Earlier on Smart Bitches I reviewed Houdini and Doyle, a new TV series in which Harry Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle team up to solve mysteries. The series was pretty meh, but you can get a great Houdini and Doyle fix from the non-fiction book, The Witch of Lime Street: Séance, Seduction, and Houdini in the Spirit World.

Pro: It has a glow in the dark cover.
Con: It leaves many questions unanswered.

Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz, also sometimes spelled Ehrich Weiss) was a magician and escape artist. If you are having trouble meeting your personal life goals, do not despair, for Houdini struggled in vaudeville, barely scraping by, for eight years before getting his big break (he met manager Martin Beck, who signed him onto the Orpheum circuit and convinced him to concentrate on escapes).

Arthur Conan Doyle was best known for creating the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. He was a doctor, a writer, and a war reporter. Because his writing displayed such brilliant exercises in logical deduction, his opinions on matters like spiritualism carried great weight with the public. He also had a sense of wonder that could lead him astray. No matter how many times Houdini explained his tricks to Doyle, Doyle insisted that Houdini must have at least some magical abilities to carry off his escapes.

Witch of Lime Street focuses on Houdini and Doyle and a famous medium, Margery, who Houdini was obsessed with discrediting. Margery, whose real name was Mina Crandon, channeled the spirit of her brother, Walter. Margery was a funny, warm, attractive woman who befriended the same people who came to debunk her. Unlike other mediums, Margery did not charge for her services. For about a year, investigators, including Houdini and other members of a committee formed by Scientific American, tested Margery. Depending on your point of view, she was either thoroughly debunked or the case was inconclusive. Margery never admitted to fraud.

Initially, both Houdini and Doyle were excited about the possibility of contacting the dead. Houdini had been especially close to his mother, and was devastated when she died. He hoped to contact her from the beyond. Meanwhile Doyle lost many close family members in WWI. Closest to home was his son, who died of influenza in the last days of the war. Houdini and Doyle became close friends, and stayed that way long into the argument that ensued when Houdini became increasingly convinced that all mediums were fakes, while Doyle claimed to talk to his dead son on a regular basis through mediums. As time passed, their interests became obsessions. Houdini became obsessed with discrediting Spiritualism, while Doyle became obsessed with defending it.

The Spiritualist Movement was popular during the Victorian Era, and it took off in a big way right after WWI. This was a period during which many people had disposable income (mediums were not cheap) and an overabundance of terrible loss. One thing this book excels at is demonstrating why so many intellectual giants of the day, including Doyle, were convinced that while most mediums were fake, many had a true ability to contact the dead. For one thing, the best mediums went far beyond tricks like table rapping. Doyle’s medium, Margery, summoned spirits who could send a table chasing people around a room. She sent objects through the air, she could start and stop a Victrola playing music in another room, and she could produce ectoplasm from startling parts of her anatomy. As a reader, even when Houdini claimed to know how tricks were done, I often found myself saying, “OK, but how did she do that other thing?” And I didn’t always get an answer.

The other reason Spiritualism was so attractive as a concept was that not only were America and Europe in mourning for those lost in the war, they were also nations in constant wonderment at all the inventions and discoveries that had become prevalent during this time. This was an age of electricity, x-rays, the telephone, the telegraph, the radio, and the atom. The idea that invisible signals or waves could travel to and from the land of the dead didn’t seem that odd when held up to something like the telephone, which allowed invisible but audible signals to travel to and from distant speakers.

I enjoyed Witch, but the pacing is odd. It’s told in very short chapters. It has a disjointed, choppy feel. Huge chunks of book go by that don’t involve Margery, or Houdini, or Doyle, or sometimes any of the three. I was left with a lot of unanswered questions. If any two words could sum up my reaction to this book, which threw around facts such as “Fires with an eerie blue hue began erupting” like handfuls of confetti, those words would be, “Wait, WHAT?” Seriously, I needed a full breakdown of how Margery did her stuff. “She used her foot” does not cut it.

In addition to all the ways I must now feel inferior to Victorian and Edwardian women (I haven’t had an 18 inch waist since I was four) I now feel inadequate because I cannot produce ectoplasm from my vagina. What is this stuff supposed to look like? There are lurid photos, says David Jaher (the author). Well, let’s see them! Does she look like she’s manifesting ghosts or does she look like she needs a good antibiotic? I need to know these things FOR SCIENCE.

As you might guess from the emphasis on Margery’s vagina, gender and sexuality play a huge role in this book, as does class and religion. Margery was often asked to strip and have her orifices examined as part of examinations. She had an affair with one researcher and was accused of attempting to seduce several others. Spiritualism was, for many participants, a chance to engage in intimate touch and a chance to express sexual feelings and thoughts (either directly or through channeled spirits). As a woman who was sexually attractive and charming, Margery was subjected to an enormous amount of slut-shaming.

Class and religion also came into play. Margery’s credibility took a serious hit when she was exposed as having a lower class past. In marrying Dr. Crandon, Margery had moved up socially, and this was thought to make her less trustworthy than if she actually had been upper class. Meanwhile, Houdini was attacked by Spiritualists for his Jewish identity. Spiritualism for thousands of people was a religion, not a hobby, and Houdini’s efforts to discredit it were seen as religious persecution by Spiritualists. Houdini was attacked by mediums that compared him to Judas and to the Romans who crucified Jesus.

All these interplays of the economic and social realities of the time as well as attitudes towards religion, science, class, and gender are fascinating. Ultimately the story is primarily a sad one, but it is at least somewhat heartwarming to see that many bitter rivals were able to be courteous to each other – the loss of the friendship between Houdini and Doyle is heartbreaking largely because they were able to tolerate each other’s viewpoints in a friendly way for so long.

In the sense of showing the context in which Spiritualism thrived, and the context in which it faded from view, this book is excellent. The book falters in failing to provide a close focus on a particular plot or set of characters. As the book progresses, people and stories drop in and out of view. It also fails to provide details about how mediums did their work. You can Google “Houdini and Margery” and find a detailed pamphlet by Houdini about his examination of Margery – why isn’t that included in the book? Why did I have to turn to Google to find out how Houdini made an elephant disappear? Why did the Crandons send the child they intended to adopt, Horace Newton, back to England, and what happened to him?

This is a fascinating book with an abundance of photographs and no lack of intriguing characters. It’s a great look into those post-WWI days and pre-Depression days when people experienced at once great sorrow and great joy in an age of rapid invention and innovation. The only serious problem with this book is that there’s both too much content and not enough. The many different threads keep the book from feeling cohesive, and the many different details keep the reader both eager to keep reading and frustrated at a lack of resolution.

In the last days of her life, Margery said to an investigator, “Why don’t you just guess? You’ll all be guessing…for the rest of your lives.” This book leaves us guessing about a lot of things, sometimes unnecessarily, but it’s entertaining as heck.