In “The Life and Many Deaths of Houdini”, Ruth Brandon makes a solid case for the belief that Houdini was constantly in search of father figures. His own father seems to have let him down, even if Harry praised him as a beloved parent and a scholar, and the great Robert-Houdin let him down as well when Harry discovered that his celebrated tricks weren’t of his own devising. When Houdini knocked his former idol off the pedestal with “The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin”, he dedicated the book to his father. Two birds felled with one stone. There were other father figures.

Above is a satellite image of the Royal Theatre Carré, seemingly afloat on the Amstel in Amsterdam. When it was built in 1887 by the Franco-German Carré dynasty, long famed for their equestrian skills, it was home to the circus of Oscar Carré, at least from November through May. When the weather warmed they hit the road, as any good circus should.

Tagging along with them in September 1903 was Houdini, and it was during Circus Carré’s appearance in Dordrecht, Holland, that Harry finally received permission to visit Professor Wiljalba Frikell, and an extraordinary tale began — even by Houdini’s standards.

Sometimes billed as “Physician to the Emperor and Empress of Russia”, Frikell had been one of Europe’s most celebrated magicians of the previous century, and Harry knew his story well. He was one of the pioneers who dispensed with the cumbersome stage trappings like heavy draperies and elaborate apparatus that were once part and parcel of magic shows, the better to conceal trickery. Houdini decided that Frikell had in fact been the first to jettison the junk, long before Robert-Houdin was applauded for doing so, though even Harry had to admit that Frikell first went with a bare stage because he had to: All of his gear was lost in a fire.

While in Russia he’d learned that Frikell was still alive at age 87 and living in Kotschenbroda, Germany (a town evidently not far from Dresden but unknown to the Internet). Houdini dutifully made the pilgrimage — it was his habit to cultivate the friendship of past masters — and, having arrived in the middle of the night, even waited on a park bench for a decent hour to knock at Frikell’s door.

He was refused entry — the old man just wanted to be left alone — and for all his trouble Harry left with nothing save a photo of the house. He’d hired a photographer to get the great man’s picture, but settled for a tourist’s snapshot of the Villa Frikell. (It turned out that Frikell believed Harry might be his illegitimate son.)

Undeterred, Houdini wrote several times to Frikell from Moscow and sent gifts, and gradually coaxed an invitation from him. A date was set during Houdini’s engagement in Dresden, but Frikell didn’t wait. He came to Dresden unannounced to look for Harry, and was ironically turned away at the theatre without Harry knowing of it. He and his wife went to a nearby cafe and Harry went looking for him in turn, saw an elderly couple that was indeed them and thought nothing of it, and the opportunity was missed.

On the Saturday Houdini travelled again to Kotschenbroda to keep his appointment, and found to his shock that Frikell had died two and half hours earlier! Having gone to great lengths to prepare for his visitor, including having a new photograph taken with his wife (seen here), the old man had had a heart attack and “was not cold yet”, Harry wrote his brother Theo. “Mr and Mrs Frikell had dressed up especially to meet me, but Death forestalled my visit … There lie the man who had sworn he would not see any stranger as long as he lived — and Fate compelled him to keep his word.”

Houdini had much better luck with Ira Davenport, who with his brother William had been world-famous as a medium in the 1850s and ’60s.

There are scholars online who still quaintly blame Houdini for “ruining the Davenport brothers’ reputation”. In fact, despite the unshakeable faith that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and many others maintained in the brothers’ psychic powers, Ira told Houdini flat out that it was all a sham, and that he and William had never claimed to have supernatural gifts. Of course, they didn’t deny it, either — there was a lot of money to be made.

Conan Doyle produced plausible evidence that Ira, at least, considered himself a genuine believer in spiritualism, but Sir Arthur’s claim that the brothers were never exposed was patently false. They were caught out on several occasions and very nearly lynched.

In 1854 the Davenports — Ira was 15 and Bill 13 — followed Maggie and Katie Fox into the realm of superstar mediumship by apparently communicating with the dead via mysterious rapping, automatic writing, flying dishes and cutlery and even levitation (all in the dark, if not the imagination), as well as through spirit guides named George Brown and John King.

They played theatres across America and Europe, producing a wide range of “spiritual manifestations” while tied to their chairs inside a “spirit cabinet”. The violins, guitars, concertinas and tambourines placed next to them played and glowing hands waved through windows in the cabinet doors.

William died while they were touring Australia in 1877, and when Houdini was performing there 33 years later he made it his business to have the unkempt grave tidied up. Just before Houdini went Down Under, yet another of the old greats of magic, Harry Kellar, told him that Ira was still alive and retired to Mayville, New York (not “Maysville”, as some biographies have it).

Houdini promptly wrote to Ira and, when he returned from Australia, visited him on July 11, 1911, at his house on Blanchard Street in Mayville. This is when Ira spilled the beans about the brothers’ tricky ways, something he hadn’t even confessed to his own children.

There’s not a lot to see in Mayville, as the Google Earth image below shows. Blanchard Street has only a few houses, others having no doubt been swallowed up by a shopping mall. The Mayville Cemetery, where Ira was presumably interred, is indicated where several sources say it should be, though it’s not apparent on Google Earth. The other image shows brother William’s resting place in Sydney’s Rookwood Cemetery, at 700 acres the biggest in southern hemisphere. Almost a million people have been buried there since it opened in 1867.
Ira died in 1911, not long after they the two conjurors met, clearing the way for Houdini to eventually share the spilled beans, in his 1924 book “A Magician Among the Spirits”.

There’s a rather engaging “biography” of the brothers online here, written while they were still alive.