Margery Crandon and Harry Houdini: The Story I Had to TellMaryka BiaggioI write historical fiction about real people, and I’m always looking for characters who might be interesting enough to warrant a novel. So when my editor at Doubleday mentioned I might consider writing about Margery Crandon, a spiritualist who did battle with Harry Houdini, my curiosity was piqued. Then she sent me a complimentary copy of The Witch of Lime Street by David Jaher. And I was hooked.Here’s what most intrigued me about the story: In the summer of 1924, Harry Houdini, the most famous escape artist in the world, sat in a darkened Boston parlor across from a woman in her thirties. She was glamorous, charming, and rumored to have the ability to summon the dead. Her name was Mina Crandon. The public knew her as Margery, and she was arguably the most famous psychic in the world.
I dug into the research and learned a great deal about the world of spiritualism, which was experiencing a renewal of interest in the 1920s. I acquired several books about Margery Crandon and delved into her background. If I was going to write about her, I needed to understand what made her tick.
Nothing in Margery Crandon’s early life suggested séance-room celebrity. She was born in 1888 to a farm family in rural Ontario. She and her brother, Walter, were apparently very close. He called her Mina. To her, he was the older brother she could confide in when their strict father punished them. When Walter came of age, he left the farm to work as a railroad worker in Buffalo, New York. A few years later, Margery moved to Boston, where she found a job working in the theatre. Before long, the lively and restless Margery met her first husband, Earl Rand, with whom she had a son.
When Walter died in a tragic trainyard accident in 1911, Margery was heartbroken. His death and their enduring bond would become a part of her legend.
In 1917, Margery experienced terrible abdominal pain, and Earl rushed her to the hospital, where she underwent surgery, possibly for appendicitis. Her surgeon was Dr. Roy Crandon, a wealthy and respected doctor. They met again while Crandon worked as a military physician at a Boston hospital and Margery volunteered as a military ambulance driver. Margery was unhappy in her first marriage and divorced Rand. She then married Dr. Crandon. She was his third wife, and his two divorces had apparently been acrimonious, so Margery may have worried about his constancy and her future with him.
Nevertheless, her marriage to Crandon provided her with two things she craved and hadn’t found with her first husband—prosperity and social recognition. Dr. Crandon was a distinguished Boston surgeon and Harvard man, well-connected and considerably older than Margery. Margery relished her newfound socialite status and welcomed many guests to their stately Victorian mansion at 10 Lime Street. Overnight, the Ontario farm girl became a fixture of Beacon Hill society, with a fashionable address, a wealthy husband, and the social access that came with them.
Margery launched her career as a spiritualist in the early years of her marriage to Crandon. Dr. Crandon wholeheartedly supported this endeavor and even had a carpenter build a special table for séances. The reasons Margery began holding séances are lost to history, but some say she relished her husband’s astonishment and admiration for the wonders she produced. Soon a voice began speaking through her—brash, joking, and irreverent. It said it was Walter.
Margery became a celebrity in Boston circles, and invitations to her séances were much sought after. Boston luminaries and colleagues of Roy Crandon were common attendees. A typical evening began at the dinner table, where the cook prepared excellent fare, and the doctor broke out wine from his cellar, which he’d managed to collect despite Prohibition. After the guests had enjoyed their sumptuous meal, the party trekked up to the fourth floor to sit around the séance table in a darkened room.
Dr. Crandon maintained careful contemporaneous records of all Margery’s séances, noting the extraordinary phenomena observed there: bells rang; tables tilted, and objects drifted. Walter whistled, cracked jokes, and delivered commentary in a gruff male voice. A Victrola played “Souvenir” and “Yes! We Have No Bananas.” Most startling of all, a live dove appeared and thumbprints were left in wax, prints that failed to match those of any person in attendance.
Margery was no shabby carnival act. She was a glamorous socialite. Her admirers included a magazine editor who wrote glowing accounts of her powers, and the press could not resist a story with so many enticing ingredients: a society beauty, a brilliant surgeon husband, and a dead brother. Unlike most spiritualists of the time, Margery did not charge attendees, which many took as a sign of her honesty and authenticity.
Yes, I had now decided that I would write about Margery, but how to tell the story? Should I have Margery narrate her tale? Should an omniscient voice hover over the whole story, giving the reader the inside scoop? I tried both approaches, and neither really took hold. I just wasn’t satisfied with either way of recounting this fascinating tale.
Then, surprise of surprises, Walter began speaking to me. He provided me with the first line of the novel: “Truth is, I understand Mina better than the whole lot of them, meaning those meddlers who wanted to know how the ‘Witch of Lime Street,’ as some dubbed her, acquired her psychic powers.” And I was off to the races. I won’t say the whole novel came as easily as that opening line, but it just made sense to have Walter tell the story. After all, he was a great wit who regularly appeared at Margery’s séances, and his salty repartee never failed to entertain the guests around the table. He and Margery had a close relationship, and he had access to her most private thoughts. Walter had a vested interest in Margery’s success, but he also worried about her.
Spiritualism had become wildly popular in the 1920s, but it had its detractors. Into the fray stepped the respected magazine Scientific American, which set out to test spiritualists and resolve the raging public debate. They offered $2,500 ($50,000 in today’s money!) for any medium who could produce a visible psychic manifestation under controlled conditions. The first several mediums the prize committee tested proved to be frauds. Then Dr. Crandon entered Margery into the contest. The committee expected her to be the first serious entrant.
The committee members devised all manner of tests, and Margery’s performance astounded them. But one member of the committee, Harry Houdini, insisted he be allowed to conduct his own tests. And Walter worried that Houdini would not give Margery a fair chance. The battle between Margery and Harry Houdini became the climax of my novel, and Walter did not disappoint at this crucial juncture.
I’m sure prospective readers wouldn’t want me to give away the ending, so I won’t. But in all my novels, I aim to stay true to the historical record. And the history of the epic battle between Margery and Houdini was worth all the struggles I encountered as I wrote the novel.
Maryka Biaggio is an award-winning novelist with a passion for history and the human spirit. She writes historical fiction inspired by real people—figures whose lives illuminate the complexities of their time. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Her novel Margery and Me, published by Regal House, has been hailed by distinguished author Valerie Martin as “a wry, lively, and wicked-good novel.”
Purchase Margery & Me from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk, or directly from Regal House Publishing.
Thank you, Maryka!
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