Buffalo

The Davenport Brothers and the Spirit Cabinet

From 1854 Ira and William Davenport of Buffalo toured both sides of the Atlantic with a cabinet in which they were tied up with rope; the doors were shut, and out of the darkness came flying trumpets, ringing guitars and hands at the little window. Nobody could tie them until, in Liverpool in 1868, two sailors used a knot that held: the séance collapsed and the audience wrecked the hall. In 1911 Ira, an old man, received Harry Houdini at home and showed him the method in detail — how the rope is slipped and taken up again — and confirmed that there had never been any spiritualism in the act. Houdini set it down in a book.