Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is the second episode of a three part series.
Speaker 1: You can enjoy it on a standalone basis, but if
Speaker 1: you've not heard episode one, you might prefer to listen
Speaker 1: to it first. The tearful young widow in a cheap
Speaker 1: looking dress was desperate to get in touch with her
Speaker 1: recently deceased husband. She explained to mister Herman Parker, one
Speaker 1: of the leading spiritualist mediums in Chicago. Mister Parker could
Speaker 1: help with that for a fee, of course. He settled down,
Speaker 1: closed his eyes and went into a trance.
Speaker 2: I am in touch with a man. Yes, it's your husband.
Speaker 3: He says.
Speaker 2: He is happy but misses you. I think he is
Speaker 2: leaving us now.
Speaker 1: Parker opened his eyes.
Speaker 4: He's gone. Oh, but I did so want to ask
Speaker 4: him what to do with the money?
Speaker 1: The money, yes, the widow explained the settlement for his
Speaker 1: death three thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Perhaps I can get your husband back.
Speaker 1: Said mister Parker. He closed his eyes again.
Speaker 2: I have your husband again. His spirit is standing by
Speaker 2: your side. He says, to invest the money. He is
Speaker 2: trying to give me the name of the company he
Speaker 2: wants you to invest in.
Speaker 1: Parker screwed up his face in concentration, then reached for
Speaker 1: a pen and scribbled a name.
Speaker 2: Though Wilcox's Transportation Company. Your husband says it is a
Speaker 2: very sound company.
Speaker 4: I don't know how to thank you.
Speaker 1: Said The young woman, wiping a tear from her eye,
Speaker 1: paid mister Parker the fee for his consultation, went back
Speaker 1: to her hotel and placed a long distance telephone call
Speaker 1: to her boss, Harry Houdini. For this young woman was
Speaker 1: no naive Chicago widow with a chunky death settlement to
Speaker 1: invest She was New York bachelor girl Rose Mackenberg, Houdini's
Speaker 1: chief investigator of dodgy mediums. Harry Houdini's sellout shows now
Speaker 1: consisted of three acts, Some Magic, some of the escapes
Speaker 1: that made his name, and a new final section called
Speaker 1: Do the Dead Come Back, where Harry would name and
Speaker 1: shame fraudulent local mediums. On the stage of the Princess
Speaker 1: Theater in Chicago, Harry invited Rose to continue the story
Speaker 1: of herman Parker. She looked into the Wilcox Transportation Company.
Speaker 1: It was, of course, both worthless and run by an
Speaker 1: associate of mister Parker. But it couldn't just be Rose's
Speaker 1: word against herman Parker's they needed to gather hard evidence.
Speaker 1: Rose told the theater, I.
Speaker 4: Took out my checkbook and I said, I'm afraid I
Speaker 4: can't write very well. Mister Parker. Could you help me
Speaker 4: fill out the check The.
Speaker 1: Audience loved it. Billboard called this section of Houdini's show
Speaker 1: as laughter provoking as it was educational. Chicago's police also
Speaker 1: enjoyed this particular story. They took mister Parker and mister
Speaker 1: Wilcox to court and got them both convicted. But did
Speaker 1: the laws in America do enough to protect the vulnerable,
Speaker 1: bereaved clients of his cynical mediums. Harry Houdini was not
Speaker 1: convinced that they did, and so in early nineteen twenty six,
Speaker 1: Harry and Rose went to Washington. I'm Tim Harford, and
Speaker 1: you're listening to cautionary Tales. The committee room in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Was packed. Three hundred people crammed the seats,
Speaker 1: the aisles, and anywhere else they could find. Some were
Speaker 1: simply there to enjoy what promised to be an entertaining spectacle.
Speaker 1: The Great Showman Houdini was going to give evidence in
Speaker 1: support of the Copeland Bloom Bill. Others there were spiritualists
Speaker 1: and mediums whose livelihood and liberty were under threat if
Speaker 1: the bill made it onto the statute books. The Congressman
Speaker 1: called the session to order. What is your full name?
Speaker 1: He asked. My name is Harry Houdini, and what is
Speaker 1: your business?
Speaker 3: I am an author, I am a psychic investigator for
Speaker 3: the scientific magazines of the world, and then I am
Speaker 3: a mysterious entertainer.
Speaker 1: It's a revealing answer about how Harry Houdini saw himself.
Speaker 1: In his fifty second year, the famous escape artist put
Speaker 1: mysterious entertainer only third on his list of occupations. Top
Speaker 1: of that list was author. Houdini was proud of his book,
Speaker 1: A Magician among the Spirits, partly a history of the
Speaker 1: spiritualist movement and partly an account of his own dealings
Speaker 1: with spiritualists, such as the seance at which Lady Doyle,
Speaker 1: wife of the author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had written
Speaker 1: a lengthy letter that purported to come from Harry's mother.
Speaker 1: Nearly four years had passed since that seance, and Houdini
Speaker 1: had become more and more strident in his attacks on
Speaker 1: those who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead.
Speaker 1: In his experience, He told the assembled congressman.
Speaker 3: There are only two kinds of mediums, those who are
Speaker 3: mental degenerates and those who are deliberate cheats and france,
Speaker 3: I have never seen one genuine medium.
Speaker 1: But Houdini didn't just want to warn people off spending
Speaker 1: their hard earned money on messages purportedly from the spirit world.
Speaker 1: Now he thought it should be illegal to sell those
Speaker 1: messages at all. That's what the Copeland Bloom Bill set
Speaker 1: out to do. Cities around America had different laws on mediumship.
Speaker 1: The laws in Washington, d c. Were among the most permissive.
Speaker 1: They said that mediums, clairvoyants, soothsayers, fortune tellers, or palmists
Speaker 1: conducting business for profit shall pay a license tax of
Speaker 1: twenty five dollars per annum, and to get a license,
Speaker 1: they simply had to apply to the Superintendent of Licenses
Speaker 1: with letters from ten credible residents that he or she
Speaker 1: is of good character. Not exactly difficult, as Houdini pointed out,
Speaker 1: The problem was was that having a license seemed to
Speaker 1: imply that the government was vouching for your skills. Fortune
Speaker 1: tellers could proudly display their official certificate in much the
Speaker 1: same way as properly qualified lawyers or doctors. The Copeland
Speaker 1: Bloombill would go to the other extreme. It would ban
Speaker 1: all together pretending to tell fortunes or unite the separated,
Speaker 1: among other things. Some of the congressional representatives of the
Speaker 1: hearing shared Houdini's skepticism about clairvoyance, soothsayers and so on.
Speaker 1: Others were more credulous that palmistry is a science, said
Speaker 1: one representative. Isn't it, No, it is not. Houdini was appalled.
Speaker 3: How can you tell anything from the lines of the hand.
Speaker 3: You can tell whether a man is a bricklayer or
Speaker 3: a bank clerk.
Speaker 1: The congressman continued, I understand astrology can bring out facts
Speaker 1: that have been proven to be true. Houdini tried to
Speaker 1: explain to him why you should never be too impressed
Speaker 1: at discovering that an astrologist has predicted something accurately.
Speaker 3: Where they make so many guesses, sometimes they make a
Speaker 3: good guess. If you guess often enough, you're bound to
Speaker 3: guess something right.
Speaker 1: The congressman moved on to spiritualism. If it really is
Speaker 1: such an outrageous fake and fraud, why would that not
Speaker 1: have been discovered by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who after all,
Speaker 1: is an outstanding authority. Houdini snapped back.
Speaker 3: Conan Doyle is not an outstanding authority.
Speaker 1: He is accepted as one of the best, the committee
Speaker 1: member said.
Speaker 3: No, he is not accepted as one of the best.
Speaker 3: He is one of the greatest dupes.
Speaker 1: The year's long friendship between Houdini and Conan Doyle had
Speaker 1: become increasingly strained since that seance with Doyle's wife. For
Speaker 1: a while, Houdini still optimistically addressed his letters my dear
Speaker 1: Sir Arthur, Conan Doyle became more stiff.
Speaker 2: Our relations are suddenly.
Speaker 1: Curious, he wrote to Houdini.
Speaker 2: For so long as you attack what I know from
Speaker 2: experience to be true, I have no alternative but to
Speaker 2: attack you in return. How long a private friendship can
Speaker 2: survive such an ordeal? I do not know.
Speaker 1: You can see the problem. Doyle's wife is a medium,
Speaker 1: and there's Houdini breezily telling a congressional committee that every
Speaker 1: medium he's encountered is either a deliberate fraud or a
Speaker 1: mental degenerate. But there's another reason why Arthur and Houdini
Speaker 1: had fallen out, and it's to do with the second occupation.
Speaker 1: Whodini listed psychic investigator for the scientific magazines of the world.
Speaker 1: The Scientific American magazine put up a cash prize for
Speaker 1: anyone who could conclusively demonstrate psychic phenomena to their panel
Speaker 1: of eminent academic investigators. The panel was on the cusp
Speaker 1: of awarding the prize to a friend of Conan Doyle,
Speaker 1: a medium called Marjorie, the wife of a Boston surgeon,
Speaker 1: at whose seances the spirits rang bells and shook tambourines.
Speaker 1: The academics were stumped if this was all a trick.
Speaker 1: They couldn't figure out how Marjorie was doing it, so
Speaker 1: it must be spirits. But when the magazine sent Houdini,
Speaker 1: he watched closely and understood it was slight of hand,
Speaker 1: highly accomplished and hard to detect, but slight of hand.
Speaker 1: None the less, academics aren't smart enough for this kind
Speaker 1: of investigation.
Speaker 3: Houdini explained, it takes a flim flammer to catch a
Speaker 3: flim flammer.
Speaker 1: Because of Houdini, Marjorie did not get the cash prize,
Speaker 1: But for Sir Arthur it wasn't about the money. The
Speaker 1: approval of Scientific American would have been a major boost
Speaker 1: for the spiritualist religion. Sir Arthur was furious with Houdini.
Speaker 1: He was certain that Marjorie had genuine supernatural powers and
Speaker 1: Houdini's expose a was unfair. For that matter, he was
Speaker 1: sure Houdini had supernatural powers and was only pretending that
Speaker 1: he didn't. When journalists asked Houdini about Conan Oyle, he
Speaker 1: didn't hold back. Conan Doyle is getting a bit senile.
Speaker 1: He's fifteen years Houdini's senior. The old man is easily bamboozled.
Speaker 1: It's such a pity, Houdini, says.
Speaker 3: Doyle thinks he is a messiah who has come to
Speaker 3: save mankind. Instead of that, he is misleading the public,
Speaker 3: and his teachings are a menace to sanity and health.
Speaker 1: Houdini was on a mission. He now saw exposing frauds
Speaker 1: like Marjorie as his sacred duty, and he couldn't do
Speaker 1: it alone. Cautionary tales will be back after the break.
Speaker 1: Rose Mackenberg was born in Brooklyn to Russian immigrant parents.
Speaker 1: She started out as a stenographer at a law firm,
Speaker 1: then became a private detective. She had just turned thirty
Speaker 1: when she took on a new client who wanted her
Speaker 1: to investigate a medium. The medium had given him bad
Speaker 1: investment advice. Rose didn't know much about mediums, but she
Speaker 1: did know someone who knew Harry Houdini. She asked the
Speaker 1: mutual friend to set up a meeting so she could
Speaker 1: ask for Houdini's advice on how to proceed. Coincidentally, Rose
Speaker 1: had just spent an evening at a seance herself, invited
Speaker 1: by a friend who said it would be good, clean fun.
Speaker 1: It was certainly fun. Rose told Houdini the story. The medium,
Speaker 1: an attractive young woman, was tied to a chair. Her
Speaker 1: assistant switched out the lights, and in the darkness, she
Speaker 1: called on the spirits to play various musical instruments, culminate
Speaker 1: with a big bass drum in the middle of the room.
Speaker 1: Her assistant turned on the light to reveal that the
Speaker 1: medium was still tied to the chair and the big
Speaker 1: bass drum was beating all on its own. Rose was
Speaker 1: curious about how it was done, she told Houdini, so
Speaker 1: she went back a few nights later in disguise. When
Speaker 1: the lights were turned out, she quietly left her seat
Speaker 1: and crawled towards the drum, stretching out her fingers in
Speaker 1: the darkness until they encountered a child, whoever it was, froze,
Speaker 1: so Rose felt them out further. No, not a child,
Speaker 1: a dwarf, a very small dwarf. Rose crawled back to
Speaker 1: her seat, her curiosity satisfied. When the lights came on
Speaker 1: and the drum was sounding. This time she knew what
Speaker 1: it was, the dwarf beating the drum from inside. Houdini
Speaker 1: listened to the story, gave Rose the advice she wanted,
Speaker 1: then offered her a job. Rose was tough, smart, and,
Speaker 1: crucially for Houdini, open minded. She had no particular views
Speaker 1: either way on whether it might be possible to make
Speaker 1: contact with the dead. If she did happen to find
Speaker 1: a medium who was genuine, sh'd let Houdini know. As
Speaker 1: Rose later wrote.
Speaker 4: Harry Houdini, from the bottom of his fine soul, wanted
Speaker 4: passionately to believe in spiritualism. He would have sacrificed a
Speaker 4: fortune if he had ever been able to convince himself
Speaker 4: that there was actually such a thing as communication with
Speaker 4: the dead. His relentless attempts to unmask for dudulent mediums
Speaker 4: were devoid of malice, he thought, but one thing truth.
Speaker 1: Houdini sent Rose around the country trying to find that elusive,
Speaker 1: genuine medium while gathering material for his shows. When she
Speaker 1: got to a new city, she had first hang out
Speaker 1: in department stores to observe the local fashions. She had
Speaker 1: decide on a persona the rustic school teacher, perhaps the
Speaker 1: credulous servant girl, or the small town matron, should purchase
Speaker 1: an appropriate outfit. Back at her hotel, she wrote.
Speaker 4: I'd remove the powder from my face, plaster my hair
Speaker 4: down in the most unbecoming fashion, probably put on glasses
Speaker 4: and sally forth.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Houdini himself would turn up for the fun of
Speaker 1: unmasking the fraud. Inland, Ohio, Houdini went to a seance
Speaker 1: at a famous trumpet medium's house in a blond wig
Speaker 1: and thick glasses, having given his name as mister f Road.
Speaker 1: He had with him a photographer, a prosecutor, a flashlight,
Speaker 1: and lampblack, a pigment used in boot polish. Trumpet mediums
Speaker 1: claimed that the spirits move the trumpet around in the
Speaker 1: darkness and whisper their messages through it. When the lights
Speaker 1: went out, Houdini surreptitiously smeared lamp black on the trumpet.
Speaker 1: Then mid seance turned on his flashlight. The photographer caught
Speaker 1: the medium blackhanded. The prosecutor told him, you're obtaining money
Speaker 1: under false pretenses. The medium was outraged. In forty years,
Speaker 1: he protested, I have never been exposed. Well, said Houdini,
Speaker 1: whipping off his blonde wig.
Speaker 3: Why now?
Speaker 1: More often Rose would gather evidence herself, sometimes at grave
Speaker 1: personal risk. She consulted a man about sixty years old
Speaker 1: who ran his own spiritualist church. She casually mentioned that
Speaker 1: she was interested in establishing a church herself. Her husband
Speaker 1: had left her plenty of money. It was a way
Speaker 1: to prove how easy it could be to set yourself
Speaker 1: up as an authority in the spiritualist religion. The man
Speaker 1: leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, and began
Speaker 1: to breathe heavily.
Speaker 5: Your husband is right near you. He loves you. So
Speaker 5: your husband tells me to tell you. You go into
Speaker 5: this work.
Speaker 2: You'll be quite successful.
Speaker 4: Can you ask my husband where I would find someone
Speaker 4: to assist me.
Speaker 1: The man began to speak in a changed voice.
Speaker 6: Ask the medium. The medium is very good. He can
Speaker 6: give you a charter for your church. He can cure
Speaker 6: you physically. You have to be purified before you can
Speaker 6: do this.
Speaker 5: Work.
Speaker 1: The man stopped speaking, breathed heavily for a while longer,
Speaker 1: then rubbed his eyes and spoke in his normal voice again.
Speaker 5: What did I say?
Speaker 1: Rose repeated the man's words back to him. Yes, he
Speaker 1: agreed thoughtfully he could do that. He went into another
Speaker 1: room and returned with a framed charter for a branch
Speaker 1: of his church, the First Church of the Divine Light.
Speaker 1: It would cost Rose five dollars to be ordained, but
Speaker 1: as the spirits rightly said, she would first need to
Speaker 1: be purified, and yes, he could purify her.
Speaker 2: Now, have you any corsets on?
Speaker 5: The steel will interfere in the purification process?
Speaker 1: Rose did not have any corsets on, She confirmed.
Speaker 5: I must get close to the body.
Speaker 1: He knelt in front of Rose's chair, made the sign
Speaker 1: of the Cross over her face, then began to rub
Speaker 1: her ankles and her thighs.
Speaker 5: Lord, please help me to show this new worker the light.
Speaker 1: He put his hand on her breast.
Speaker 5: You God, bring this worker closer to me.
Speaker 1: Rose stood up, the man still on his knees.
Speaker 4: I feel purified already. Thank you, five dollars, did you say?
Speaker 1: Rose paid her money and made her escape from the
Speaker 1: medium's house. Clutching her framed charter. She was now the
Speaker 1: Reverend Florence B. Rush of the First Church of the
Speaker 1: Divine Light. When Houdini went to Washington to give evidence
Speaker 1: for the Copeland Bloom Bill, he sent Rose ahead. As
Speaker 1: always suitably disguised, she went to visit two of Washington's
Speaker 1: most prominent mediums. Houdini called Rose Mackenberg to testify in
Speaker 1: front of the Congressional Committee. What is your full.
Speaker 4: Name, Reverend Rose Mackenberg?
Speaker 1: Rose explained that she's not just any old reverend. Note
Speaker 1: she's been ordained six times as a spiritualist minister under
Speaker 1: various silly names. She has full rights to baptize, to marry,
Speaker 1: and to bury. She explained too, that the previous day
Speaker 1: she had made appointments to see two of the best
Speaker 1: known Washington mediums, Madame Marcia and Missus Coates.
Speaker 3: Why are you dressed differently from what you are today.
Speaker 4: Whodini asked, entirely different.
Speaker 1: Madame Marcia and Missus Coates were both in the committee room.
Speaker 1: They got up and started to shout.
Speaker 7: I'd demand the right to defend myself.
Speaker 1: Rose related the typically vague reetings she received Missus Coates.
Speaker 1: She says told her.
Speaker 4: The spirits tell me that you are going to take
Speaker 4: a trip very shortly and going to meet some person
Speaker 4: and be placed in a different environment.
Speaker 1: Could she be more specific? No. As for Madame Marcia,
Speaker 1: she said a spirit was trying to communicate with her
Speaker 1: by the name of.
Speaker 3: So or maybe G.
Speaker 1: Anyway, said Rose. I then engaged them in conversation about
Speaker 1: these hearings and this bill. The two mediums, both heavily
Speaker 1: built women, edged menacingly closer to Rose.
Speaker 3: I insist that missus Colts keep away from the witness.
Speaker 1: Houdina yelled. He turned back to Rose.
Speaker 3: What did she tell you, object.
Speaker 1: Shouted Missus Coates. The medium said, Rose told me she
Speaker 1: thinks the bill won't pass because most senators visit mediums.
Speaker 1: She named four senators who visit her.
Speaker 4: That's a lie, She named Senator Kaeper, Senator Watson, Senator Dill,
Speaker 4: and Senator Fletcher. Then she said, I know for a
Speaker 4: fact there have been spiritual seances held at the White
Speaker 4: House with President Coolidge and his family.
Speaker 1: The chairman vainly tried to restore order. A man barreged
Speaker 1: through the crowd to lunge at Houdini, shouting, I'll break
Speaker 1: your nose, a congressman threw himself in the way. The
Speaker 1: police were called. The newspapers loved it. Today's Session, said
Speaker 1: The New York Times came near winding up in a
Speaker 1: free for all fistfight. The Chicago Daily Tribune reported that
Speaker 1: if luks could kill Missus Coates and Madame Marcia would
Speaker 1: have destroyed the existence of miss Rose Mackenberg. Rose herself
Speaker 1: later recalled.
Speaker 4: Ordinarily I dislike scenes, but this pandemonium of unleashed hysteria
Speaker 4: was not only volcanically dramatic, but extremely funny.
Speaker 1: Missus Coates finally got her turn on the witness stand.
Speaker 1: She claimed that Rose's account of their meeting was all wrong,
Speaker 1: that actually she hadn't been fooled by Rose's disguise, and
Speaker 1: that the message she had passed on from the spirits
Speaker 1: was this, you were doing work that is killing you.
Speaker 7: If you don't stop it, you will not live eighteen months.
Speaker 1: Cautionary tales will be back after the break. The congressional
Speaker 1: hearings on the Copeland Bloom Bill were a total waste
Speaker 1: of time. If you were hoping they might shed some
Speaker 1: light on the wisest way to legislate about mediums and
Speaker 1: fortune tellers. But if all you wanted was circus entertainment,
Speaker 1: they were great. Phodini theatrically brandished ten thousand dollars in cash,
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands in today's money. I'll give that to
Speaker 1: any medium, he says, who can prove they get knowledge
Speaker 1: by supernatural means. Tell me what nickname my father called
Speaker 1: me when I was a boy. Or here he reaches
Speaker 1: in his pocket and brings out a crumpled telegram. Tell
Speaker 1: me what this telegram says? The medium Madame Marcia yells
Speaker 1: from the audience that.
Speaker 7: Money belongs to me.
Speaker 4: I predicted the election of President Harding.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, as a congressman, I predicted that too.
Speaker 1: I see the matter is in dispute, adds another. Why
Speaker 1: don't I hold the ten thousand until it's settled. Houdini
Speaker 1: performed tricks to show how easily he could replicate the
Speaker 1: ways mediums claimed to be getting messages from the spirits.
Speaker 1: Speaking through a trumpet, for example.
Speaker 3: Now put it to your ear, and you have got
Speaker 3: to have A.
Speaker 1: Congressman puts the trumpet to his ear.
Speaker 3: If you hear a voice, you speak to it, you say,
Speaker 3: thank you, kind spirit. That's the rigamarole. They go through.
Speaker 1: After making the congressman hear a voice, Hoodini shows them
Speaker 1: a trick with writing on slates. He gets the congressman
Speaker 1: to examine two blank slates, then ties them together with
Speaker 1: a handkerchief. He gives another congressman a card and tells
Speaker 1: him to drop it in a dictionary. As Houdini rifles
Speaker 1: through the pages.
Speaker 3: There is no human being living who can tell me
Speaker 3: the number of the page in which that card has
Speaker 3: been trapped. Spirits. I want you to please give me
Speaker 3: the number of the page. Spirits, are you present if
Speaker 3: you are here, pull my ridea.
Speaker 1: Hoodini unwraps the handkerchief from around the slate on which
Speaker 1: are written Two words. Are those the first and last
Speaker 1: words on the dictionary page where the card was dropped.
Speaker 1: They are.
Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5: This is a trick.
Speaker 3: It is performed by mediums as a proof that they
Speaker 3: consult with the dead. It is the easiest thing in
Speaker 3: the world to make someone believe whose heart is yearning
Speaker 3: to believe.
Speaker 1: It's the nineteen twenties, the aftermath of the First World
Speaker 1: War and the Terrible Flu of nineteen eighteen, the world
Speaker 1: had no shortage of bereaved relatives. Whose hearts were yearning
Speaker 1: to believe. Hudini tells the congressman the story of how
Speaker 1: he once performed a slate writing trick for President Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: and Roosevelt had later asked whether it was genuinely a
Speaker 1: message from the spirits.
Speaker 3: When a great mind like Roosevelt asks that there must
Speaker 3: be protection for those who cannot protect themselves.
Speaker 1: But was the Copeland Bloom Bill the right way to
Speaker 1: provide that protection. When the opponents of the bill gave
Speaker 1: their evidence, there were moments of levity. Missus Coates dramatically
Speaker 1: explained that through the power of his own negative thoughts,
Speaker 1: Houdini is destroying himself, then snapped at a journalist who
Speaker 1: burst out laughing. Madame Marcia engaged a congressman in earnest
Speaker 1: discussion about what it means to have saturn in scorpio
Speaker 1: in the ascendancy. But there were more serious points too.
Speaker 7: Prophecy, spiritual guidance and advice are the very foundation of
Speaker 7: our religion, and to deny a spiritual minister the right
Speaker 7: to advise their followers is to curtail their privileges as
Speaker 7: ministers that their religion. It is a very delicate question gentlemen.
Speaker 1: That hit home. As one congressman mused, it is mighty
Speaker 1: difficult to legislate about religion. Then how exactly do you
Speaker 1: define fortune telling? The wording of the bill was hard
Speaker 1: to pause. You could read it as criminalizing a doctor
Speaker 1: giving a prognosis or the United States Weather Bureau providing
Speaker 1: a weather forecast. And what about uniting the separated? What
Speaker 1: does that mean? If a divorce lawyer persuades her clients
Speaker 1: to give their marriage another chance, would she be guilty
Speaker 1: of uniting the separated by a strict construction of this law?
Speaker 1: Perhaps she would after all the fun with trumpets and
Speaker 1: slates and saturn in scorpio. Eventually, an actual lawyer took
Speaker 1: to the stand to give evidence, although one suspicious congressman
Speaker 1: wanted to be sure he knew who they were speaking to.
Speaker 1: Are you a spiritualist, I am not, said the lawyer.
Speaker 1: Are you a palmist? I am not. You're just a lawyer,
Speaker 1: a mere lawyer. The mere lawyer explained that some clauses
Speaker 1: of the bill are hard to understand. Others might criminalize
Speaker 1: things nobody wants to criminalize, and others still were already
Speaker 1: covered by existing legislation on crimes such as fraud or
Speaker 1: obtaining money under false pretenses. The Copeland Bloom bill doesn't
Speaker 1: actually accomplish what it wants to accomplish, she said, but
Speaker 1: perhaps Senator Copeland and Congressman Bloom shouldn't feel too bad
Speaker 1: about that. In the century that's followed, plenty more legislators
Speaker 1: have found psychic phenomena a slippery thing to regulate. In
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, the International Journal of Law in Context published
Speaker 1: a paper by scholars from the University of Westminster exploring
Speaker 1: why the UK, for example, had tried the Vagrancy Act,
Speaker 1: the Fraud Act, the Theft Act, the Fraudulent Mediums Act,
Speaker 1: the Trade Descriptions Act, and the Unfair Commercial Practice Regulations,
Speaker 1: all of them manifestly in effect. Is paying to consult
Speaker 1: a medium a consumer transaction, an entertainment service, a religious experience.
Speaker 1: If a medium can't prove they're in touch with the dead,
Speaker 1: should the law care if they genuinely believe it. The
Speaker 1: article's authors reach a conclusion much like that of the
Speaker 1: mere lawyer. It seems unlikely that adequate legislation can be
Speaker 1: framed to deal with what is unknown or unprovable. But
Speaker 1: there's a bigger issue at play. Even when things are
Speaker 1: knowable or provable, There's only so much the law can
Speaker 1: do to shield people from their own gullibility. It's not illegal,
Speaker 1: for example, to sell useless alternative health products, although it
Speaker 1: might be illegal to market them with claims you can't
Speaker 1: back up. Many countries make banks refund customers who fall
Speaker 1: for some kinds of scam, but not all scams. The
Speaker 1: impulse behind the Copeland Bloom Bill, using the law to
Speaker 1: protect vulnerable people is a noble one. But there comes
Speaker 1: a point when laws have to let the public make
Speaker 1: their own mistakes. Or, as one congressman summed it up
Speaker 1: to Houdini with an air of resignation, I completely agree
Speaker 1: with you about all this, But what's the use in
Speaker 1: us legislating? A fool and his money are soon parted
Speaker 1: and always will be the showman. Houdini takes the stand
Speaker 1: in the committee room one last time to choreograph what
Speaker 1: Rose Mackenberg later describes as one of the most touching
Speaker 1: little domestic interludes I have ever seen.
Speaker 3: My character has been a sale.
Speaker 1: Says Houdini. It's true one witness compared him to Judas
Speaker 1: someone else shouted anti Semitic slurs while trying to punch
Speaker 1: him in the nose. He's been called brutal, vile, and crazy.
Speaker 1: He wants to defend himself.
Speaker 8: There are no medals and ribbons on me, but when
Speaker 8: a girl will stick to a man for thirty two years,
Speaker 8: it is a pretty good recommendation I would like to
Speaker 8: have as a witness here, Missus Houdini.
Speaker 1: Kudini turns to his wife, Bess.
Speaker 3: Have I shown traces of being crazy unless it was
Speaker 3: about you?
Speaker 9: No am I brutal to you or vile? No am
Speaker 9: I a good boy? Yes, thank you, Missus Houdini.
Speaker 1: The Copeland Bloom Bill didn't make it into law, or
Speaker 1: perhaps that didn't matter. Houdini had got a blizzard of
Speaker 1: newspaper coverage out of the hearings. The people who read
Speaker 1: those articles, like the people who came to his shows,
Speaker 1: might thereby be made less foolish, less liable to be
Speaker 1: parted from their money by claims of supernatural abilities. As
Speaker 1: the hearings came to a close and Houdini prepared to leave,
Speaker 1: Madame Marcia came up to him.
Speaker 4: You're a smart man, mister Houdini, but perhaps I can
Speaker 4: tell you something you don't know.
Speaker 3: What's that, Madam Marcia.
Speaker 4: When November comes around, you won't be here.
Speaker 3: How's that you'll be dead?
Speaker 1: Now? Both Houdini and Rose Mackenberg had had their imminent
Speaker 1: demise foretold. Rose's work did not kill her. She went
Speaker 1: on to spend three more decades as an investigator of
Speaker 1: fraudulent mediums. Rose never married, but by the time she retired,
Speaker 1: she reckoned she'd been confidently put in touch with about
Speaker 1: fifteen hundred dead husbands, all of whom assured her that
Speaker 1: they were blissfully happy. On the other side, fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: dead husbands, not a single one of them said he
Speaker 1: was lost without her. As Rose liked to.
Speaker 4: Joke, that's not entirely flattering.
Speaker 1: But Houdini, What was it that? Houdini had told the committee,
Speaker 1: If an astrologer makes enough guesses, sometimes they'll guess something right.
Speaker 1: Hoodini would indeed be dead by November at the age
Speaker 1: of just fifty two, as we'll hear about next time
Speaker 1: in the third final episode of our three part series.
Speaker 1: Newspaper articles written by Rose Mackenberg are collated in a
Speaker 1: book by Tony Wolfe called Houdini's Girl Detective. For a
Speaker 1: full list of our sources, see the show notes at
Speaker 1: Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales as written by me Tim
Speaker 1: Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fines and Ryan Billy. It's
Speaker 1: produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design
Speaker 1: and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Additional
Speaker 1: sound design is by Carlos san Juan at Brain Audio.
Speaker 1: Ben and Dapfhhaffrey edited the scripts. The show features the
Speaker 1: voice talents of Melanie Guttridge, Stella Half, Oliver Hembrough, Sarah Jupp,
Speaker 1: Massamn Roe, Jamal Westman and Rufus Wright. The show also
Speaker 1: wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: Greta Cohene, Sarah Nix, Eric Sandler, Carrie Brody, Christina Sullivan,
Speaker 1: Kira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. It's recorded at Wardoor Studios in London
Speaker 1: by Tom Berry. If you like the show, please remember
Speaker 1: to share, rate and review. It really makes a difference
Speaker 1: to us and if you want to hear the show,
Speaker 1: add free sign up to Pushkin Plus on the show
Speaker 1: page on Apple Podcasts or at Pushkin dot fm, slash
Speaker 1: plus