St Louis’ original American Theatre stood at 619 Market Street until 1953 and early in the century was the city’s top spot for touring vaudeville acts, so it’s likely that that’s where Houdini first introduced his famous Milk Can Escape on January 27, 1908.

This innovation on an old trick saw him somehow emerge from a sealed, water-filled milk can when all of its rivets, locks and chains remained undisturbed. The secret was that the can came apart below the seals. Hidden behind a curtain, Harry had only to lift off the lid, undo his handcuffs, and wait a while until members of the audience, challenged to hold their breath as long as he apparently was, were in an uproar. An assistant, looking suitably alarmed, invariably raised an axe ready to break the can apart moments before Houdini reappeared.

Houdini had earned a devoted following in St Louis nine years earlier when the chief of police added his name to written testimony, published in the press, that “the famous Handcuff King” and, comically enough, “positively the only conjurer in the world who strips stark naked”, had in his own office been searched, gagged and shackled hand and foot with eight sets of irons, and yet successfully released himself “with absolutely no chance of confederacy”.