Section III: Politics and Society
JEREMY C. YOUNG
Empowering Passivity: Women Spiritualists, Houdini,
and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
Abstract
Women Spiritualist mediums and Harry Houdini converged on Washington,
D.C. in 1926 for a raucous, but previously little-studied, Congressional hearing
on fortune-telling. This article examines that hearing and contextualizes it within
the larger historiography of American women and feminism in the interwar years.
With the disintegration of the suffrage movement, 1920s American feminists were
faced with a difficult choice: demand full equality with men and downplay female
solidarity, or emphasize women’s difference from men and defend the special prerogatives they had already won. Only with the advent of women’s liberation in the
1960s were women activists able once again to contain the equality-difference
dichotomy within a single movement. This article, however, argues that 1920s
Spiritualist mediums formed a critical vanguard of women able to anticipate the
later multiplicity of feminisms by virtue of their presumed passivity. By declaring
themselves mere vessels through which spirit personalities could speak and be heard,
Spiritualist women could perform a variety of transgressive gender roles, both masculine and feminine, while remaining traditionally feminine in their non-séance
lives. In defending themselves against Houdini’s gendered attacks, and in actually
convincing a Congressional panel that Houdini himself was gender-transgressive,
the Washington mediums drew power from their passivity and proved they could
simultaneously be both egalitarian and maternal feminists—thus foreshadowing the
pluralistic feminism of the later twentieth century.
History does not record why New York Congressman Sol Bloom introduced
H. R. 8989 into the Ninety-Sixth U. S. Congress in the winter of 1926.
Whatever the bill’s origin, Bloom clearly thought he was proposing routine legislation, not bringing chaos to the nation’s capital. Bloom’s measure, cumbersomely
titled “A Bill Amending Subchapter 5 of the Code of Law of the District of
Columbia, as Amended to June 7, 1924, relating to Offenses against Public
Policy,” sought to make fortune-telling a crime—punishable by up to a $250 fine
and/or six months’ imprisonment—within the capital district. After Congress
had referred the bill to the Subcommittee on Judiciary of the Committee on the
District of Columbia, Bloom assured Subcommittee Chairman Clarence McLeod
that the proposal was uncontroversial. “I am just trying to bring this fortuneJournal of Social History vol. 48 no. 2 (2014), pp. 341–362
doi:10.1093/jsh/shu075
© The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].
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telling proposition to a basis where it can be properly regulated,” Bloom testified
at a February 26 hearing. “That is all there is to it.”1 But pandemonium, not reasoned consideration, was what Bloom got for his trouble. Instead of an inquiry regarding a bill, the hearings became the theater for a dramatic confrontation over
gender roles in 1920s America.
The fight concerned Spiritualism, the belief in and practice of communication with the dead. Spiritualism’s mostly female mediums and ministers billed
their movement as a religion far removed from the dubious clairvoyance of
county-fair fortune tellers. Despite the fact that Spiritualists often used their otherworldly contacts to dispense advice about the future—and that the professional
lines between Spiritualists, astrologers, and fortune tellers were often blurry
ones—it was unclear whether true Spiritualist practitioners even fell under
Bloom’s legislation. Bloom made Spiritualism the central issue, however, when
he invited the famed magician and escape artist Harry Houdini to testify before
the committee. Houdini believed that the Spiritualist faith was a “curse . . . leaving
in its wake a crowd of victims whose plight is frequently pathetic, sometimes ludicrous, oftener miserable and unfortunate, and who are always deluded.”2 Arguing
that Bloom’s bill should be interpreted or changed to include Spiritualists, Houdini
quickly seized control of the hearing and used it to put Spiritualism itself on trial.
For their part, local Spiritualists recognized that the bill and Houdini’s involvement might well lead to the criminalization of their activities. Led by the astrologer/medium Madame Marcia and the minister Jane B. Coates, they put up a
vigorous defense. On February 26 and for three more days after the hearings
resumed in May, witnesses and audience members hurled charges of fraud and
malfeasance at one another in a circus-like atmosphere, while the committee
tried desperately to maintain order. Newspapers across the country chronicled the
fracas. Even the otherwise-uninvolved President Coolidge was dragged into the
mess when a witness claimed, probably inaccurately, that the Coolidges had held
Spiritualist séances in the White House.3 Relegated to the sidelines in a battle
that went far beyond his bill, Bloom became so exhausted by the proceedings that
he fainted in the Capitol the day after the hearings concluded.4
Historians have analyzed Houdini’s long-running war on Spiritualist
mediums, but—for all the H. R. 8989 subcommittee hearing’s theatrical bluster—
they have written little about the 1926 confrontation between Houdini, Marcia,
and Coates.5 An examination of the hearing enhances our understanding of the
Houdini-Spiritualism conflict in several key ways. First, the hearing transcript
allows for a shift in focus from Houdini to the Spiritualists themselves. Outside
the confines of the séance, Houdini’s formidable media presence generally left
little room for mediums to respond publicly to his exposés. Within the congressional hearing, however, Spiritualists were able to speak for themselves before a relatively open-minded audience. Second, the hearings highlight the conflict’s
gendered underpinnings. In a society where women held few positions of power,
between fifty and eighty percent of practicing mediums were female.6 The
hearing transcript—along with the writings of Houdini, the Spiritualists, and
journalist observers—shows that Houdini’s attacks on the mediums had perhaps
even more to do with their gender than with their beliefs.
Most important, in placing gender at the center of the Houdini-Spiritualism
battle, the hearings form a valuable case study of how women negotiated the
complex landscape of gender roles in post-suffrage America. As the suffrage
Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
343
coalition fractured, Nancy Cott has shown, American women in the 1920s faced
perplexing choices over whether to present themselves as equal to or different
from men—entitled to the same rights men enjoyed, or deserving of special privileges based on sex differences and unique social roles.7 Both approaches were integral to the emerging feminist movement, but their contradictions also created
difficulties for individual women and left their activism open to attack. The result
was the dissolution of the “woman movement” and a weakening of women’s
overall influence on American society. Not until feminism reconstituted itself as
an organized movement in the second half of the century were women able once
again to contain the sameness/difference dichotomy within an effective activist
agenda.8
The actions of Madame Marcia and Jane Coates during the hearing, however,
suggest that Spiritualist women had a unique ability to anticipate postwar feminism’s plurality of identities and to use these multiple roles to their advantage.
The Spiritualists’ proto-feminism derived in large part from the nature of Spiritualism
itself. As John Kasson writes, Spiritualism allowed women mediums “to accept
the tightest bonds of femininity—passivity, spirituality, and suffering—and then
slip them off.” By passively allowing “spirits” to speak through their bodies, the
women operated as masculine masters of the séance and even embodied male
spirits before resuming their female condition.9 Similarly, the pluralistic nature of
Spiritualism allowed female mediums to embody multiple models of womanhood
at the same time, enabling them to reconcile competing aspects of feminism and
presenting a frustratingly slippery target to enemies such as Houdini. Ultimately,
in both the séance and the subcommittee hearing, the mediums’ apparent passivity served as the source of their power.
Seen in this context, Houdini’s attacks and the mediums’ responses, as well
as the congressmen’s reactions, help to outline the contours of possibility in 1920s
gender roles. Over the course of the hearing, Houdini and the Spiritualists
adopted a variety of gendered stances designed to maneuver themselves out of
harm’s way while suggesting that their opponents were dangerous violators of traditional values. Figuratively channeling a dizzying array of female forms, the
Washington Spiritualists often outsmarted Houdini in these skirmishes. Meanwhile,
the panel’s seven congressmen operated as the de facto arbiters of gender and social
mores alike. Their responses to events foreshadowed both the hearing’s surprising
conclusion and the multifaceted nature of late-twentieth-century feminism.
Women, Gender, and Spiritualism in the 1920s
Many historians view the 1920s as a bleak period in American women’s
history, a time of retrenchment after the heady days of the suffrage movement.10
In part, women’s equality and activism suffered because of a newly-conservative
culture. America entered the 1920s still reeling from the upheavals of World War
I; the widespread belief that the conflict had upended traditional values spawned
a new cultural cynicism. In a quest to heal the nation’s wounds, much of
American society embraced conservative nationalism and reified traditional
gender norms—in particular, the white middle-class ideal of a stable, sexually discreet, monogamous marriage, with a dominant male breadwinner and a supportive female homemaker. This cultural shift led to greater political and social
inequality between men and women.11 Contemporaries viewed the emergence of
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young female “flappers” as a sign of women’s equality with men, but flapper
culture often masked deeper gendered inequalities both at work and at home.12
Being a flapper was itself an audacious act of resistance, since women were generally expected to conform to a feminine ideal of domesticity and motherhood.13
The resurgence of this type of gender traditionalism created difficulties for
American women’s activism. With the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in
1920, suffrage organizers and other powerful women seemed at the height of their
influence, but winning the vote did little to expand women’s prerogatives in
society. Some historians argue that the 1920s male political establishment systematically dismantled women’s reform efforts in an attempt to preserve its own
power. Men undermined women’s political clout both by out-organizing women’s
groups and by leveling accusations of Communism at female-run organizations.14
Cott and other scholars challenge this narrative; they argue instead that the
decade was a key period for the development of feminist consciousness, but that
the women’s movement simultaneously fragmented along internal lines.15 Either
way, the 1920s represented a shift among women reformers from aggressive political and direct-action strategies to less threatening, and arguably less effective, voluntarist methods.16
As female political activism waned, many women turned to less-institutionalized
activities which afforded them more freedom to maneuver within cultural norms
while still enabling them to exercise societal influence. Spiritualism was one such
site of informal authority for women. “Spiritualism,” according to the National
Spiritualist Association’s 1930 constitution, “is the science, philosophy, and religion of continuous life, based upon the demonstrated fact of communication, by
means of mediumship, with those who live in the spirit world.”17 The Spiritualist
movement began in 1848 when sisters Margaret and Kate Fox heard spirits
rapping on their Rochester bedroom wall.18 In a nation filled with uncertainty
about the growing scientific rationalization of society, eager believers soon filled
Spiritualism’s ranks.19 Within a few decades, the movement had spread throughout the United States and Western Europe.
From the beginning, mediums claimed to be merely passive channels through
which spirit guidance could reach the living; in some ways, they even resembled
mechanical telegraph relays that allowed people to communicate freely between
worlds.20 In reality, however, the Spiritualist faith afforded its women practitioners a great deal of power. Spiritualists viewed women as uniquely prone to mediumistic ability; accordingly, the movement encouraged female members to lead
séances, sermonize before congregations, and preach at revival meetings.21 The
logic of female mediumship rested on a conception of women as the sensitive sex.
Women mediums were often able to turn this role on its head—using their connection with the spirit world, as Alex Owen writes, to “sabotag[e] the mechanics
of power inherent in the Victorian codification of gender difference.”22 Claiming
spiritual inspiration, female mediums often urged their mostly female clients to
avoid loveless marriages, divorce abusive husbands, or even pursue extramarital
relationships.23 Spiritualism eventually developed an informal political platform
centered on women’s rights and the liberalization of gender norms. Women
mediums achieved prominence in suffrage campaigns; aided the causes of
women’s health, free love, and marriage reform; and waged a lengthy battle
against sex-discriminatory doctors.24 Talented Spiritualist lecturers such as Lois
Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
345
Waisbrooker and Victoria Woodhull brought the causes of egalitarian marriage
and free love, respectively, outside the séance to lay audiences.25
Political activism was not Spiritualists’ only method of expanding the boundaries of female gender roles. The appearance of passivity enabled mediums to
subvert mainstream sexual mores in a variety of subtler ways. Male clients and psychical researchers interacted with female mediums and their spirit manifestations
in a highly sexualized fashion, all in the name of scientific investigation.26 Spirits
often made sexually suggestive comments to onlookers. Some African and Native
American apparitions participated in Victorian narratives of exoticism that legitimized sexual deviance within the séance.27 Even where overt sexual transgressions did not occur, the very concept of spirit possession and communication
with the spirit world undermined strict social and sexual boundaries.28 By the last
decades of the nineteenth century, Spiritualist practitioners such as Woodhull
had become synonymous in the public mind with sexual transgression and even
obscenity; Anthony Comstock and other moralists sought to jail women
Spiritualists and outlaw their publications.29
After a fallow period in the 1890s, Spiritualism experienced a strong resurgence after World War I.30 Spirit communication appealed to families who had
lost loved ones during the war; the new converts included prominent intellectuals
and scientists such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge. Unlike its
nineteenth-century counterpart, postwar Spiritualism emphasized association and
cooperation.31 Researcher George Lawton reported in 1932 that Spiritualism had
become a fully-organized religion complete with national governing bodies,
formal churches, and even a seminary for training mediums.32 The largest national body, the National Spiritualists’ Association, boasted over five hundred
churches nationwide. This increased organization and publicity led to significant
growth in the movement. Census records show that both the number and membership of Spiritualist churches nearly doubled between 1916 and 1926; by the
latter date, over six hundred established churches claimed over fifty thousand adherents, with the total number of believers probably far greater.33 Practicing
female mediums likely numbered at least several thousand.
Though men held most offices in the new governing bodies, women continued to play a leading role in séances and to use the passivity inherent in
Spiritualist practice as a cover for engaging in public activism.34 Just as their counterparts had helped promote the social reform movements of the 1870s,
Washington’s women Spiritualists became involved in the female-led peace
movement of the mid-1920s.35 Madame Marcia used her nationally-syndicated
annual horoscope in 1924 to urge American leaders to join the World Court and
inaugurate “an era of peace and understanding between the nations of the
world.”36 Meanwhile, Jane Coates submitted a world peace proposal to a national
contest and promoted her entry through the newspapers.37 Clearly, Spiritualism
remained an important public platform for American women.
The Magician and the Medium
It was largely women’s role in Spiritualism that roused Harry Houdini to
oppose the practice of communication with the dead—though he might well
have denied the connection. Houdini, born Erik Weisz in 1874, was a Hungarian
Jewish immigrant who found fame in the United States first as a magician and
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then as a celebrated escape artist. Houdini’s athletic, often shirtless performances
thrilled audiences and transformed him into an icon of masculinity, but his own
views on gender were complicated.38 Houdini fancied himself a defender of
domesticity and traditional marriage. However, his obsessive attachment to his
mother and his 1918 affair with socialite Charmian London placed the escape
artist’s own marriage under considerable strain.39
Beginning in 1922, Houdini launched an intensive campaign to discredit
Spiritualism. His crusade began when a female medium attempted to channel the
spirit of Houdini’s now-dead mother. Though the practitioner was a personal
friend of Houdini’s and doubtless meant well, the magician detected fraud in the
performance and felt betrayed.40 Communicating with his mother would have
“meant to me an easing of all pain that I had in my heart,” Houdini wrote; having
that possibility offered only to be taken away was unbearable.41 He never forgave
Spiritualism for this painful experience. Through countless exposés of individual
mediums, and through the 1924 publication of his anti-Spiritualist tract A
Magician among the Spirits, Houdini quickly became Spiritualism’s most prominent
and dangerous antagonist.
As his opposition to the movement grew, Houdini developed two key criticisms of Spiritualism. Both critiques reflected the escape artist’s apprehensions
about Spiritualism’s role in enabling gender transgression. First, Houdini viewed
séances as a form of legalized fraud—and, in keeping with contemporary fears
about threats to American manhood, he saw fraud itself as an attack on masculinity.42 “You [have] been truthful and manly all your life,” the magician wrote Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle in 1922; Houdini’s coupling of the two traits suggested an
intrinsic link—an untruthful man could not be manly.43 In A Magician among the
Spirits, Houdini recounted the story of a Dr. Julian Hubbell who had been bilked
out of $12,400 by a female medium who claimed to be channeling the spirit of
American Red Cross founder Clara Barton.44 Houdini implied that Hubbell had
lost both his money and his manhood to the medium’s feminine wiles. At the
1926 hearing, Houdini described more than one scientist as “a gentleman and a
scholar;” again, the escape artist was linking the search for truth with manly
virtue and implying that the falseness of Spiritualism undermined masculinity as
well.45
Second, Houdini echoed time-honored fears of Spiritualist sexuality by attacking mediums as dangerous sexual libertines. In his book, Houdini described
in prurient detail the sexual escapades of the Spiritualists he had unmasked. One
male practitioner, he reported, had induced a married male investigator to kiss
the medium’s “stubble beard” during a séance.46 More often, Houdini revealed his
obsession with female transgressions by skewering the sexual immorality of
women Spiritualists. He informed his readers that Eusapia Palladino, who “in her
younger days . . . was a buxom woman,” was known to “thr[o]w her legs into the
laps of her male sitters . . . and did various other things calculated to confuse and
muddle men.”47 Houdini devoted an entire chapter to medium Ann O’Delia Diss
Debar and her “morals as low as one can imagine in a human being.”48 He traced
the history of Diss Debar’s male conquests and described how she “had lured
young girls into joining her immoral cult.”49 Equally as bad, from Houdini’s perspective, was Diss Debar’s open display of sexual desire: “In choosing between two
lawyers to represent her in court she . . . desired to know about their age and looks
as well, finally deciding upon the younger and better-looking.”50 Meanwhile, Diss
Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
347
Debar’s husband, judged by the courts equally guilty of her crimes, was in
Houdini’s view a mere emasculated dupe “without money or ‘mind of his own’”
who was “physically incapable” in the bedroom.51
For all Houdini’s antipathy toward mediums, the magician’s own art at times
seemed uncomfortably similar to Spiritualism. Early in his career, Houdini had
even conducted séances before large audiences, though his guilty conscience had
led him to suspend the practice.52 Even after he ceased practicing mediumship,
Houdini borrowed many of his escape routines from early Spiritualists such as the
Davenport brothers. Almost the only difference between Houdini’s performances
and those of Spiritualists was that Houdini insisted his success stemmed from
physical ability rather than supernatural power.53 John Kasson points out the gendered importance of this distinction: while women Spiritualists took on a variety
of feminine and even masculine identities through the guise of passive mediumship, Houdini’s craft as an escape artist involved disabling his own masculine independence by encasing himself in physical bondage and then removing the
shackles and restoring himself to full manhood.54 The “mirror image” nature of
the two practices threatened the magician and further motivated his attack on
Spiritualism.
The sharp contrasts Houdini drew between his own truthfulness and
mediums’ fraudulence, his own marital stability and mediums’ sexual transgressions, were rooted in this central performative distinction between Houdini’s
active creation of his own manhood and the mediums’ passive denial of their femininity. Houdini recognized that Spiritualist passivity enabled women mediums to
adopt and discard a virtually unlimited series of gender roles, while maintaining
plausible deniability about their own involvement—since it was not the mediums
themselves, but the spirits speaking through them, who were responsible for even
the most transgressive gender performances. In describing mediums as frauds and
libertines, the escape artist was acknowledging the power and flexibility mediumship imparted to nominally gender-traditional women practitioners. Despite his
sexually suggestive presentation, by contrast, Houdini himself was trapped in a traditional, monogamous marriage that—as the London affair made clear—he found
just as confining as, and more inescapable than, the chains that bound him
during his performances. It was no wonder that Houdini resented a group of
women who had found a way to engage in gender-transgressive behavior while
maintaining a veneer of respectability.
Houdini’s anxieties about female mediums made a confrontation in
Washington all but inevitable. The District of Columbia was home to the most
politically-connected women Spiritualists of the 1920s—none more powerful
than Madame Marcia. The middle-aged Marcia was a fantastical figure who has
become an enduring cultural symbol; she even appeared as a character in a Gore
Vidal novel.55 In real life, Marcia had come from poverty. Abandoned by both
her father and her husband, she performed as a chorus girl, a palm reader, and a
Spiritualist medium (a role she never fully relinquished) before becoming a professional astrologer.56 Marcia labored in relative obscurity until 1909, when she
predicted that one of her clients, Edith Galt, would become First Lady.
When Galt married President Woodrow Wilson six years later, Madame
Marcia became a sensation. By 1920, the Bridgeport Telegram reported that
“Eminent Washington women have taken up the study of astrology and now the
craze for horoscopes has dispossessed the Ouija board;” the article named Marcia
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as the medium of choice.57 Reporters began frequenting the seer’s Dupont Circle
apartment, and Marcia’s annual politically-tinged national horoscopes became
fixtures in American newspapers.58 In February 1919, Marcia told her client
Florence Harding, wife of Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding, that the Senator
would soon become President. When that prediction came true as well, Marcia
found herself with regular access to the First Lady.59
In a 1938 Liberty Magazine article, the astrologer boasted that during the
Harding administration “I, Marcia, had been the hub of the wheel of our national
government . . . a President-maker and a President-ruler.”60 Though exaggerated,
the claim contains a kernel of truth; Marcia did function as a sort of political operative, albeit one who evinced only vague ideological or policy interests. For instance, Marcia became involved in the exposure of a shadowy “fixer” named Jess
Smith who had blackmailed his way into the Harding White House.61 Acting on
a tip from Florence Harding, Marcia first confirmed the allegations through her
network of female clients and then relayed them to a young J. Edgar Hoover by
way of his mother, another client.62 In the cesspool of corruption that was
Harding-era Washington, Marcia’s subtle management of this web of information
made her an agent of good government.
Marcia was in many ways a unique figure; few other Spiritualists published
national newspaper columns, counted First Ladies as close friends, or served as informal auxiliaries of the Bureau of Investigation. In gendered terms, however,
Marcia was merely an outstanding example of the sort of Spiritualist woman
Houdini most strongly opposed. She advised political figures, bragged to reporters
about her influence, and even published copies of Florence Harding’s handwritten letters to her in a 1925 Collier’s article—but she could also claim, plausibly, to
be merely a hardworking middle-class woman whose insights came from the
spirits and the stars and who was therefore above reproach.63 More even than
Coates or the other Washington Spiritualists, Marcia proved that there was virtually no limit to the power a woman medium could wield, or the identities (gendered and otherwise) she could adopt, under the guise of Spiritualist passivity.
Unsurprisingly, Houdini would make Marcia one of his primary targets at the
hearing.
Houdini Makes His Case
Though he seemed confident on the February morning when he faced the
Subcommittee on Judiciary for the first time, Houdini might well have felt
nervous about the complex and difficult performance that awaited him. The committee’s four Republicans and three Democrats, all men, sat ready to consider Sol
Bloom’s bill banning both Spiritualism and fortune telling within the nation’s
capital; Houdini’s job was to convince a majority of these diverse and opinionated
congressmen that the bill deserved passage. The two committee members who
would figure most prominently in the hearings reflected the panel’s range of temperaments. Frank Reid was an urbane Republican from Illinois, “fast-talking, with
quick, darting movements,” according to historian Douglas Waller, and “could be
brusque but witty.”64 Across the aisle from Reid sat “portly” North Carolina
Democrat William Cicero Hammer, who was, in a reporter’s words, “strong for la
politesse, especially when ladies are present.”65 Reid’s breezy sarcasm and
Hammer’s conservative, chivalrous attitudes toward gender would prove central
Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
349
to the ensuing debate. Could even such an experienced showman as Houdini
satisfy both congressmen?
The committee members began by raising concerns about Bloom’s bill. Most
felt the legislation imposed on freedom of religion and restricted harmless amusements; they compared it with a ban on belief in Santa Claus or fairies. “We are
here to pass an act of Congress,” fumed Congressman Ralph Gilbert, “and we are
making ourselves ridiculous with this bill.”66 Despite denials from Bloom, Gilbert
and others charged that the measure would outlaw recreational fortune-telling at
parties. Meanwhile, the sardonic Reid repeatedly broke the flow of Bloom’s presentation with witty asides. “I am serious about this thing, and I don’t want any
kidding or joking from you,” Bloom protested at one point. “That is the sad part
of it,” Reid retorted.67 Of the seven congressmen, Hammer alone indicated clear
support for the bill. “I don’t think soothsayers and gamblers ought to be allowed
in county fairs where children go,” he declared. Surprisingly, Hammer had never
even heard of Houdini, but the Congressman quickly came to appreciate the magician. “Mr. Houdini is an enthusiast, and he is what you might call an extremist,”
Hammer declared, but “I am the son of a Methodist minister, and I agree with
him.” Yet even Hammer worried that suppressing Spiritualism might infringe on
freedom of religion.68
Houdini quickly recognized the futility of arguing against Spiritualism’s validity when committee members acknowledged that mediums were tricksters but saw
little harm in their trickery. Houdini’s scientific disproof of Spiritualism was
equally pointless given that his closest ally on the committee, Hammer, did not
believe in evolution.69 The magician’s showmanship proved ineffective, too.
When Houdini produced a telegram and challenged the clairvoyants in the room
to tell him what it said without leaving their seats, Reid ruined the set-piece by
jokingly offering a guess of his own.70 In fact, Houdini’s showy performance lent
credence to Jane Coates’ charge that Houdini was “one of the greatest mystics the
world possesses to-day,” a talented Spiritualist who sought to eliminate his female
competitors.71 Since Hammer and others knew little about the magician’s public
persona, Houdini would have to be more careful about his self-presentation.
The attacks from Coates and others stung Houdini. In a February 27 letter,
the magician complained that he had been “bitterly assailed by the Spiritualists
in Washington” at the House and subsequent Senate hearings.72 Accordingly,
Houdini returned to the Capitol in May more determined than ever to prove
Spiritualism’s nefarious nature. In February, Sol Bloom had promoted his bill as a
routine good-government measure, but this time Bloom would play only a minor
role in the hearing while Houdini himself directed the pro-H. R. 8989 forces. The
magician would foreground his most devastating arguments against Spiritualism:
that the practice undermined conventional gender norms by promoting fraud and
enabling sexual misbehavior. Houdini had already made statements to this effect
at the February hearing: male mediums would “get the women [clients] alone, and
they put their hands all over their bodies,” he had charged, while female mediums
would “say to a woman, ‘You have been intimate with a certain man,’ and then
proceed to blackmail her.”73
When the hearings resumed, Houdini made Spiritualist gender transgressions
the centerpiece of his presentation. He began with testimony designed to illustrate Spiritualism’s fraudulent nature. Houdini’s first witness was Remigius Weiss,
a questionable figure who claimed to be a debunker of Spiritualism, but who may
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actually have been a practitioner himself.74 On the stand, Weiss termed mediums
“moral degenerates, that . . . do not believe in Spiritualism at all.” Echoing
Houdini’s conflation of masculinity with honest scholarship, Weiss charged that
mediums deceived men such as Doyle and Lodge by exploiting the honesty and
propriety of the “gentlemen” scientists. Because female mediums knew the
morally upright investigators would not physically interfere with them, they could
get away with all sorts of tricks under cover of darkness.75 Chairman McLeod
caught Weiss in an important contradiction, though: how could it be “an easy
thing” for Spiritualists to “have bamboozled and humbugged prominent scientists”?76 Was not Weiss himself impugning the investigators’ masculinity by
making such a claim? Weiss’s testimony also raised another troubling issue: in
contrast with the gentlemanly conduct of Doyle and Lodge, Houdini seemed all
too willing to grab hold of female mediums in the name of preventing trickery.
Was the magician participating in the illicit eroticization of the séance? Not only
had he failed to win over the committee, Weiss had actually undermined the
anti-Spiritualists’ status as defenders of traditional gender roles.
Houdini’s other anti-fraud demonstration was similarly unsuccessful. The magician wanted to illustrate the Julian Hubbell case he had used in his 1924 book
to show how men could be stripped of their masculinity by fraudulent female
mediums. For some reason, however, Houdini got the story confused; he argued
that Hubbell’s medium was not a medium at all, but that Hubbell had visited a
second medium who had told him to concoct the whole story in order to steal the
first woman’s money.77 Soon Hubbell and both alleged mediums appeared as witnesses, and all three told different versions of the story.78 Reid was completely
baffled. “You paid another medium who gave you advice how to get it back from
the other medium?” he asked Hubbell incredulously. “Does not that prove instead
of disproving it?”79 Houdini’s broader connection between fraud and emasculation was lost in the muddle.
That left Houdini with his second and most sensational argument: that
Spiritualism encouraged sexual transgression. “Do you know how many crimes
have been committed in a dark room where a male or female medium has one of
the opposite sex in the room for hours?” he asked the committee.80 Houdini produced a witness to corroborate such claims: private investigator Rose Mackenberg, a
young employee of Houdini’s and an accomplished debunker of Spiritualists in her
own right.81 On the witness stand, Mackenberg described the ways mediums had attempted to victimize her sexually. One man, she reported, “said that he would have
to purify me . . . and tried to take advantage of seeing how far he could go with a
woman.” Another Spiritualist “said that the spirit of my husband came to him and
told him . . . I would have to go through a certain condition. Oh, it was very terrible, too terrible to repeat.” To play further on fears of sexual danger, Houdini
himself added a racial component to the latter incident: “[The medium] is a colored
man, and he gets white women in there.”82
Mackenberg had secured the committee’s attention, and now she dropped a
bombshell: at Houdini’s request, she had gone undercover in Washington to seek
spiritual advice from Jane Coates and Madame Marcia! In detail, Mackenberg recounted her covert interviews with the two Spiritualists: Coates had accused
Mackenberg of being “quite intimate, almost as good as married,” with a man not
her husband. Coates herself had stated that she “felt like putting [her] arms
around” Houdini. Both Coates and Marcia had impugned the character of elected
Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
351
officials by claiming that U.S. Senators numbered among their clients. Coates
had actually named four Senators who visited her regularly, including one,
Duncan Upshaw Fletcher of Florida, “whose wife is a medium.” And in a crowning indignity, Coates had attacked the integrity of the President himself. “I know
for a fact,” she had told Mackenberg, “that there have been spiritual séances held
at the White House with President Coolidge and his family.”83
In these lurid tales of sexual misconduct and official malfeasance, Houdini
seemed to have found the perfect argument to defeat his Spiritualist opponents.
Newspapers rushed to spread Mackenberg’s dramatic testimony across the
country. Despite official denials from the Coolidge administration, some papers
treated the alleged White House séances as fact.84 Even the sober New York
Times, while dismissing the allegation that Coolidge was a Spiritualist, found it
plausible that some Senators might attend séances.85 James O’Donnell Bennett of
the Chicago Tribune surreptitiously added his own state’s Senator Charles Deneen
to Mackenberg’s list of alleged Spiritualist officials.86 Meanwhile, Bloom and
committee member Robert Houston confirmed nervously that Coates had not
accused any congressmen of Spiritualism, “just the Senators.”87 Houdini himself
seemed swept away by his own narrative; he wrote to journalist Walter Lippmann
that he actually believed “they do hold séances in the White House.”88
Though Houdini framed his latest argument as a corruption charge, the sensationalist reporter Bennett made certain no one missed the gendered implications of Houdini’s attack. In Bennett’s coverage of the hearing, Coates appeared
as “Secresy Jane” who held séances with “a certain ‘blue vapor’ enveloping her;”
she glared at Houdini with “a searching once-over which was so special and particular that to call it a gloat would be to belittle it.” For her part, Marcia was “robust,
ample and richly appareled,” or alternately “billowy Madame Marcia . . . dripping
with jewelry.” The two Spiritualists “aimed deadly glances” at the “serene”
Mackenberg and “advanced menacingly toward” her until Hammer “bade them, in
the name of the womanhood he reverenced, sit.”89 Bennett’s dispatches made clear
to his readers what already seemed plain in the committee room: the confrontation
between magician and mediums was a fight over gender roles, not licensure requirements or even Washington intrigue.
It was a fight Houdini appeared to be winning. The committee members,
among others, clearly found Mackenberg’s narrative disconcerting. If Houdini
thought he had triumphed, however, he underestimated the resourcefulness of his
Spiritualist opponents.
The Spiritualist Defense
Just as Houdini’s early antics had threatened his standing with the committee, the defenders of Spiritualism quickly realized that they, too, would need to be
careful to avoid offending the congressmen’s sense of traditional values and
gender propriety. The women Spiritualists, in particular, found themselves scrutinized by committee members searching eagerly for deviations from traditional
gender norms. Coates fared poorly at first when she defended her rights too vociferously for the committee’s taste. She repeatedly shouted her outrage and interrupted Mackenberg’s testimony to attack “Houdini’s woman” until Hammer
silenced the medium.90 In the midst of an unrelated discussion, Bloom asked
Coates whether she was married; later, Hammer asked her whether she had been
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born in the United States.91 At one point, Congressman Henry Rathbone
launched into a spontaneous defense of traditional marriage by opining that a
good divorce lawyer should “get the parties together and prevent the divorce,”
and Hammer agreed with him.92 Clearly, the committee was laying down gender
boundaries the Spiritualists would have to navigate carefully. The mediums also
had some cause for encouragement, however. Hammer, for instance, had become
visibly agitated at one point during Houdini’s attacks on Coates. “I object to that
remark,” he had warned Houdini. “You are too much of a gentleman to make a
statement of that kind when the witness can not reply to you.”93 On this and
other occasions, the committee seemed concerned that Houdini himself might
lack the qualities of a “gentleman.”
Though the professional rivalries between the Spiritualists probably prevented much collaboration on a defense plan, a coherent strategy emerged from the
mediums’ actions.94 This approach consisted of three elements: first, discredit
Houdini’s specific charges against individual mediums, as they had in the Julian
Hubbell case; second, position Spiritualism as an ally of traditional societal and
gender norms; and third, attack Houdini himself as a threat to those norms. The
plan drew on Spiritualism’s own gendered identity: the paradox of a medium asserting authority while claiming to be merely the conduit for a powerful spirit.
Just as female Spiritualists had long utilized their supposed passivity to legitimize
their power, the Washington mediums would use the pious, feminine image of
their profession to justify the more gender-transgressive authority they held—and
to charge that Houdini’s attacks on them were themselves disrespectful and
unchivalrous.95
From the witness stand, Jane Coates outlined the Spiritualists’ opening argument. First, she categorically denied having accused Coolidge or any Senators of
practicing Spiritualism. “It is a great privilege, Mr. Chairman,” she declared, “to
stand here before this committee and deny the statement of Mr. Houdini and his
paid accomplice . . . [of] table tipping ever having been conducted in the White
House.” Coates insisted that Coolidge, “one of the finest men who has ever held
office as Chief Executive of our country . . . a great soul and a great Christian,”
should not have his name dragged into such a proceeding. Next, the medium suggested that Houdini had put his own assistant, Mackenberg, in danger: “I am convinced Houdini has practiced what we call ‘black magic’ on this woman and
hypnotized her. She obeys him as one in a trance.” Coates herself had not accused
Mackenberg of unchastity, she insisted; instead, she had urged the investigator to
expose Houdini as a fraud. “He is in your power,” Coates claimed to have told
Mackenberg, “and you can ruin him.”96
Coates had put Houdini in a difficult position. By denying she had said anything about Coolidge, the minister left Houdini and Mackenberg as the only ones
asserting that the President had held séances in the White House. Coates then
charged that it was Houdini himself, with “his foul language and his insinuations,” who was undermining American power structures by spreading dangerous
rumors about the nation’s chief executive. Similarly, Coates declared that
Houdini was leading his young female assistant to ruin. “This man Houdini,”
Coates concluded, “who speaks evil, sees evil, hears nothing but evil; who stands
here in the midst of lawmakers and utters evil words against scientists . . . has
been practicing trickery and fraud for so long that all men are tricksters to him.”97
Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
353
While Coates’ defense of Spiritualism was impressive, Madame Marcia’s performance at the hearing was even more effective. On the witness stand, the talented political operative played to perfection the role of the simple, aggrieved
woman. “I have never gone to school,” she lamented; “I am too ill to be here. . . .
After being deserted by a husband with two little babies I had to earn a
livelihood. . . . I am earning bread and butter for a mother 98 years old, and I
have all I can do in my physical state.”98 She was, she suggested, a middle-class
matron with traditionally conservative racial views—a fact she emphasized by
pointedly referencing her “colored maid.”99 Marcia focused her defense on
Houdini’s claim that she had, by charging Mackenberg for a fraudulent reading,
bilked Houdini out of ten dollars. Inverting the accusation, Marcia reflected this
charge back onto the magician himself: “In defense of my honor and
reputation . . . as an American woman,” she insisted that Houdini had besmirched her womanly reputation by calling her a thief.100 Bloom, clearly rattled,
assured Marcia that Houdini’s accusation of thievery “will be corrected. . . . I do
not think Mr. Houdini meant that.”101 In fact, it seemed plain that Houdini had
made exactly this charge.
Marcia was not finished. She castigated Houdini for calling the late Florence
Harding “a degenerate or weak-minded or an imbecile” for consulting mediums.102
Marcia was mischaracterizing Houdini’s comments, but the charge resonated with
a committee already sensing that Houdini was prone to intemperate attacks on
respectable women. Marcia further undermined Houdini’s self-portrayal as a
defender of traditional American culture when she highlighted the magician’s
Jewish identity. Though Houdini had falsely claimed Wisconsin as his birthplace
earlier in the hearing, Marcia’s references to “being an American born and bred”
and her objection to Houdini’s pronouncing her name “Marchia” underlined the
magician’s ethnic origins.103 Other witnesses echoed these anti-immigrant and
anti-Semitic undercurrents. One medium even stated, “In the beginning . . . Judas
betrayed Christ. He was a Jew, and I want to say that this bill is being put through
by two—well, you can use your opinion,” referring to Bloom and Houdini.104
National Spiritualists’ Association Secretary Harry Strack continued the onslaught
by referring to Houdini as “a pronounced atheist and infidel” whom Christians
should denounce.105
Marcia and the other witnesses had landed three solid blows against Houdini’s
claim to defend traditional gender norms. If Houdini launched vituperative
attacks on an innocent matron, if he called a former First Lady a dupe and an imbecile, if his ethnic and religious identity was questionable, perhaps the magician
himself was a threat to gender traditionalism. “I am not on trial,” Houdini complained in frustration, but Marcia retorted that “you are on trial in a way.”106
Later, when the magician fulminated that he would find her out if she ever began
selling lucky charms, Marcia replied confidently, “You will never catch me; no sir.
I am as slick as you are.”107
Having called Houdini’s character into question, the Spiritualists next produced a witness who bolstered their own traditionalist pedigree. Anna Louise
Paine Fletcher, the Spiritualist medium wife of Senator Duncan Fletcher, was an
ideal spokeswoman for the Spiritualist cause. Every aspect of Anna Fletcher’s selfpresentation downplayed the gender transgression represented by the marriage of
a medium and a Senator. Unlike Marcia, Fletcher did not claim to influence politics through her Spiritualist faith. Instead, Fletcher’s 1929 autobiography situated
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Winter 2014
her personal commitment to Spiritualism within family tradition; her mother had
been a medium and still communicated with her regularly, she wrote, from
beyond the grave.108 Fashionable and feminine, Fletcher embodied the sort of traditional womanhood the congressmen sought to defend. At the same time,
Fletcher’s status as a Senator’s wife prevented Houdini from attacking her, even
though she admitted to being a practicing medium. When Fletcher informed the
committee that “I have never come in contact with a medium who was dishonest,” the magician could only respond circumspectly that “I respect her very
much. I must respect her, but I also know that she is honestly mistaken.”109
A parade of additional witnesses testified to Spiritualism’s traditional gender
and family values and further strengthened the Spiritualists’ case. An African
American woman medium explained how Spiritualism benefited her congregation; a government worker recounted how a medium had prevented him from
committing a robbery; a German American soldier discussed the beautiful religious stories his wife had written through spirit guidance; a housewife described a
séance at which her dead mother had sung her a Christian hymn.110 Medium Ella
McLaren explained that her job was to “give a mother’s advice to a girl” in a way
that “encourages them to lead clean, noble, right lives.”111 The congressmen appeared moved by this testimony. Finally, after another medium testified that
“Spiritualism is a religion out of which thousands of people to-day are getting
their comfort and consolation,” Congressman Reid had had enough. “Your suggestion is that there be an amendment to this bill that it shall not apply to
Spiritualism?” he asked the witness. “We will insert it in there for you.” Strack
had the provision ready, and suddenly H. R. 8989 contained a clause stating that
it would not “interfere with the exercise of the spiritual functions or offices of
any . . . accredited representative of any religion.”112 The anti-Spiritualism bill no
longer concerned Spiritualists at all.
Meanwhile, the mediums’ attacks placed Houdini so thoroughly on the defensive that the magician felt obliged to put his own family on trial in order to
prove his claims of gender traditionalism. Fighting now for his reputation,
Houdini swore in his wife as a witness in an effort to reestablish his masculine authority by demonstrating the gender hierarchy of his marriage. He structured Bess
Houdini’s testimony to present her as a docile, submissive woman who would not
challenge him as Coates and Marcia had. While the gallery erupted in laughter,
Houdini asked his “girl” to affirm monosyllabically that he was not “brutal to you,
or vile,” or “crazy, unless it was about you,” and, awkwardly, that he was “a good
boy,” and then summarily dismissed her from the witness stand.113
Such a set-piece may have soothed Houdini’s masculine pride, but it did not
help him with the committee. As the hearings drew to a close, Houdini found
himself abandoned by even the formerly-sympathetic Hammer. The Congressman
suddenly began asking the magician a series of strange questions: had Houdini been
to British India, Allahabab, Germany, Paris, Hawaii, or Tokyo? Did he know Hugh
Weir, D’Alory Fetchett, or William J. Burns? Was he a numerologist or the president of a secret society? Apparently, Hammer had received these questions from
Marcia or another Spiritualist and was attempting to expose Houdini as a
medium.114 Shocked, Houdini repeated his social standing and marital status like a
mantra: “I am very happily married, 52 years of age, well to do, and very proud –”
Reid interjected, “And very proud of your wife, or try to make us think so.”115 This
time, the laughter in the gallery came at Houdini’s expense.
Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
355
Hammer’s transformation from Spiritual skeptic to Houdini critic symbolized
the collapse of the pro-H. R. 8989 campaign. Unsurprisingly, the subcommittee
did not recommend the bill for passage. Though the mediums had clearly won
the battle, Houdini initially refused to admit defeat. In a May 26 letter to the
New York World, he altered some details of the hearing to burnish his own performance and insisted that the bill would still pass.116 Exaggeration and bravado
could not overturn the result, however. In an August 26th letter to magician
James Harto, Houdini admitted responsibility for the debacle: “I think [the congressmen] were more interested in my manifestations than they were in the
mediums. I was sorry to see that, as I really am sincere about the law.”117 This
appears to have been Houdini’s final writing on the event; on October 31 he died
of peritonitis—a fate Marcia and Coates both later claimed to have prophesied at
the hearing.118
Houdini’s actions may have had one lasting effect on the Washington
Spiritualists. In 1932, Congress did levy an annual “licensing fee” of $250 for
“mediums, clairvoyants, etc.” in the District of Columbia.119 As Reid had promised six years earlier, the bill exempted organized Spiritualist churches from the
fee. Returning to her Spiritualist roots, Marcia “joined the church for three
dollars church dues for a year, and received a certificate of ordination;” she was
back at work the next day.120
Conclusion: Gender, Passivity, and Power in 1920s America
By any reasonable measure, the women Spiritualists successfully defended
their movement at the H. R. 8989 hearings. They presented themselves as advocates of traditional gender values, convinced key committee members that
Houdini was a threat to those values, and won a Congressional decision that safeguarded their positions of authority in Washington. Owing in part to the efforts
of these women, Spiritualism continued to thrive over the ensuing fifteen
years.121 The success of Marcia and Coates demonstrates, too, that women in
non-political, yet still activist realms such as Spiritualism could maintain their independence and effectiveness despite the inhospitable culture of the mid-1920s.
Certainly, the hearing represented something of a best-case scenario for the
defense of female prerogatives. The Washington mediums were quick-witted and
agile and had ample time to prepare for Houdini’s onslaught. The women’s local
connections provided the linchpin of their case by giving them access to a
Senator’s wife who was able to outflank Houdini culturally. Meanwhile,
Houdini’s performance hindered his argument in a variety of ways. The magician’s antics, brilliant on the stage, seemed ridiculous and unsettling in the committee room. His lack of local allies forced him to rely on questionable witnesses
and confusing narratives. His own ethnic identity compared unfavorably with
those of the women he was attacking. In less favorable circumstances, the
Spiritualists might have had more difficulty refuting Houdini’s central charge:
that their refusal to accept the boundaries of traditional gender roles rendered
them fraudulent, sexually transgressive, and dangerous to the American social
order.
Yet the Washington Spiritualists triumphed in the committee room not
because they were convincing, but because they were baffling. At every turn,
Coates and Marcia frustrated Houdini’s efforts to define their gender identities.
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Winter 2014
Houdini knew his female opponents were behaving in traditionally masculine,
overtly political, and sexually aggressive ways—but whenever he sought to prove
their transgressions, the Spiritualists transformed before the magician’s very eyes
into demure, traditional matrons. Houdini interpreted this gender malleability as
fraud, an illicit sleight-of-hand designed to mislead honest committee members
into supporting transgressive behavior. This view, however, clearly failed to
describe a woman such as Anna Fletcher—a medium who clearly engaged in
Spiritualist practices the magician considered deceptive but who was just as
clearly a morally upright paragon of traditional womanhood. In the end, the committee concluded that the mediums’ femininity trumped Houdini’s accusations of
fraud, but the congressmen, too, had difficulty fathoming the Spiritualists’ gender
performance. What, everyone wondered, were these women really up to?
Ultimately, the men at the hearing could not fully comprehend the
Washington Spiritualists because they misunderstood the purpose of the mediums’
self-presentation as maternal figures. Houdini realized that Spiritualist women were
covertly embracing transgressive and egalitarian gender roles—serving as activists,
political operatives, outspoken women, and even on occasion appearing as men—
but he failed to grasp that they were also the demure, feminine matrons they
claimed to be. Spiritualism’s passivity allowed practitioners to fragment their identities in a strikingly postmodern fashion; they could be themselves and other people,
men and women, egalitarian and maternal feminists simultaneously. What Houdini
viewed as fraud was actually something else entirely: a refusal by the mediums to
limit themselves to a single, consistent gender identity. This ability to contain a
multiplicity of selves within a single life allowed Spiritualist women to solve the
feminist riddle of sameness versus difference in a uniquely modern way—by embracing both roles at once.
When the late-twentieth-century women’s liberation movement developed a
new activist rhetoric with room for both female solidarity and gender equality, its
members did so in part through the active construction of feminist identities. The
women Spiritualists of the 1920s, however, achieved a similar outcome by embracing the power of passivity. By figuratively becoming an inert vessel through
which multiple gender impulses could manifest themselves, Marcia could be “a
President-maker and a President-ruler” while also quietly caring for her elderly
mother in a middle-class home; likewise, Coates could seamlessly combine outspoken activism with retiring widowhood. In the restrictive gender climate of the
1920s, Americans tolerated such a pluralism of gendered identities largely because
they did not understand it. Houdini charged that Spiritualist women were gendertransgressive, while the committee members concluded they were gendertraditional. It would take another forty years for American society to grasp that
women could be both at the same time.
Endnotes
I am grateful to Judith Allen and Michael McGerr for shepherding this project in its
earliest stages; to the Journal of Social History’s anonymous reader for valuable comments
that helped me reframe and strengthen my argument; and to Chelsea McCracken for
thoughtful advice on improving the manuscript. Address correspondence to Jeremy C.
Young, History Department, Grand Valley State University, MAK D-1-160, Allendale, MI
49401. Email: [email protected].
Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
357
1. U. S. House, Committee on the District of Columbia, Fortune Telling Hearing, 26
February, 18, 20, and 21 May 1926 (Washington, 1926), 1–2.
2. Harry Houdini, A Magician among the Spirits (1924; reprint, New York, 1972), 180.
3. “Hints of Séances at White House,” New York Times, May 19, 1926, 26.
4. “Representative Bloom Faints in House Lobby,” Washington Post, May 23, 1923, M2;
Kenneth Silverman, Houdini!!! The Career of Ehrich Weiss (New York, 1996), 393.
5. Analyses of the hearing include Silverman, Houdini!!!, 392–396; Benjamin Filene,
“Questions of Identity Shadow Houdini at Congressional Hearing,” Mystifier, Vol. 5, No. 4
(1996; online, <http://www.foxvalleyhistory.org/houdini/questionsofID.asp>); George
Lawton, The Drama of Life after Death: A Study of the Spiritualist Religion (New York, 1932),
408–409n; and Fred Nadis, Wonder Shows: Performing Science, Magic, and Religion in
America (New Brunswick, 2005), 129. Studies on Houdini and Spiritualism include
Silverman, Houdini!!!, 249–396; John F. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The
White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America (New York, 2002), 143–153;
Ruth Brandon, The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries (New York, 1983), 165–189; Ruth Brandon, The Life and Many Deaths of Harry
Houdini (New York, 1993), 233–279; Bernard C. Meyer, Houdini: A Mind in Chains
(New York, 1976), 142–154; and Thomas R. Tietze, Margery (New York, 1973), 48–55.
6. R. Laurence Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American
Culture (New York, 1977), 105; Lawton, The Drama of Life after Death, 181.
7. Nancy F. Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven, Conn., 1987), 30,
37, 50.
8. Ibid., 282–283.
9. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man, 143.
10. Jo Freeman, “From Suffrage to Women’s Liberation: Feminism in Twentieth-Century
America,” in Freeman, ed., Women: A Feminist Perspective, 5th ed. (Mountain View, 1995),
511; Joan M. Jensen and Lois Scharf, “Introduction,” in Scharf and Jensen, eds., Decades of
Discontent: The Women’s Movement, 1920–1940 (Westport, Conn., 1983), 3–4.
11. Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s
(New York, 1995), 10–11, 98; Erika Kuhlman, Reconstructing Patriarchy after the Great War:
Women, Gender, and Postwar Reconciliation between Nations (New York, 2008), 142.
12. Estelle B. Freedman, “The New Woman: Changing Views of Women in the 1920s,”
Journal of American History 61:2 (September 1974), 393.
13. Angela J. Latham, Posing a Threat: Flappers, Chorus Girls, and Other Brazen Performers
of the American 1920s (Hanover, N.H., 2000), 9; Paula Baker, “The Domestication of
Politics: Women and American Political Society, 1780–1920,” American Historical Review
89:3 (June 1984), 620, 621.
14. J. Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen: Social Feminism in the 1920s (Urbana, Ill.,
1972), 209; William H. Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic, and
Political Roles, 1920–1970 (New York, 1972), 29–30; Anna L. Harvey, Votes Without
Leverage: Women in American Electoral Politics, 1920–1970 (Cambridge, U.K., 1998), 2.
15. Nancy F. Cott, “Across the Great Divide: Women in Politics Before and After 1920,”
in Louise A. Tilly and Patricia Gurin, eds., Women, Politics, and Change (New York, 1992),
154; Cott, The Grounding of Modern Feminism, 9, 282.
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Winter 2014
16. Michael McGerr, “Political Style and Women’s Power, 1830–1930,” Journal of
American History 77:3 (December 1990), 881; Kristi Andersen, After Suffrage: Women in
Partisan and Electoral Politics before the New Deal (Chicago, 1996), 2, 169.
17. “Constitution and By-Laws of the National Spiritualist Association of the United
States of America (Revision of 1930),” in Gary L. Ward, ed., Spiritualism II: The Movement
(New York, 1990), 7; Lawton, The Drama of Life after Death, 148.
18. John J. Kucich has connected Spiritualism with earlier Native American, African, and
Creole spirit beliefs. Kucich, Ghostly Communion: Cross-Cultural Spiritualism in
Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Hanover, N.H., 2004), xi-xiii.
19. Moore, In Search of White Crows, 19, 24; Daniel Cottom, Abyss of Reason: Cultural
Movements, Revelations, and Betrayals (New York, 1991), 18; Logie Barrow, Independent
Spirits: Spiritualism and English Plebeians, 1850–1910 (London, 1986), 202; John Warne
Monroe, Laboratories of Faith: Mesmerism, Spiritism, and Occultism in Modern France
(Ithaca, N.Y., 2008), 263.
20. Tatiana Kontou, Spiritualism and Women’s Writing: From the Fin de Siècle to the
Neo-Victorian (London, 2009), 9; Jill Galvan, The Sympathetic Medium: Feminine
Channeling, the Occult, and Communication Technologies, 1859–1919 (Ithaca, N.Y., 2010),
12, 26.
21. Alex Owen, The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian
England (Philadelphia, 1990), 16; Lilian Whiting, “The Spiritualistic Camp Meetings in
the United States,” Annals of Psychical Research 5:25 (1907), 12–37; William D. Moore,
“‘To Hold Communion with Nature and the Spirit-World’: New England’s Spiritualist
Camp Meetings, 1865–1910,” in Annmarie Adams and Sally McMurry, eds., Perspectives
in Vernacular Architecture, VII, Exploring Everyday Landscapes (Knoxville, Tenn., 1997),
230–248.
22. Owen, The Darkened Room, 11; Amy Lehman, Victorian Women and the Theatre of
Trance: Mediums, Spiritualists and Mesmerists in Performance (Jefferson, N.C., 2009), 26.
23. Lawton, The Drama of Life After Death, 203.
24. Ann Braude, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century
America, 2nd ed. (Bloomington, Ind., 2001; orig. ed. Boston, 1989), 7, 117–118, 142–143.
25. Ibid., 136–137.
26. Pamela Thurschwell, Literature, Technology and Magical Thinking, 1880–1920
(Cambridge, U.K., 2001), 32.
27. Marlene Tromp, Altered States: Sex, Nation, Drugs, and Self-Transformation in Victorian
Spiritualism (Albany, N.Y., 2006), 29–31, 77.
28. Sarah A. Willburn, Possessed Victorians: Extra Spheres in Nineteenth-Century Mystical
Writings (Aldershot, U.K., 2006), 5.
29. Molly McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of
Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley, Cal., 2008), 94–97.
30. Lawton, The Drama of Life after Death, 146; Geoffrey K. Nelson, Spiritualism and Society
(New York, 1969), 160–161; Joseph McCabe, Spiritualism: A Popular History from 1847
(London, 1920), 212, 235.
31. Braude, Radical Spirits, 163.
32. Lawton, The Drama of Life after Death, 144, 186.
Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
359
33. U. S. Bureau of the Census, Religious Bodies: 1926, Vol. II: Separate Denominations
(Washington, 1929), 1313; Lawton, The Drama of Life after Death, 146; Nelson,
Spiritualism and Society, 160–161; McCabe, Spiritualism, 212, 235.
34. “Constitution and By-Laws of the National Spiritualist Association of the United
States of America,” 51.
35. Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace as a Women’s Issue: A History of the U. S. Movement for
World Peace and Women’s Rights (Syracuse, N.Y., 1993), 85–124.
36. Harry B. Hunt, “Famed Woman Astrologer Forecasts 1924 Eventful Year,” Portsmouth
Daily Times, January 1, 1924, 1.
37. “Says Arms Necessary to Keep World Peace,” Washington Post, August 26, 1923, 5.
38. Silverman, Houdini!!!, 28, 160–163.
39. Ibid., 218–219, 230; Houdini, A Magician among the Spirits, v.
40. Brandon, The Spiritualists, 173.
41. Houdini, A Magician among the Spirits, 152.
42. Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York, 1996), 193.
43. Houdini to Arthur Conan Doyle, December 15, 1922, reprinted in Houdini, A
Magician among the Spirits, 157.
44. Houdini, A Magician among the Spirits, 188.
45. U. S. House, Fortune Telling Hearing, 114, 115.
46. Houdini, A Magician among the Spirits, 183.
47. Ibid., 64–65n.
48. Ibid., 66.
49. Ibid., 68–70, 77n.
50. Ibid., 72.
51. Ibid., 69, 77n.
52. Silverman, Houdini!!!, 18–19.
53. Ibid., 40–42.
54. Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man, 143.
55. Gore Vidal, Hollywood: A Novel of America in the 1920s (New York, 1990), 9–12.
Madame Marcia’s legal name was probably Marcia Champney, though the hearing transcript lists her as “Grace Marcia.” This article refers to her by her chosen professional name.
56. Madame Marcia, “When an Astrologer Ruled the White House,” Liberty, April 9,
1938, 18.
57. “Craze for Horoscopes Supplants ‘Wee-Gee’,” Bridgeport Telegram, August 12, 1920, 1.
58. Hunt, “Famed Woman Astrologist Forecasts 1924 Eventful Year,” 1; Larry Boardman,
“She Predicts Stormy Year Ahead: Astrologist Sees Restless 1925,” Lima News, January 1,
1925, 1.
59. “Carl Sferrazza Anthony, Florence Harding: The First Lady, the Jazz Age, and the Death of
America’s Most Scandalous President (New York, 1998), 173; Madame Marcia as told to
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Herbert Corey, “The Tragic Love of Mrs. Warren G. Harding,” Home Magazine, January
1931, 19–23.
60. Marcia, “When an Astrologer Ruled the White House,” Liberty, April 8, 1938, 18.
61. Richard Hack, Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (Beverly Hills, CA,
2004), 79–80.
62. Ibid., 89–91; Anthony, Florence Harding, 402–403; Marcia, “When an Astrologer
Ruled the White House,” Liberty, June 11, 1938, 40.
63. Harry B. Hunt, “Harding Nomination and Death Foretold by Fortune Teller,” Ogden
Standard-Examiner, August 6, 1923, 1–2; Madame Marcia, “What the Stars Told Mrs.
Harding,” Collier’s National Weekly 75:20 (May 16, 1925), 5–6, 41–43.
64. Douglas C. Waller, A Question of Loyalty: Gen. Billy Mitchell and the Court-Martial that
Gripped the Nation (New York, 2004), 38, 373n.
65. James O’Donnell Bennett, “Anti-Medium Bill Gives Congress Horse Play Hour,”
Chicago Tribune, May 19, 1926, 10.
66. U. S. House, Fortune Telling Hearing, 10.
67. Ibid., 3.
68. Ibid., 14.
69. Ibid., 86.
70. Ibid., 10.
71. Ibid., 17.
72. Apparently, the Senate hearing on February 26 was the only Senate action on the bill.
Houdini to Remigius Weiss, 27 February 1926, Harry Houdini Papers, American Jewish
Historical Society, Center for Jewish History; “Bill to Regulate Mediums Develops
Uproarious Hearing,” Washington Post, February 27, 1926, 1, 4.
73. U. S. House, Fortune Telling Hearing, 9, 15.
74. Weiss admitted posing as a medium called “Albus,” but he maintained this identity was
a ruse that allowed him to coerce a confession of fraud from the slate-writing medium
Henry Slade; no evidence indicates such a confession ever took place. Weiss also claimed
to have testified about Slade’s confession before the Seybert Commission of psychical researchers, but the Commission’s report contains no mention of his testimony. Houdini, A
Magician among the Spirits, 80–81, 83, 37, 94, 96–97, 100; Preliminary Report of the
Commission Appointed by the University of Pennsylvania to Investigate Modern Spiritualism in
Accordance with the Request of the Late Henry Seybert (1887; reprint, Philadelphia, 1920),
7–77.
75. U. S. House, Fortune Telling Hearing, 18–19.
76. Ibid., 18–19.
77. Ibid., 52–53.
78. Ibid., 99–103.
79. Ibid., 100, 101.
80. Ibid., 114.
81. Rose Mackenberg as told to Joseph Fulling Fishman, “I’ve Unmasked a Thousand
Frauds,” Saturday Evening Post, March 3, 1951, 26.
Women Spiritualists, Houdini, and the 1926 Fortune Telling Hearing
361
82. U. S. House, Fortune Telling Hearing, 139.
83. Ibid., 30, 32–33, 36.
84. “Coolidges are Interester [sic] in Spiritualism, Too,” Jefferson City Tribune, May 18,
1926, 1.
85. “Topics of the Times,” New York Times, May 20, 1926, 24.
86. Bennett, “Anti-Medium Bill Gives Congress Horse Play Hour,” 10.
87. U. S. House, Fortune Telling Hearing, 32–33.
88. Lippmann’s response is not recorded. Houdini to Walter Lippmann, 26 May 1926,
Walter Lippmann Papers, Series 1, Part 1, Box 14, Folder 562, Yale University Library;
Silverman, Houdini!!!, 394.
89. Bennett, “Anti-Medium Bill Gives Congress Horse Play Hour,” 10; James O’Donnell
Bennett, “Senator’s Wife, Herself an Amateur, Defends Mediums,” Chicago Tribune, May
22, 1926, 23.
90. U. S. House, Fortune Telling Hearing, 36.
91. Ibid., 17, 80.
92. Ibid., 43.
93. Ibid., 29.
94. Marcia, “When an Astrologer Ruled the White House,” Liberty, April 8, 1938, 20.
95. Kontou, Spiritualism and Women’s Writing, 9.
96. U. S. House, Fortune Telling Hearing, 73–75.
97. Ibid., 76.
98. Ibid., 92–93, 95.
99. Ibid., 93.
100. Ibid., 126.
101. Ibid., 93.
102. Ibid., 93.
103. Ibid., 14, 91.
104. Ibid., 155.
105. Ibid., 39.
106. Ibid., 92.
107. Ibid., 131.
108. Anna Louise Fletcher, Death Unveiled (Washington, 1929), 13–17, 82.
109. U. S. House, Fortune Telling Hearing, 153.
110. Ibid., 95, 145, 156, 159.
111. Ibid., 90, 91.
112. Ibid., 157–158.
113. Ibid., 52.
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114. Marcia had previously given Hammer other pro-Spiritualist questions, suggesting she
may have handed him the Houdini questions as well. Ibid., 134, 148–149.
115. Ibid., 150–152.
116. In Houdini’s letter, medium Anna Fletcher became merely a Spiritualist believer, and
the ten mediums Mackenberg had confronted in Washington became thirty. Harry
Houdini, “Houdini’s Challenge,” New York World, May 16, 1926, 12.
117. Houdini to James S. Harto, August 23, 1926, Gene Keeney Collection, Lund
Memorial Library, American Museum of Magic.
118. Marcia, “When an Astrologer Ruled the White House,” 9 April 9, 1938, 20; “Dr.
Jane B. Coates, 59, Wed to Government Worker, 28,” New York Times, June 26, 1931, 3.
119. U. S. Senate, Committee on the District of Columbia, Report on License Fees in the
District of Columbia, June 15, 1932 (Washington, 1932), 4; “License Fees Boost Proposed
in House,” Washington Post, December 17, 1931, 20; “Local License Bill is Voted By
Senate,” Washington Post, July 1, 1932, 18.
120. Marcia, “When an Astrologer Ruled the White House,” Liberty, April 8, 1938, 19.
121. Nelson, Spiritualism and Society, 161–162.