill. The two mediums, both heavily
built women, edged menacingly closer to Rose.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
I insist that missus Colts keep away from the witness.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Houdina yelled. He turned back to Rose.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
What did she tell you, object.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Shouted Missus Coates. The medium said, Rose told me she
thinks the bill won't pass because most senators visit mediums.
She named four senators who visit her.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
That's a lie, She named Senator Kaeper, Senator Watson, Senator Dill,
and Senator Fletcher. Then she said, I know for a
fact there have been spiritual seances held at the White
House with President Coolidge and his family.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
The chairman vainly tried to restore order. A man barreged
through the crowd to lunge at Houdini, shouting, I'll break
your nose, a congressman threw himself in the way. The
police were called. The newspapers loved it. Today's Session, said
(26:26):
The New York Times came near winding up in a
free for all fistfight. The Chicago Daily Tribune reported that
if luks could kill Missus Coates and Madame Marcia would
have destroyed the existence of miss Rose Mackenberg. Rose herself
(26:48):
later recalled.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Ordinarily I dislike scenes, but this pandemonium of unleashed hysteria
was not only volcanically dramatic, but extremely funny.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Missus Coates finally got her turn on the witness stand.
She claimed that Rose's account of their meeting was all wrong,
that actually she hadn't been fooled by Rose's disguise, and
that the message she had passed on from the spirits
was this, you were doing work that is killing you.
Speaker 7 (27:25):
If you don't stop it, you will not live eighteen months.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Cautionary tales will be back after the break. The congressional
hearings on the Copeland Bloom Bill were a total waste
(27:53):
of time. If you were hoping they might shed some
light on the wisest way to legislate about mediums and
fortune tellers. But if all you wanted was circus entertainment,
they were great. Phodini theatrically brandished ten thousand dollars in cash,
hundreds of thousands in today's money. I'll give that to
(28:14):
any medium, he says, who can prove they get knowledge
by supernatural means. Tell me what nickname my father called
me when I was a boy. Or here he reaches
in his pocket and brings out a crumpled telegram. Tell
me what this telegram says? The medium Madame Marcia yells
(28:35):
from the audience that.
Speaker 7 (28:37):
Money belongs to me.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
I predicted the election of President Harding.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Wait a minute, as a congressman, I predicted that too.
I see the matter is in dispute, adds another. Why
don't I hold the ten thousand until it's settled. Houdini
performed tricks to show how easily he could replicate the
ways mediums claimed to be getting messages from the spirits.
Speaking through a trumpet, for example.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Now put it to your ear, and you have got
to have A.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Congressman puts the trumpet to his ear.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
If you hear a voice, you speak to it, you say,
thank you, kind spirit. That's the rigamarole. They go through.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
After making the congressman hear a voice, Hoodini shows them
a trick with writing on slates. He gets the congressman
to examine two blank slates, then ties them together with
a handkerchief. He gives another congressman a card and tells
him to drop it in a dictionary. As Houdini rifles
through the pages.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
There is no human being living who can tell me
the number of the page in which that card has
been trapped. Spirits. I want you to please give me
the number of the page. Spirits, are you present if
you are here, pull my ridea.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Hoodini unwraps the handkerchief from around the slate on which
are written Two words. Are those the first and last
words on the dictionary page where the card was dropped.
They are.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
This is a trick.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
It is performed by mediums as a proof that they
consult with the dead. It is the easiest thing in
the world to make someone believe whose heart is yearning
to believe.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
It's the nineteen twenties, the aftermath of the First World
War and the Terrible Flu of nineteen eighteen, the world
had no shortage of bereaved relatives. Whose hearts were yearning
to believe. Hudini tells the congressman the story of how
he once performed a slate writing trick for President Roosevelt,
(31:13):
and Roosevelt had later asked whether it was genuinely a
message from the spirits.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
When a great mind like Roosevelt asks that there must
be protection for those who cannot protect themselves.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
But was the Copeland Bloom Bill the right way to
provide that protection. When the opponents of the bill gave
their evidence, there were moments of levity. Missus Coates dramatically
explained that through the power of his own negative thoughts,
Houdini is destroying himself, then snapped at a journalist who
(31:57):
burst out laughing. Madame Marcia engaged a congressman in earnest
discussion about what it means to have saturn in scorpio
in the ascendancy. But there were more serious points too.
Speaker 7 (32:15):
Prophecy, spiritual guidance and advice are the very foundation of
our religion, and to deny a spiritual minister the right
to advise their followers is to curtail their privileges as
ministers that their religion. It is a very delicate question gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
That hit home. As one congressman mused, it is mighty
difficult to legislate about religion. Then how exactly do you
define fortune telling? The wording of the bill was hard
to pause. You could read it as criminalizing a doctor
(32:57):
giving a prognosis or the United States Weather Bureau providing
a weather forecast. And what about uniting the separated? What
does that mean? If a divorce lawyer persuades her clients
to give their marriage another chance, would she be guilty
of uniting the separated by a strict construction of this law?
(33:21):
Perhaps she would after all the fun with trumpets and
slates and saturn in scorpio. Eventually, an actual lawyer took
to the stand to give evidence, although one suspicious congressman
wanted to be sure he knew who they were speaking to.
(33:42):
Are you a spiritualist, I am not, said the lawyer.
Are you a palmist? I am not. You're just a lawyer,
a mere lawyer. The mere lawyer explained that some clauses
of the bill are hard to understand. Others might criminalize
(34:02):
things nobody wants to criminalize, and others still were already
covered by existing legislation on crimes such as fraud or
obtaining money under false pretenses. The Copeland Bloom bill doesn't
actually accomplish what it wants to accomplish, she said, but
(34:24):
perhaps Senator Copeland and Congressman Bloom shouldn't feel too bad
about that. In the century that's followed, plenty more legislators
have found psychic phenomena a slippery thing to regulate. In
twenty twelve, the International Journal of Law in Context published
(34:47):
a paper by scholars from the University of Westminster exploring
why the UK, for example, had tried the Vagrancy Act,
the Fraud Act, the Theft Act, the Fraudulent Mediums Act,
the Trade Descriptions Act, and the Unfair Commercial Practice Regulations,
all of them manifestly in effect. Is paying to consult
(35:12):
a medium a consumer transaction, an entertainment service, a religious experience.
If a medium can't prove they're in touch with the dead,
should the law care if they genuinely believe it. The
article's authors reach a conclusion much like that of the
mere lawyer. It seems unlikely that adequate legislation can be
(35:37):
framed to deal with what is unknown or unprovable. But
there's a bigger issue at play. Even when things are
knowable or provable, There's only so much the law can
do to shield people from their own gullibility. It's not illegal,
for example, to sell useless alternative health products, although it
(36:02):
might be illegal to market them with claims you can't
back up. Many countries make banks refund customers who fall
for some kinds of scam, but not all scams. The
impulse behind the Copeland Bloom Bill, using the law to
protect vulnerable people is a noble one. But there comes
(36:23):
a point when laws have to let the public make
their own mistakes. Or, as one congressman summed it up
to Houdini with an air of resignation, I completely agree
with you about all this, But what's the use in
us legislating? A fool and his money are soon parted
(36:45):
and always will be the showman. Houdini takes the stand
in the committee room one last time to choreograph what
Rose Mackenberg later describes as one of the most touching
little domestic interludes I have ever seen.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
My character has been a sale.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Says Houdini. It's true one witness compared him to Judas
someone else shouted anti Semitic slurs while trying to punch
him in the nose. He's been called brutal, vile, and crazy.
He wants to defend himself.
Speaker 8 (37:25):
There are no medals and ribbons on me, but when
a girl will stick to a man for thirty two years,
it is a pretty good recommendation I would like to
have as a witness here, Missus Houdini.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Kudini turns to his wife, Bess.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Have I shown traces of being crazy unless it was
about you?
Speaker 9 (37:51):
No am I brutal to you or vile? No am
I a good boy? Yes, thank you, Missus Houdini.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
The Copeland Bloom Bill didn't make it into law, or
perhaps that didn't matter. Houdini had got a blizzard of
newspaper coverage out of the hearings. The people who read
those articles, like the people who came to his shows,
might thereby be made less foolish, less liable to be
parted from their money by claims of supernatural abilities. As
(38:32):
the hearings came to a close and Houdini prepared to leave,
Madame Marcia came up to him.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
You're a smart man, mister Houdini, but perhaps I can
tell you something you don't know.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
What's that, Madam Marcia.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
When November comes around, you won't be here.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
How's that you'll be dead?
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Now? Both Houdini and Rose Mackenberg had had their imminent
demise foretold. Rose's work did not kill her. She went
on to spend three more decades as an investigator of
fraudulent mediums. Rose never married, but by the time she retired,
(39:20):
she reckoned she'd been confidently put in touch with about
fifteen hundred dead husbands, all of whom assured her that
they were blissfully happy. On the other side, fifteen hundred
dead husbands, not a single one of them said he
was lost without her. As Rose liked to.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Joke, that's not entirely flattering.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
But Houdini, What was it that? Houdini had told the committee,
If an astrologer makes enough guesses, sometimes they'll guess something right.
Hoodini would indeed be dead by November at the age
of just fifty two, as we'll hear about next time
(40:08):
in the third final episode of our three part series.
Newspaper articles written by Rose Mackenberg are collated in a
book by Tony Wolfe called Houdini's Girl Detective. For a
full list of our sources, see the show notes at
(40:28):
Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales as written by me Tim
Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Billy. It's
(40:50):
produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design
and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional
sound design is by Carlos san Juan at Brain Audio.
Ben and Dapfhhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the
voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Half, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp,
(41:11):
Massamn Roe, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also
wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Greta Cohene, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London
(41:33):
by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
to us and if you want to hear the show,
add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot fm, slash
plus
Pushkin. This is the second episode of a three part series.
You can enjoy it on a standalone basis, but if
you've not heard episode one, you might prefer to listen
to it first. The tearful young widow in a cheap
(00:37):
looking dress was desperate to get in touch with her
recently deceased husband. She explained to mister Herman Parker, one
of the leading spiritualist mediums in Chicago. Mister Parker could
help with that for a fee, of course. He settled down,
closed his eyes and went into a trance.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I am in touch with a man. Yes, it's your husband.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
He says.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
He is happy but misses you. I think he is
leaving us now.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Parker opened his eyes.
Speaker 4 (01:14):
He's gone. Oh, but I did so want to ask
him what to do with the money?
Speaker 1 (01:19):
The money, yes, the widow explained the settlement for his
death three thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Perhaps I can get your husband back.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Said mister Parker. He closed his eyes again.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I have your husband again. His spirit is standing by
your side. He says, to invest the money. He is
trying to give me the name of the company he
wants you to invest in.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Parker screwed up his face in concentration, then reached for
a pen and scribbled a name.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Though Wilcox's Transportation Company. Your husband says it is a
very sound company.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
I don't know how to thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Said The young woman, wiping a tear from her eye,
paid mister Parker the fee for his consultation, went back
to her hotel and placed a long distance telephone call
to her boss, Harry Houdini. For this young woman was
no naive Chicago widow with a chunky death settlement to
(02:28):
invest She was New York bachelor girl Rose Mackenberg, Houdini's
chief investigator of dodgy mediums. Harry Houdini's sellout shows now
consisted of three acts, Some Magic, some of the escapes
(02:49):
that made his name, and a new final section called
Do the Dead Come Back, where Harry would name and
shame fraudulent local mediums. On the stage of the Princess
Theater in Chicago, Harry invited Rose to continue the story
(03:10):
of herman Parker. She looked into the Wilcox Transportation Company.
It was, of course, both worthless and run by an
associate of mister Parker. But it couldn't just be Rose's
word against herman Parker's they needed to gather hard evidence.
(03:31):
Rose told the theater, I.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Took out my checkbook and I said, I'm afraid I
can't write very well. Mister Parker. Could you help me
fill out the check The.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Audience loved it. Billboard called this section of Houdini's show
as laughter provoking as it was educational. Chicago's police also
enjoyed this particular story. They took mister Parker and mister
Wilcox to court and got them both convicted. But did
(04:03):
the laws in America do enough to protect the vulnerable,
bereaved clients of his cynical mediums. Harry Houdini was not
convinced that they did, and so in early nineteen twenty six,
Harry and Rose went to Washington. I'm Tim Harford, and
(04:25):
you're listening to cautionary Tales. The committee room in Washington,
(04:58):
d C. Was packed. Three hundred people crammed the seats,
the aisles, and anywhere else they could find. Some were
simply there to enjoy what promised to be an entertaining spectacle.
The Great Showman Houdini was going to give evidence in
support of the Copeland Bloom Bill. Others there were spiritualists
(05:21):
and mediums whose livelihood and liberty were under threat if
the bill made it onto the statute books. The Congressman
called the session to order. What is your full name?
He asked. My name is Harry Houdini, and what is
your business?
Speaker 3 (05:41):
I am an author, I am a psychic investigator for
the scientific magazines of the world, and then I am
a mysterious entertainer.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
It's a revealing answer about how Harry Houdini saw himself.
In his fifty second year, the famous escape artist put
mysterious entertainer only third on his list of occupations. Top
of that list was author. Houdini was proud of his book,
(06:15):
A Magician among the Spirits, partly a history of the
spiritualist movement and partly an account of his own dealings
with spiritualists, such as the seance at which Lady Doyle,
wife of the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had written
a lengthy letter that purported to come from Harry's mother.
(06:35):
Nearly four years had passed since that seance, and Houdini
had become more and more strident in his attacks on
those who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead.
In his experience, He told the assembled congressman.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
There are only two kinds of mediums, those who are
mental degenerates and those who are deliberate cheats and france,
I have never seen one genuine medium.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
But Houdini didn't just want to warn people off spending
their hard earned money on messages purportedly from the spirit world.
Now he thought it should be illegal to sell those
messages at all. That's what the Copeland Bloom Bill set
out to do. Cities around America had different laws on mediumship.
(07:31):
The laws in Washington, d c. Were among the most permissive.
They said that mediums, clairvoyants, soothsayers, fortune tellers, or palmists
conducting business for profit shall pay a license tax of
twenty five dollars per annum, and to get a license,
(07:52):
they simply had to apply to the Superintendent of Licenses
with letters from ten credible residents that he or she
is of good character. Not exactly difficult, as Houdini pointed out,
The problem was was that having a license seemed to
imply that the government was vouching for your skills. Fortune
(08:16):
tellers could proudly display their official certificate in much the
same way as properly qualified lawyers or doctors. The Copeland
Bloombill would go to the other extreme. It would ban
all together pretending to tell fortunes or unite the separated,
among other things. Some of the congressional representatives of the
(08:40):
hearing shared Houdini's skepticism about clairvoyance, soothsayers and so on.
Others were more credulous that palmistry is a science, said
one representative. Isn't it, No, it is not. Houdini was appalled.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
How can you tell anything from the lines of the hand.
You can tell whether a man is a bricklayer or
a bank clerk.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
The congressman continued, I understand astrology can bring out facts
that have been proven to be true. Houdini tried to
explain to him why you should never be too impressed
at discovering that an astrologist has predicted something accurately.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Where they make so many guesses, sometimes they make a
good guess. If you guess often enough, you're bound to
guess something right.
Speaker 1 (09:35):
The congressman moved on to spiritualism. If it really is
such an outrageous fake and fraud, why would that not
have been discovered by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who after all,
is an outstanding authority. Houdini snapped back.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Conan Doyle is not an outstanding authority.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
He is accepted as one of the best, the committee
member said.
Speaker 3 (10:02):
No, he is not accepted as one of the best.
He is one of the greatest dupes.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
The year's long friendship between Houdini and Conan Doyle had
become increasingly strained since that seance with Doyle's wife. For
a while, Houdini still optimistically addressed his letters my dear
Sir Arthur, Conan Doyle became more stiff.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Our relations are suddenly.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
Curious, he wrote to Houdini.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
For so long as you attack what I know from
experience to be true, I have no alternative but to
attack you in return. How long a private friendship can
survive such an ordeal? I do not know.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
You can see the problem. Doyle's wife is a medium,
and there's Houdini breezily telling a congressional committee that every
medium he's encountered is either a deliberate fraud or a
mental degenerate. But there's another reason why Arthur and Houdini
had fallen out, and it's to do with the second occupation.
(11:13):
Whodini listed psychic investigator for the scientific magazines of the world.
The Scientific American magazine put up a cash prize for
anyone who could conclusively demonstrate psychic phenomena to their panel
of eminent academic investigators. The panel was on the cusp
(11:35):
of awarding the prize to a friend of Conan Doyle,
a medium called Marjorie, the wife of a Boston surgeon,
at whose seances the spirits rang bells and shook tambourines.
The academics were stumped if this was all a trick.
They couldn't figure out how Marjorie was doing it, so
(11:59):
it must be spirits. But when the magazine sent Houdini,
he watched closely and understood it was slight of hand,
highly accomplished and hard to detect, but slight of hand.
None the less, academics aren't smart enough for this kind
of investigation.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Houdini explained, it takes a flim flammer to catch a
flim flammer.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Because of Houdini, Marjorie did not get the cash prize,
But for Sir Arthur it wasn't about the money. The
approval of Scientific American would have been a major boost
for the spiritualist religion. Sir Arthur was furious with Houdini.
(12:48):
He was certain that Marjorie had genuine supernatural powers and
Houdini's expose a was unfair. For that matter, he was
sure Houdini had supernatural powers and was only pretending that
he didn't. When journalists asked Houdini about Conan Oyle, he
didn't hold back. Conan Doyle is getting a bit senile.
(13:14):
He's fifteen years Houdini's senior. The old man is easily bamboozled.
It's such a pity, Houdini, says.
Speaker 3 (13:24):
Doyle thinks he is a messiah who has come to
save mankind. Instead of that, he is misleading the public,
and his teachings are a menace to sanity and health.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Houdini was on a mission. He now saw exposing frauds
like Marjorie as his sacred duty, and he couldn't do
it alone. Cautionary tales will be back after the break.
(14:03):
Rose Mackenberg was born in Brooklyn to Russian immigrant parents.
She started out as a stenographer at a law firm,
then became a private detective. She had just turned thirty
when she took on a new client who wanted her
to investigate a medium. The medium had given him bad
(14:24):
investment advice. Rose didn't know much about mediums, but she
did know someone who knew Harry Houdini. She asked the
mutual friend to set up a meeting so she could
ask for Houdini's advice on how to proceed. Coincidentally, Rose
had just spent an evening at a seance herself, invited
(14:46):
by a friend who said it would be good, clean fun.
It was certainly fun. Rose told Houdini the story. The medium,
an attractive young woman, was tied to a chair. Her
assistant switched out the lights, and in the darkness, she
called on the spirits to play various musical instruments, culminate
(15:09):
with a big bass drum in the middle of the room.
Her assistant turned on the light to reveal that the
medium was still tied to the chair and the big
bass drum was beating all on its own. Rose was
curious about how it was done, she told Houdini, so
(15:30):
she went back a few nights later in disguise. When
the lights were turned out, she quietly left her seat
and crawled towards the drum, stretching out her fingers in
the darkness until they encountered a child, whoever it was, froze,
(15:52):
so Rose felt them out further. No, not a child,
a dwarf, a very small dwarf. Rose crawled back to
her seat, her curiosity satisfied. When the lights came on
and the drum was sounding. This time she knew what
it was, the dwarf beating the drum from inside. Houdini
(16:19):
listened to the story, gave Rose the advice she wanted,
then offered her a job. Rose was tough, smart, and,
crucially for Houdini, open minded. She had no particular views
either way on whether it might be possible to make
(16:39):
contact with the dead. If she did happen to find
a medium who was genuine, sh'd let Houdini know. As
Rose later wrote.
Speaker 4 (16:49):
Harry Houdini, from the bottom of his fine soul, wanted
passionately to believe in spiritualism. He would have sacrificed a
fortune if he had ever been able to convince himself
that there was actually such a thing as communication with
the dead. His relentless attempts to unmask for dudulent mediums
(17:10):
were devoid of malice, he thought, but one thing truth.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Houdini sent Rose around the country trying to find that elusive,
genuine medium while gathering material for his shows. When she
got to a new city, she had first hang out
in department stores to observe the local fashions. She had
decide on a persona the rustic school teacher, perhaps the
(17:40):
credulous servant girl, or the small town matron, should purchase
an appropriate outfit. Back at her hotel, she wrote.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
I'd remove the powder from my face, plaster my hair
down in the most unbecoming fashion, probably put on glasses
and sally forth.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Sometimes Houdini himself would turn up for the fun of
unmasking the fraud. Inland, Ohio, Houdini went to a seance
at a famous trumpet medium's house in a blond wig
and thick glasses, having given his name as mister f Road.
He had with him a photographer, a prosecutor, a flashlight,
(18:26):
and lampblack, a pigment used in boot polish. Trumpet mediums
claimed that the spirits move the trumpet around in the
darkness and whisper their messages through it. When the lights
went out, Houdini surreptitiously smeared lamp black on the trumpet.
Then mid seance turned on his flashlight. The photographer caught
(18:51):
the medium blackhanded. The prosecutor told him, you're obtaining money
under false pretenses. The medium was outraged. In forty years,
he protested, I have never been exposed. Well, said Houdini,
whipping off his blonde wig.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Why now?
Speaker 1 (19:20):
More often Rose would gather evidence herself, sometimes at grave
personal risk. She consulted a man about sixty years old
who ran his own spiritualist church. She casually mentioned that
she was interested in establishing a church herself. Her husband
had left her plenty of money. It was a way
(19:41):
to prove how easy it could be to set yourself
up as an authority in the spiritualist religion. The man
leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and began
to breathe heavily.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Your husband is right near you. He loves you. So
your husband tells me to tell you. You go into
this work.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
You'll be quite successful.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Can you ask my husband where I would find someone
to assist me.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
The man began to speak in a changed voice.
Speaker 6 (20:26):
Ask the medium. The medium is very good. He can
give you a charter for your church. He can cure
you physically. You have to be purified before you can
(20:47):
do this.
Speaker 5 (20:48):
Work.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
The man stopped speaking, breathed heavily for a while longer,
then rubbed his eyes and spoke in his normal voice again.
Speaker 5 (21:03):
What did I say?
Speaker 1 (21:05):
Rose repeated the man's words back to him. Yes, he
agreed thoughtfully he could do that. He went into another
room and returned with a framed charter for a branch
of his church, the First Church of the Divine Light.
It would cost Rose five dollars to be ordained, but
(21:28):
as the spirits rightly said, she would first need to
be purified, and yes, he could purify her.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
Now, have you any corsets on?
Speaker 5 (21:46):
The steel will interfere in the purification process?
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Rose did not have any corsets on, She confirmed.
Speaker 5 (21:57):
I must get close to the body.
Speaker 1 (22:03):
He knelt in front of Rose's chair, made the sign
of the Cross over her face, then began to rub
her ankles and her thighs.
Speaker 5 (22:17):
Lord, please help me to show this new worker the light.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
He put his hand on her breast.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
You God, bring this worker closer to me.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Rose stood up, the man still on his knees.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
I feel purified already. Thank you, five dollars, did you say?
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Rose paid her money and made her escape from the
medium's house. Clutching her framed charter. She was now the
Reverend Florence B. Rush of the First Church of the
Divine Light. When Houdini went to Washington to give evidence
(23:06):
for the Copeland Bloom Bill, he sent Rose ahead. As
always suitably disguised, she went to visit two of Washington's
most prominent mediums. Houdini called Rose Mackenberg to testify in
(23:28):
front of the Congressional Committee. What is your full.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
Name, Reverend Rose Mackenberg?
Speaker 1 (23:38):
Rose explained that she's not just any old reverend. Note
she's been ordained six times as a spiritualist minister under
various silly names. She has full rights to baptize, to marry,
and to bury. She explained too, that the previous day
(23:58):
she had made appointments to see two of the best
known Washington mediums, Madame Marcia and Missus Coates.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
Why are you dressed differently from what you are today.
Speaker 4 (24:09):
Whodini asked, entirely different.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Madame Marcia and Missus Coates were both in the committee room.
They got up and started to shout.
Speaker 7 (24:21):
I'd demand the right to defend myself.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Rose related the typically vague reetings she received Missus Coates.
She says told her.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
The spirits tell me that you are going to take
a trip very shortly and going to meet some person
and be placed in a different environment.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
Could she be more specific? No. As for Madame Marcia,
she said a spirit was trying to communicate with her
by the name of.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
So or maybe G.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
Anyway, said Rose. I then engaged them in conversation about
these hearings and this bill. The two mediums, both heavily
built women, edged menacingly closer to Rose.
Speaker 3 (25:17):
I insist that missus Colts keep away from the witness.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Houdina yelled. He turned back to Rose.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
What did she tell you, object.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
Shouted Missus Coates. The medium said, Rose told me she
thinks the bill won't pass because most senators visit mediums.
She named four senators who visit her.
Speaker 4 (25:42):
That's a lie, She named Senator Kaeper, Senator Watson, Senator Dill,
and Senator Fletcher. Then she said, I know for a
fact there have been spiritual seances held at the White
House with President Coolidge and his family.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
The chairman vainly tried to restore order. A man barreged
through the crowd to lunge at Houdini, shouting, I'll break
your nose, a congressman threw himself in the way. The
police were called. The newspapers loved it. Today's Session, said
(26:26):
The New York Times came near winding up in a
free for all fistfight. The Chicago Daily Tribune reported that
if luks could kill Missus Coates and Madame Marcia would
have destroyed the existence of miss Rose Mackenberg. Rose herself
(26:48):
later recalled.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Ordinarily I dislike scenes, but this pandemonium of unleashed hysteria
was not only volcanically dramatic, but extremely funny.
Speaker 1 (27:05):
Missus Coates finally got her turn on the witness stand.
She claimed that Rose's account of their meeting was all wrong,
that actually she hadn't been fooled by Rose's disguise, and
that the message she had passed on from the spirits
was this, you were doing work that is killing you.
Speaker 7 (27:25):
If you don't stop it, you will not live eighteen months.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
Cautionary tales will be back after the break. The congressional
hearings on the Copeland Bloom Bill were a total waste
(27:53):
of time. If you were hoping they might shed some
light on the wisest way to legislate about mediums and
fortune tellers. But if all you wanted was circus entertainment,
they were great. Phodini theatrically brandished ten thousand dollars in cash,
hundreds of thousands in today's money. I'll give that to
(28:14):
any medium, he says, who can prove they get knowledge
by supernatural means. Tell me what nickname my father called
me when I was a boy. Or here he reaches
in his pocket and brings out a crumpled telegram. Tell
me what this telegram says? The medium Madame Marcia yells
(28:35):
from the audience that.
Speaker 7 (28:37):
Money belongs to me.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
I predicted the election of President Harding.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Wait a minute, as a congressman, I predicted that too.
I see the matter is in dispute, adds another. Why
don't I hold the ten thousand until it's settled. Houdini
performed tricks to show how easily he could replicate the
ways mediums claimed to be getting messages from the spirits.
Speaking through a trumpet, for example.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
Now put it to your ear, and you have got
to have A.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Congressman puts the trumpet to his ear.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
If you hear a voice, you speak to it, you say,
thank you, kind spirit. That's the rigamarole. They go through.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
After making the congressman hear a voice, Hoodini shows them
a trick with writing on slates. He gets the congressman
to examine two blank slates, then ties them together with
a handkerchief. He gives another congressman a card and tells
him to drop it in a dictionary. As Houdini rifles
through the pages.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
There is no human being living who can tell me
the number of the page in which that card has
been trapped. Spirits. I want you to please give me
the number of the page. Spirits, are you present if
you are here, pull my ridea.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Hoodini unwraps the handkerchief from around the slate on which
are written Two words. Are those the first and last
words on the dictionary page where the card was dropped.
They are.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5 (30:24):
This is a trick.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
It is performed by mediums as a proof that they
consult with the dead. It is the easiest thing in
the world to make someone believe whose heart is yearning
to believe.
Speaker 1 (30:49):
It's the nineteen twenties, the aftermath of the First World
War and the Terrible Flu of nineteen eighteen, the world
had no shortage of bereaved relatives. Whose hearts were yearning
to believe. Hudini tells the congressman the story of how
he once performed a slate writing trick for President Roosevelt,
(31:13):
and Roosevelt had later asked whether it was genuinely a
message from the spirits.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
When a great mind like Roosevelt asks that there must
be protection for those who cannot protect themselves.
Speaker 1 (31:32):
But was the Copeland Bloom Bill the right way to
provide that protection. When the opponents of the bill gave
their evidence, there were moments of levity. Missus Coates dramatically
explained that through the power of his own negative thoughts,
Houdini is destroying himself, then snapped at a journalist who
(31:57):
burst out laughing. Madame Marcia engaged a congressman in earnest
discussion about what it means to have saturn in scorpio
in the ascendancy. But there were more serious points too.
Speaker 7 (32:15):
Prophecy, spiritual guidance and advice are the very foundation of
our religion, and to deny a spiritual minister the right
to advise their followers is to curtail their privileges as
ministers that their religion. It is a very delicate question gentlemen.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
That hit home. As one congressman mused, it is mighty
difficult to legislate about religion. Then how exactly do you
define fortune telling? The wording of the bill was hard
to pause. You could read it as criminalizing a doctor
(32:57):
giving a prognosis or the United States Weather Bureau providing
a weather forecast. And what about uniting the separated? What
does that mean? If a divorce lawyer persuades her clients
to give their marriage another chance, would she be guilty
of uniting the separated by a strict construction of this law?
(33:21):
Perhaps she would after all the fun with trumpets and
slates and saturn in scorpio. Eventually, an actual lawyer took
to the stand to give evidence, although one suspicious congressman
wanted to be sure he knew who they were speaking to.
(33:42):
Are you a spiritualist, I am not, said the lawyer.
Are you a palmist? I am not. You're just a lawyer,
a mere lawyer. The mere lawyer explained that some clauses
of the bill are hard to understand. Others might criminalize
(34:02):
things nobody wants to criminalize, and others still were already
covered by existing legislation on crimes such as fraud or
obtaining money under false pretenses. The Copeland Bloom bill doesn't
actually accomplish what it wants to accomplish, she said, but
(34:24):
perhaps Senator Copeland and Congressman Bloom shouldn't feel too bad
about that. In the century that's followed, plenty more legislators
have found psychic phenomena a slippery thing to regulate. In
twenty twelve, the International Journal of Law in Context published
(34:47):
a paper by scholars from the University of Westminster exploring
why the UK, for example, had tried the Vagrancy Act,
the Fraud Act, the Theft Act, the Fraudulent Mediums Act,
the Trade Descriptions Act, and the Unfair Commercial Practice Regulations,
all of them manifestly in effect. Is paying to consult
(35:12):
a medium a consumer transaction, an entertainment service, a religious experience.
If a medium can't prove they're in touch with the dead,
should the law care if they genuinely believe it. The
article's authors reach a conclusion much like that of the
mere lawyer. It seems unlikely that adequate legislation can be
(35:37):
framed to deal with what is unknown or unprovable. But
there's a bigger issue at play. Even when things are
knowable or provable, There's only so much the law can
do to shield people from their own gullibility. It's not illegal,
for example, to sell useless alternative health products, although it
(36:02):
might be illegal to market them with claims you can't
back up. Many countries make banks refund customers who fall
for some kinds of scam, but not all scams. The
impulse behind the Copeland Bloom Bill, using the law to
protect vulnerable people is a noble one. But there comes
(36:23):
a point when laws have to let the public make
their own mistakes. Or, as one congressman summed it up
to Houdini with an air of resignation, I completely agree
with you about all this, But what's the use in
us legislating? A fool and his money are soon parted
(36:45):
and always will be the showman. Houdini takes the stand
in the committee room one last time to choreograph what
Rose Mackenberg later describes as one of the most touching
little domestic interludes I have ever seen.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
My character has been a sale.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Says Houdini. It's true one witness compared him to Judas
someone else shouted anti Semitic slurs while trying to punch
him in the nose. He's been called brutal, vile, and crazy.
He wants to defend himself.
Speaker 8 (37:25):
There are no medals and ribbons on me, but when
a girl will stick to a man for thirty two years,
it is a pretty good recommendation I would like to
have as a witness here, Missus Houdini.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Kudini turns to his wife, Bess.
Speaker 3 (37:45):
Have I shown traces of being crazy unless it was
about you?
Speaker 9 (37:51):
No am I brutal to you or vile? No am
I a good boy? Yes, thank you, Missus Houdini.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
The Copeland Bloom Bill didn't make it into law, or
perhaps that didn't matter. Houdini had got a blizzard of
newspaper coverage out of the hearings. The people who read
those articles, like the people who came to his shows,
might thereby be made less foolish, less liable to be
parted from their money by claims of supernatural abilities. As
(38:32):
the hearings came to a close and Houdini prepared to leave,
Madame Marcia came up to him.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
You're a smart man, mister Houdini, but perhaps I can
tell you something you don't know.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
What's that, Madam Marcia.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
When November comes around, you won't be here.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
How's that you'll be dead?
Speaker 1 (38:59):
Now? Both Houdini and Rose Mackenberg had had their imminent
demise foretold. Rose's work did not kill her. She went
on to spend three more decades as an investigator of
fraudulent mediums. Rose never married, but by the time she retired,
(39:20):
she reckoned she'd been confidently put in touch with about
fifteen hundred dead husbands, all of whom assured her that
they were blissfully happy. On the other side, fifteen hundred
dead husbands, not a single one of them said he
was lost without her. As Rose liked to.
Speaker 4 (39:41):
Joke, that's not entirely flattering.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
But Houdini, What was it that? Houdini had told the committee,
If an astrologer makes enough guesses, sometimes they'll guess something right.
Hoodini would indeed be dead by November at the age
of just fifty two, as we'll hear about next time
(40:08):
in the third final episode of our three part series.
Newspaper articles written by Rose Mackenberg are collated in a
book by Tony Wolfe called Houdini's Girl Detective. For a
full list of our sources, see the show notes at
(40:28):
Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales as written by me Tim
Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Billy. It's
(40:50):
produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design
and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional
sound design is by Carlos san Juan at Brain Audio.
Ben and Dapfhhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the
voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Half, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp,
(41:11):
Massamn Roe, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also
wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Greta Cohene, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London
(41:33):
by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
to us and if you want to hear the show,
add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot fm, slash
plus
Host
Tim Harford
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