McCord Museum receives magic and Houdini collection

The McCord Museum in Montreal, Canada--which is housed in the former McGill University Student Union building where Houdini lectured during his ill-fated visit to the city in October 1926--has received a large bequest of magic memorabilia, including many items related to Houdini.

"It’s the second-largest collection of Houdini material held in a public institution," said David Ben, artistic director of Magicana. Ben served as an adviser to the museum and was there on Monday as journalists were invited to view some of the artifacts. Among the McCord's new treasures is a Houdini 8-sheet "Buried Alive!" poster.

The $3-million collection, gathered over 50 years by a magic buff who preferred to remain anonymous, includes 600 posters, 200 rare books and 200 documents relating to the golden age of magic. The Houdini items are said to include personal correspondence and scrapbooks.

The collection will be available to scholars and will be used in future exhibitions, including one slated for 2017, museum spokesperson Catherine Guex said.

Houdini spoke at the McGill University student union on October 19, 1926. It was here he received what's come to be known as "the Pickleman punch."

For more, check out the report in the Montreal Gazette. You can also watch video of David Ben showing and explaining the Houdini items at CBC News.

UPDATE: Chat on the various magic boards are saying that news reports have downplayed the significance and extent of the Houdini items -- that the McCord has acquired a MAJOR Houdini collection (over 1000 individual items) from a MAJOR Houdini collector whose identity has not yet been revealed. Intriguing.

Related:

• The Pickleman punch
• Houdini on his 1926 Buried Alive: "I like it very much."

The Prince of Wales assault

We all know J. Gordon Whitehead punched Houdini in the stomach at the Princess Theater in Montreal on October 22, 1926. That punch started a chain of events that would lead to the magician's death on Halloween. But in his seminal work, The Man Who Killed Houdini, author Don Bell uncovered evidence of two other punches delivered by McGill University students during Houdini's stay in the city.

Recently we looked at the first of these, "the Pickleman punch," which took place at the McGill University Union Hall on October 19. Today we have what might be better described as an "assault" on Houdini in the lobby of the Prince of Wales Hotel on McGill College St., just a few blocks west of the Princess Theater.

In 1990, Gilles Larin, the grandson of the Prince of Wales owner, Francis Larin, related to Bell the remarkable story, which he said was part of family lore. He heard it from his father and grandfather, although the only eyewitness was the night clerk, Honore Larin (Francis' brother). Here's the story as told in Bell's book:

After giving a performance Houdini usually had a meal and relaxed in the Prince of Wales lobby, reading newspapers. In the back of the  hotel was a tavern [Pig & Whistle] frequented by McGill students. It had a door leading to the lobby, but when the hotel closed at 11 p.m., the students usually went out through the rear exit leading to the lane in back.

But that particular night when Houdini was there waiting to board the overnight train that would take him and his company to Toronto, Buffalo, etc. and then to Detroit, three or four students who were rather drunk spilled out of the tavern into the lobby. One of them, mimicking the act that Houdini presented in his show where he dared anyone to hit him in the stomach walked up to Houdini, who was sitting in a lounge chair reading a newspaper, and, without any warning, hit him through the newspaper in the stomach, a crunching blow. Houdini, doubled over in pain, said, "You shouldn't have done that," then got up, very slowly, and walked out of the lobby.

Larin goes on to say that while this incident was "much discussed" the next day, there was no police report filed and Houdini was already gone. The timing of this is interesting. If Houdini was waiting for the train to Detroit, then this happened after the Whitehead blows, which would have made this especially painful (and damaging?). It's generally accepted that Houdini's appendix ruptured while on the overnight train to Detroit.

It's also interesting to speculate whether Houdini's unidentified assailant that night suffered the same confusion and guilt that Gerald Pickleman experienced. After Houdini's death, it was only reported that he had died as result of being punched by a "McGill University student." The name J. Gordon Whitehead and the details of the dressing room punch did not become public until 1953. Any student who struck Houdini that week would assume they were the student in the news reports. Houdini's words, "You shouldn't have done that," would have certainly haunted this student. (Unless he was too drunk to recall the incident at all.)

This one is a bit harder to accept than the Pickleman punch, which still had living eyewitnesses into the 1980s. While I find no reason to not believe this happened, second hand accounts are by their nature unreliable, especially when they are over 80-years-old. Still, it's a curious piece of the puzzle that is the last week of Houdini's life.

Related:

• The Pickleman punch
• Review: The Man Who Killed Houdini
• Time to rethink the rethinking on the Houdini punch

Is this J. Gordon Whitehead at McGill in 1926?

Recently our friends at the Houdini Museum in Scranton and Joe Notaro of HHCE turned up an amazing archive of yearbooks from McGill University. Of course, it was a student from McGill, Jocelyn Gordon Whitehead, who punched Houdini in his dressing room at the Princess Theater on October 22, 1926. Could these books give us our first look at Whitehead as a student?

There is only one known photo of Whitehead, taken almost 25 years after the Houdini incident when he was in his 50s. Because he never graduated, there is no individual yearbook photo of him as a student. However, this group shot of the "Arts '28 Class" in the 1926 yearbook is said to include a "Whitehead, J.G." (as well as Gerald Pickleman, who also "tested" Houdini that week). Unfortunately, it doesn't specify which student is Whitehead.

Click to enlarge.

Sam Smilovitz (aka "Smiley"), who was also present in the dressing room, gave a good description of Whitehead. Smiley described him as: "At least six foot two – wearing a blue gabardine coat that seemed much too small for him. An oldish looking young man about 27 or 28 years of age [he was actually almost 31]. He impressed one as being the very genteel type of student. His face was ruddy, his hair very thin on top; his frame was powerful though loosely-knit, and his neck was inordinately long."

My candidate for Whitehead is the individual below. He seems to match Smiley's description quite well -- right down to what might be his blue coat -- and I just feel like he might be our man.

What do you think? If this is indeed J. Gordon Whitehead, it is only the second known photo, and the only one taken at the time of the Houdini punch. Wild indeed.

Thanks to Dorothy Dietrich, Dick Brookz, and Joe Notaro. You can check out all the McGill Yearbooks HERE.

Related:

• This is J. Gordon Whitehead
• The eyewitness - Smiley's sketch
• The Pickleman punch

The Pickleman punch

McGill University's Union Hall.

We all know J. Gordon Whithead punched Houdini in the stomach in his dressing room at the Princess Theater in Montreal on October 22, 1926. It's debated whether or not the punch caused or just masked his fatal appendicitis, but all agree that Whitehead's punch was the start of a chain of events that would lead to the magician's death on Halloween. But in his seminal work, The Man Who Killed Houdini, author Don Bell uncovered evidence of two other punches delivered by McGill University students during Houdini's stay in the city that might extend that chain a little further back.

One of those punches is said to have occurred in the lobby of the Prince of Wales Hotel. However, that incident is questionable as it only comes via second-hand sources, so I'm going to save it for another time. The punch I want to discuss today is the first of the three for which there is strong evidence. This punch or "test" occurred on October 19, 1926, when Houdini was giving his lecture at McGill University. Bell calls it "the Pickleman punch."

Bell first learned of the Pickleman punch from a former McGill University student named Dr. William Cohen. Dr. Cohen said that a student named Gerald Pickleman had tested Houdini with a blow at the McGill Union Hall (today the McCord Museum). Unfortunately, Dr. Cohen could not remember specific details, although he did recall Houdini putting a needle through his cheek during this same meeting with students.

Eventually, Bell tracked down a key eyewitness to the Pickleman punch, another former McGill student named Jack Hausner. Bell interviewed the 84-year-old Hausner in Palm Beach, Florida in 1991. As you'll see, Hausner confused it with the Whitehead blow, as would others. Hausner recalled:

"It was in a public room where students went to socialize -- to shoot a game of pool or snooker. Houdini was passing through and we engaged him in conversation. He was very warm when we met him.

I remember clearly his challenge to anyone within the group to punch him -- with all his might! -- in his stomach so that he could demonstrate his powers of concentration to withstand physical pain and survive unharmed.

I must differ with you concerning the identity of the person who delivered the blow which apparently resulted in his death a week or two later. That person was not Gordon Whitehead, as you believe. If my memory serves me correctly, it was an undergraduate known to many of us at the time, name Gerald Pickleman (or Pickelman). ... He came from a family who lived in upper New York State.

Pickleman was a pretty burly fellow, but as far as I knew he wasn't a boxer and didn't work for the McGill Daily, although anyone could have contributed an article from time to time. Houdini had time to prepare himself. The blow wasn't unexpected. Pickleman was 170 pounds or so, five feet seven or nine. It was just one blow."

Site of the Pickleman punch?

Gerald Pickleman died in 1981, but Bell was able to find his widow, Annette Pickleman, who independently confirmed the events at Union Hall:

"Gerry told the story many times," she said, "whenever Houdini's name came up, but in later years people hadn't discussed it with him as much. It wasn't a thing he boasted about, but nor was it a secret or anything he ever tried to hide. He had the normal guilt a person would have. He was a sensitive man, not the kind of person who would go around punching people. He wasn't aware [that the punch had caused Houdini's death] until after the autopsy. That's when he began to talk about it."

What's tragic here is it appears Pickleman blamed himself for delivering the blow that "killed Houdini." But one can see how this happened. After Houdini's death, the newspapers only reported that he was struck by a "student of McGill University." In fact, the name of J. Gordon Whitehead did not appear in print until 1953. So it's understandable that Pickleman believed that he was the "McGill student" who fatally injured Houdini. Poor guy.

Now, I'd be remiss in not mentioning that Dr. William Tait, head of the McGill psychology department, who had invited Houdini to give his lecture at the University that day, denied that Houdini was struck by a student at the meeting. He said Houdini left in a taxi immediately after the lecture. But he may have been unaware of the informal meeting with the students (which could have happened before the lecture), or was trying to protect the University. He also said Houdini appeared ill at the meeting.

I do believe the Pickleman punch happened as independently described by William Cohen, Jack Hausner and Annette Pickleman (by way of her husband). I also believe it's likely that this "punch me as hard as you can" challenge and successful first demonstration at Union Hall is what motivated the drunken students at the Prince of Wales to test Houdini and, of course, J. Gordon Whitehead in the dressing room at the Princess Theater on the fateful day. You might even say Houdini's death began here.

Union Hall is today the McCord Museum in Montreal.

Related:

• Review: The Man Who Killed Houdini
• The McGill explanation
• Time to rethink the rethinking on the Houdini punch

UPDATE: Thanks to our friends at the Houdini Museum in Scranton and Joe Notaro, here is a photo of Gerald Pickleman from the 1929 McGill yearbook.

Did Houdini's death begin here?

Check out WILD ABOUT HARRY tomorrow when we'll take a look at one of the lesser known links in the chain of events that lead up to the death of Harry Houdini.