Houdini’s fame as a magician and manic drive to expose all that threatened his trade put him on an inevitable crash course with the religion. The collision was played out in part through his friendship with the author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Houdini’s Anti-Spiritualist Campaign After the committee’s verdict, Houdini became more aggressive in his efforts to discredit mediums. Not only did Houdini disagree with opportunistically tricking vulnerable and uneducated people out of money, he also espoused the popular theory of the time that Spiritualism could lead people to become insane and/or to commit crimes and pointed out that sexual assaults on women happened under the cover of the séance proceedings. Houdini essentially opened his own anti-fraud, anti-Spiritualist police force. He advertised in papers that anyone who had been robbed by a medium could write to him for help. He trained the New York Police on tricks used during séances.
What do You think about Houdini: A Life Worth Reading?
