London’s Hippodrome, as of 2007 being hired out by a company called Hip Events for private parties and film shoots, was four years old when Houdini appeared on its stage in 1904. Challenged by the Daily Illustrated Mail newspaper to try and escape from its “Mirror Cuffs” — a pair of handcuffs with a set of nesting Bramah locks that had supposedly taken five years to make (no source explains how it could possible have taken so long) — he did so, with considerable effort, at a St Patrick’s Day matinee performance.
For the 4,000 people in the audience — and especially the 100 journalists — it looked like a supreme effort, stretching into a 70-minute ordeal. Several times Houdini emerged from behind the screen that concealed his progress (the “ghost house”, as it was called), begging for some concession or other. His request that the cuffs be removed so he could take off his coat was refused on the grounds that he might spot in the process how their mechanism worked, so he produced a pen knife and slashed his coat free, to boisterous cheers.
When Houdini finally did emerge, the handcuffs dangling loosely from his grasp, the crowd went crazy and hoisted him aloft, the magician breaking down in tears at what he called the most difficult escape of his career. After he died, his friend Will Goldstone wrote that the handcuffs in fact beat Houdini, who only managed to “escape” because his wife Bess begged for the key and slipped it to Houdini in a glass of water. Other biographers have suggested the whole stunt was pre-planned by Houdini and the newspaper.
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Where Trafford and Regent Roads now meet Cross Lane at a wide-arcing Manchester roundabout, the Regent Theatre and Opera House opened in 1895. Later renamed the Regent Theatre of Varieties and later still The Palace, it was demolished in 1963 to make way for the concrete rivers.
The poster shown here trumpets a challenge issued to Houdini: Escape from an “extra strong and large travelling basket” purchased from the Henshaw Blind Asylum while secured by locks, chains and ropes.
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Though the year is not given, this was likely during Houdini’s second or third tour of Britain. In 1910 he spent a full nine months accepting such challenges. In Chatham town square he was chained to a cannon with a 15-minute fuse and wriggled free in six (the artillery gun turned out to be unloaded). In Shepherd’s Bush he was coopered up inside a rum-punch barrel and got out in 40 seconds. In Liverpool he found his way out of tarpaulin sailcloth treated with oil and tar. In Harlesden he got loose after being chained and strung by the neck among three ladders arranged in a tripod, with his shoes “stapled” to the stage.
Somehow Houdini left his audience in Nottingham unimpressed, and in Leeds he had to call for help — for one of the few times in his life — after a brewer filled his milk can with ale, and either the teetotalling illusionist was stupefied by the fumes or he was deprived of oxygen because of the carbonated ale. His assistant Franz Kukol had to drag him out of the container. Still, at the London Palladium by late 1919, he was earning a record salary of $3,750 per week.
Let’s talk some more about beer, because apparently Harry hadn’t had his fill — or maybe he began to enjoy swimming in it. Biographer Milbourne Christopher claimed that the last time Houdini did a “beer escape” was in 1912, but those in the know in the Poconos — the boisterous magicians at Scranton’s Houdini Museum — say on their website Harry did another one in their neck of the woods three years later.
It was a challenge issued by the local Standard Brewery, the makers of Tru-Age beer, the site says, and it then suggests that these yeasty stunts were fairly common:
“Houdini always asked the brewery to deliver plenty of extra beer to the theater which Houdini distributed to the stagehands at the end of the engagement.”
Hung-over Harry would have smirked at the mug pictured above. It was made in a limited edition of 500 for Appleton Brewery, his hometown hops-masters, who sell “Houdini’s Escape Stout” and “Houdini Root Beer & Soda”.
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BRADFORD
The Great Mysto — a magician’s moniker co-opted so many times that it’s become almost generic — may have originally belonged to Jim Pickles, a plumber in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, who became a well-known escapologist and, as such, was on a collision course with Harry Houdini.
Houdini biographer Harold Kellock mentions Carl Mysto only once and in passing, listing him among the rival “handcuff kings” who drove Harry mad but ultimately forced him to broaden his stage show. Ruth Brandon devotes nearly a page to the Mysto incident, yet mentions neither his stage nor his real name.
But fortunately, in 2002, Pickles’ great-great-great nephew Richard Bevan wrote an article about what happened between Houdini and Mysto that appears on the BBC website, where it’s noted that Bevan was at the time turning the saga into a screenplay.
Equalling Harry’s fame in Britain, Bevan says, the Great Carl Mysto packed theatres by climbing into a coffin that had holes in the side through which he extended his arms so his wrists could be cuffed. “He usually took an hour to escape, but it was said that he could have freed himself in three minutes had he wanted to.”
Bevan writes that, when Houdini was touring Britain in 1905, Mysto was keen to meet “his inspirer … However it soon became apparent that Houdini mainly saw Mysto as an opportunist and inferior imitator, possibly even a threat [and] took it upon himself to carry out an act of professional treachery.”
Mysto had a solid engagement at Bradford’s Palace Theatre when Harry, performing at the Salford Regent outside Manchester, actually brought onstage a copy of Mysto’s celebrated casket, told his audience he hoped they would “never again have to see a coffin used as an accessory to public entertainment” — and then proceeded to reveal the secret of Mysto’s trick!
Brandon actually dates this episode to September 30, 1904, and says Mysto (again, she doesn’t name the magician) was advertising “an unprepared coffin” — no trick rigging. The version of the Mysto casket that Houdini showed his audience had had all of its long screws replaced with short ones that could be easily removed from inside the box. Onstage, Harry had these taken out again and audience members not only screwed in long nails wherever they wanted, some put identifiable stamps on top of their work.
Concealed in his cabinet, Houdini still got out of the coffin, but his effrontery, says Bevan, sparked a row between the two magicians in a theatre dressing room — he doesn’t say which theatre. “It is alleged, by living relatives of Mysto, that the argument soon erupted into a visceral exchange of fists, resulting in the slightly built ex-plumber ‘flooring’ the American heavyweight.”
When Houdini’s tour rolled into Bradford and he was playing the Empire, Mysto decided to let the fans decide whose act was better. He placed observers at the Empire to see how Harry’s show went over, and Harry had spotters watching Mysto at the Palace.
And here is how the plumber outdid the greatest showman in history:
Mysto timed his finale to coincide with closing time at the city’s other theatres in the area, and just as their audiences were swarming into the streets, he had people rushing out from the Palace shouting, “The Great Mysto is dying in a coffin, unable to free himself!” The reaction was predictable — a huge throng gathered at the front doors of the Palace, anxious for news.
Just as it seemed that Mysto must have succumbed, Bevan writes, “he tottered triumphantly to the doors!” Carl Mysto continued touring Britain until his death in the late 1920s.
This was where it all happened a century ago, where the buildings of Bradford College now stand on Great Horton Road.
The Alexandra Hotel was built here in 1877 with a large lawn at the back on which the Empire Music Hall was erected in 1899. Stan Laurel, Charlie Chaplin and WC Fields were also among the great names gracing its stage. Then in 1914 the Alhambra Theatre was built across the road, and the Empire tried to cope with the competition as the Empire Theatre & Opera House, but the stage was destroyed by a fire in 1917 and it switched to cinema.
That lasted until 1952, when an even worse fire left the theatre a ruin. The Alexandra turned the shell into a restaurant and lounge, but then the hotel closed and Bradford College moved in in 1972. The Alexandra Building annex, as it was known, was finally pulled down in 1993 to make way for a car park.
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BRISTOL
Bristol’s Temple Way underpass roars across the site where the Empire Theatre stood for 70 years, from 1893 to 1963, and brought the citizens and the hordes of tourists great shows by Houdini, Fanny Brice, Gracie Fields and many more.
Then the Empire Palace of Varieties, it loomed on the corner of Old Market Street and Captain Carey’s Lane and gave the much older Tivoli Music Hall in Broadmead a run for its money. In 1931 it dedicated itself to movies, though twice-nightly live shows with comedians and chorus girls returned eight years later and carried on throughout the blitz. From war’s end until 1954 it was nudie shows, and then the BBC rented the premises to produce TV shows, only invited the public in when it needed an audience.
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HALIFAX
Halifax’s New Palace Theatre, which stood here at the corner of Horton Street and Southgate, was brand new when Houdini came to play in 1903. His shtick of accepting escape challenges was not new, and it was here that the routine took one of its nastier turns.
The challenger knew the ropes — quite literally. He was a local magician, and he bound Harry up with cord and chains in what Houdini later described as “a very dangerous tie”. Nevertheless, he got free as usual and, as usual, broke the theatre’s box-office record over the ensuing week.
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WAKEFIELD
There’s a story told online — in exactly the same words — by the people who take care of the mediaeval Chapel of St Mary the Virgin in Wakefield, Yorkshire, England (here) and the people who discuss spooky things in the SupernaturalEarth forum (here). They can fight it out over who wrote the account first, not that it’s very believable.
It seems that Houdini visited Wakefield Bridge “on many occasions”, up until 1921, because he wanted “to catch sight” of the ghost of Henry Whalton, a 17th-century highwayman who supposedly haunts the edifice.
This tale actually attributes Harry’s interest in “ghosts that haunted bridges” to that apocryphal incident in Melbourne, Australia, when he dove manacled into the Yarra River and loosened a corpse from the muddy riverbed. This is why “he became one of the world’s foremost investigators of ghostly and spiritual frauds”, these two websites concur.
Westgate was once the banking hub of Wakefield, so there were lots of robbers along the roads, and Henry Whalton was singled out as “the silent highwayman” because, if I understand this right, his voice was high-pitched, so he let his pistols do the talking.
One night, pursued by the cops, Whalton’s horse stumbled on Wakefield Bridge and broke his master’s leg. Rather than give himself up, Whalton threw himself into the river. The body was never found but, until the last century at least, his spirit haunted the place.
Below is a satellite view of Wakefield Bridge, the lower one, with the St Mary chapel chantry standing in the midst of the river current.
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WOLVERHAMPTON
Wolverhampton’s Empire Palace Theatre, originally the Gaiety, stood at the middle left in this Google Earth image, on the north side of Queen Square close to the mouth of North Street, from the 1860s until 1897, when there was concern it might fall down, so they tore it down. It was replaced with the larger Empire Palace of Varieties. The photo below is from about 1900.
In May 1905 Houdini his second appearance here, accepting a local challenge to be enclosed in a specially designed packing case.
A swarm of audience members took turns nailing the lid in place before the box was hoisted into a cabinet. In less than 10 minutes Harry was out again, missing his jacket and with his collar askew, but the case was just as the audience had last seen it.
Houdini promised to return the next evening and try to get out of what the local paper called “a strait waistcoat such as is used for the murderous insane”.
The Empire Palace was renamed the Hippodrome in 1921 and, until a fire levelled it in 1955, it was a great place to see the big dance bands, not to mention occasional superstars like Laurel & Hardy, Vera Lynn and Louis Armstrong.
The word was that American magicians were doing alright in Europe, so Harry and Bess set sail for England, and they arrived in London in May 1900 — with zero prospects. Houdini went to see the manager of the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square, which stood where the Odeon cinema is now. 
The Alhambra’s manager told Harry that handcuff artists were a dime a dozen, so Houdini had to show him he was worth considerably more than that. He took him to Scotland Yard and talked a chief inspector (Melville by name — remember it) into locking him up. The inspector had barely turned around by the time the American newcomer was free of his manacles.
Opening night came with an unexpected blessing. A magician known as the Great Cirnoc called from the audience insisting that he was the true Handcuff King, and a battle of the manacle monarchs ensued. Houdini finally produced “the Bean Giant”, a huge handcuff he travelled with. Its inventor, a Captain Bean of Boston, had offered $500 to anyone who could get out of it. Houdini had had no trouble doing so, although since he wouldn’t say how he got free he couldn’t claim the cash. But at the Alhambra, the Great Cirnoc was buffaloed by the rig. 
