Of course, Houdini escaped in front of the live audience although it took thirty-five minutes culminating in his writhing on the floor when he fell from the bed and continued to fight his way free of the bandages binding him. The attempt to escape to take place in full view of the audience. They will pour from 10 to 15 buckets of water over his form, so as to cause all the materials and knots to shrink, holding him in a positively helpless conditionĥth. They will fasten him down to an iron hospital bed with strong linen bandagesĤth. They will roll him in a number of large sheets in mummy fashionģrd. They will bandage his hands to his sidesĢnd. The challenge was published in the Herald and the Daily Telegraph on Wednesday April 20th 1910 and the instructions laid out for Houdini were detailed.ġst. One of the challenges was devised by a group of people who were employed at various hospitals and asylums around Sydney at the time, such as Callan Park, Gladesville and Kenmore hospitals for the insane, and Liverpool and Parramatta asylums. Adding to the excitement and intrigue was Houdini’s announcement that he would take ‘escape challenges’ from the public as long as the details of the challenge and the names of those who devised the challenge were published a week prior to one of his shows.

He arrived with his wife and an aeroplane as well an array of tricks that surpassed the word magic and confounded the audience at his many shows. Harry Houdini the supreme escapologist, survived to tour Australia in 1910. The man who defied shackles, chains, heights, padlocks, earth and water nearly suffocated to death when he was restrained in a coffin and buried six feet underground.

The amazing harry houdini