You can’t read about celebrities without spilling some gossip down your shirt front, and it’s the same with Houdini, about whom there are a string of rumours of extramarital affairs, virtually all of them squashed like a bug beneath reason’s toe. He was nuts about Bess and a Compleat Moralist besides, but on one occasion, according to exclamatory biographer Kenneth Silverman (”Houdini!!!”), when he did stray.

The other woman in question was the generically free-spirited Charmian London, the widow of author Jack London, whose popularity in America came close to that of Houdini. Harry and Bess had met the Londons in November 1915 following one of his shows at the Orpheum in Los Angeles. They all liked each other a lot and spent the next three days together and planned to meet up again.

The Londons and Houdinis in Oakland, California, Charmian on the right, a photo from the Geoffrey Hansen Collection.

But Jack died from kidney disease about a year later. Harry and Charmian stayed in touch, and then in 1918, at the same time he was making his elephant disappear in New York and telling the war-weary public to “Cheer Up”, they heard the “Call of the Wild” and an affair blossomed, as Silverman discovered while snooping through Charmian’s diaries.

Charmian was hearing the same call with other guys too, and Houdini was evidently unable to juggle his guilt and the notion of sharing simultaneously, so he backed out of the relationship, although he occasionally rang and wrote to Charmian until the year he died. She was heartbroken at the news of his demise, she confided to dear diary, and spent a long time studying his photo with a magnifying glass.

Do the punters at the Hardware City Tavern at 136 Main Street in New Britain, Connecticut, ever hear the sound of scuffling feet coming from the roof? If they do, that might be our Harry.

Houdini performed one of his stunts (it’s not clear which one) on the roof of what was then known as the Andrews building in the 1920s, and the tavern — whose name comes from the town’s nickname — still has the original 1903 tin ceilings and wood and concrete flooring.

Architect William Cadwell erected the elegant building that year for John Andrews’ furniture store, which was one of New England’s top retailers for more than 75 years.

Also in New Britain at the turn of the last century was P & F Corbin, established in 1882, which counted among its specialties, interestingly enough, all kinds of locks.

Below, Harry on the roof — but what roof? Not the Hardware City Tavern. Probably a scene from one of his Hollywood movies.