In “The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America’s First Superhero”, William Kalush and Larry Sloman provide plenty of detail about Ehrich Weiss’ introduction to magic. He was seven when a travelling circus came through Appleton, they report, and its trapeze artist on a highwire, Jean Weitzman, made such an impression on him that he immediately went home and stretched a rope between two trees. He fell off, sure enough (and lost some teeth trying to suspend himself orally, as Weitzman had done), but got back on again and soon had the knack.

Then he and a pal named Jack Hoeffler set up their own a five-cent circus in a vacant field, and “Ehrich, the Prince of the Air” showed off his acrobatic and contortionist skills. It was October 28, 1883, Houdini always remembered — his start in showbiz — and it earned him 35 cents, as he’d told Edna Ferber. After that there were a lot of shows put on for the amateur nights held regularly at a Milwaukee museum.

Three years later the famous Dr Lynn performed in Milwaukee, a star of London’s Egyptian Hall of curiosities thanks to amiable stage patter and feats as dazzling as beheading a pigeon and bringing it back to life. The audience was invariably befuddled by his tongue-in-cheek explanations of all the tricks, but his final pronouncement — “That’s how it’s done!” — became a popular catchphrase.

Rabbi Weiss took Ehrich to see how a real professional magician operated, and the capper of the show, for the future Houdini and everybody else, was a routine called “Paligenesia”, Greek for “new genesis” or “back from death to life” — a simple matter of cutting some poor volunteer into pieces with a scimitar. No one in the audience would volunteer, of course, so Dr Lynn lashed one of his assistants to a curtained contraption and proceeded to lop off an arm, a leg and his head. All were duly restored amid hilarious banter.

It was an amazing effect, one that Houdini would actually buy from Dr Lynn’s son in 1916 and revive onstage, as seen in the photo above. He cultivated a macabre interest all his life in tales of executions and other gruesome forms of death, particularly through decapitation and electrocution. Drownings too, of course.

Ehrich’s father often mentioned his relationship to the great Hungarian conjurer Compars Herrmann, who had been Mayer’s first cousin through his first marriage. Renowned in theatres and royal palaces across Europe in his time, Compars had even performed at the White House for Abraham Lincoln.

Ehrich’s half-brother Herman was the fruit of that marriage as well, and when Herman died from tuberculosis at age 22 in 1885, Mayer was devastated and didn’t recover for months. Ehrich was moved to offer his life savings, $10, to pay for the funeral. Instead, his father called him aside and asked him to promise that he would always take care of his mother. It was a pledge his father would make him repeat on his deathbed, and one that Ehrich always honoured.

In fact, that was doubtless why Harry packed his bag and hit the road. He was off to seek his fortune, which he would share with the family. He sent his mom a postcard saying he was bound for Galveston, Texas, for reasons he never revealed, but in the event seems to have mostly wandered for a year, odd-jobbing and occasionally hooking up with travelling circuses, signing on as “Eric the Great”, escape artist.

In their 2006 biography, Kalush and Sloman say he fell in with the westbound US Cavalry, shining the soldiers’ boots with the kit he’d packed next to his books, lockpick and a deck of cards. In Delavan, Wisconsin, a young local boy named Al Flitcroft came to see the troops encamped and discovered Harry, hirsute and raggedy. He took him home so he could get some proper food, and his mother, Hannah Flitcroft, also cleaned him up, sent him to bed and put an end to his military career.

Harry stayed for awhile and never forgot Mrs Flitcroft, posting her fancy gifts from around the world and rushing to see her when he heard she was dying.

By 1887 the meanderings of father and son ended up in the same place, New York City. They roomed together in a Mrs Leffler’s boardinghouse at 244 East 79th Street in Manhattan, then upgraded to a tenement building at 227 East 75th, where the whole family — including mother Cecelia and her five boys and baby girl — were reunited. There they remained until 1890 when their joint income afforded a larger apartment at 305 East 69th Street.

Ehrich got work as a necktie cutter and started learning a few things about locks, which was certainly going to come in handy. Soon he was entertaining at parties and club meetings as Eric the Great or sometimes “Cardo”, and he was reading about a great French wizard called Robert-Houdin.

When he heard the magician’s muse calling and hit the road again, this time professionally, Ehrich Weiss sweated out the small time as “the King of Cards” (see more about Harry and his cards at the bottom of this post) and, first with a pal and then with his brother Theo, who everybody called Dash, as half of the Houdini Brothers. The name was lifted from the celebrated French illusionist Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin and given an Italian twist at the tail. Houdin, already long deceased, was going to have more than his name stolen before the brash American upstart was finished with him.

In November 1892 the Houdini Brothers — Harry was still only 18 — played Milwaukee’s Wonderland Theater, a dime museum, as the popular entertainment venues of the day were called, and impressed the crowd with their Mystery Box trick. Harry’s hands were tied behind his back and he climbed into a sack, which was then sealed. He was hefted into a large box and it was locked and bound with ropes. A curtain was raised around it, three seconds elapsed, the curtain dropped, and there stood Harry next to the box, free as a sparrow. The trunk was reopened and, yes, Theo was bound up inside.

The following year they made hay in Chicago, both at the World’s Fair and Kohl & Middleton’s celebrated dime museum — 20 shows a day for $12 a week. Harry was by now doing his handcuff escapes as well, and learning about stage presentation in the museum’s Hall of Freaks and Miracle Workers.

In the summer of 1894 the Houdini Brothers were performing at Coney Island and Harry met Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner, who with her sister had a singing act. After a three-week courtship and a little sleight of hand as far as her mother was concerned, they married on June 22, and “Bess”, as she was known, replaced Theo in the magic act the next month, still on Coney Island.

(Bess’ preferred version of events, as laid out in Harry Kellock’s 1928 biography of Houdini, removed her from the grime of showbiz altogether. She primly claimed she met Harry when he came to her high school to perform, and even then she had to talk her mother into letting her attend the show — as long as Mom came along!)

Bess and Harry began touring dime museums and sideshows as “The Great Houdinis”, pairing up for a slice of scam mind-reading, memorable mostly because of the mnemonics they used. Years later they optimistically fashioned a phrase from the same secret code so they could stay in touch after one of them was finally beyond the grave.

Also in their stage act, Harry did his Needle Trick, swallowing dozens of needles and yards of thread and then regurgitating them back up all strung together.

It was impressive, and he never stopped doing the stunt — eventually ingesting 200 needles and 120 feet of thread and, with helpers, stringing them out clear across huge stages — but back then, the Houdinis were still getting nowhere fast. By 1896 Harry was ready to pack it in, and advertised in a newspaper that all of his tricks were for sale. Fortunately no one thought they were worth the $20 asking price, and he was stuck in the profession for a while longer.

In April 2008, Ring 362 of the International Brotherhood of Magicians based in Bangor, Maine, hosted the third Elliott Card Challenge, which annually honours James William Elliott (1874-1920), a native of Rumford in that state and the man acknowledged — even by Houdini — as the Champion Card Manipulator of the World and “The King of Kards”.

As reported in the Sun-Journal of Lewiston, Maine, the Boston physician toured for five years with the Leroy, Talma and Bosco magic act and, in the process, “wowed Houdini with his card skill. Houdini, never known for his modesty, declared Elliott to be his peer in skill at cards.”

On sale at Amazon.com and here is the 1923 book “Elliott’s Last Legacy”, so-named because, although he wrote most of it, with buyers keen to find out his secrets, Elliott died before it was finished. Harry and Clinton Burgess stepped in to complete the work, using Elliott’s notes and offering some explanations — but not all. Houdini wrote the foreword and Burgess profiled the author.

As well as card tricks, the book covers stunts with balls, bottles, boxes, chairs and tables, coins, glasses, handkerchiefs, rabbits, rings, slates, telepathy, Japanese and “Hindoo” effects and even witches’ brooms and walking on water.