HOUDINI'S FORGOTTEN YEARS

Houdini himself misdirected biographers away from his eventful early years in Milwaukee by saying, “Such hardship and hunger became our lot that the less said on the subject the better.”

The result: very little has been said indeed. All the Houdini bios, even the good ones, blow right through his formative years in Milwaukee. So naturally we got curious about Houdini’s forgotten years and began investigating. 

It was the tipping point in his life.

The Weisses lived at several addresses, including 517 North Sixth Street, in the northwest quarter of the city.

Houdini's Milwaukee years from 1882 to 1887 were undoubtedly difficult. But they were also the years that he grew up and became a man. He got smart and he got tough.

Adonis Ames, Ehrich Weiss' acrobatics teacher and performing partner.

Last week we told you about young Ehrich Weiss’s partnership with Adonis Ames, who became a world famous contortionist. He and Ehrich performed acrobatics together for free on the Wisconsin Avenue Bridge over the Milwaukee River.

Bridges over the Milwaukee River

Visiting Milwaukee as a headliner in 1916, Houdini told reporters he used to practice swimming in that river. It was there, he said, that he first learned to swim with the current and hold his breath for long periods — not, as legend has it, in his family bathtub years later in New York.

Milwaukee River in 1885

Milwaukee was where Ehrich Weiss became a first-class, all-around athlete. He fell for the bicycling craze that hit the Midwest in the mid-1880s, and according to the local papers even competed in the biggest bike race in America, the Waukesha Road Race.

We wondered where a poor kid like him would get a bicycle. They were expensive back then, the equivalent of nearly a thousand dollars in today's money. The answer? He probably borrowed it from his job as a messenger boy. Milwaukee was the first city in the country to use bicycle messengers.

Bikers of Old Milwaukee

When not racing his bike, Ehrich kept in shape by running from his home in the northwest Jewish district, down East Water Street to the Kirby House Hotel at the corner of Mason. 

Ehrich Weiss' urban track route down East Water Street (shot from the Kirby House)

At the gym in the Kirby House basement, Ehrich competed in swimming and track. And it was in Milwaukee that he became known as an unbeatable prizefighter. 

We know this thanks to P.D. “Patsy” McCartin, a Milwaukee fireman and star local boxer who ran the Kirby athletic program. He coached Ehrich Weiss. 

McCartin had left Milwaukee at the turn of the century to become fire chief of Colorado Springs. 

P.D. McCartin as fire chief

One day in the fall of 1915, he was standing in front of his fire house when a guy walked by with a stride like a pugilist. McCartin had never even heard of Houdini the escape artist, who was in town to perform. But he never forgot a boxer.

“Pardon me, but isn't your name Weiss?”

"It is," Houdini answered. "But I do not remember you."

"You fought for me several times," said McCartin. "Mickey Riley was one of my best performers. He brought you in. I remember you gave Mickey a bad licking and earned the dollar that went to the winner."

Mickey Riley, "The Irish Pride"

Mickey Riley was not just some palooka. He was considered the best boxer in Milwaukee. He was the only person who four times clobbered the famous “Battling” Nelson, the future lightweight champion of the world. But he could not beat the man who became Houdini. 

"Battling" Nelson said he never lost a fight, except to Mickey Riley. Here with Owen Moran 1910

“Nelson was so mean he’d fight for a ham sandwich,” McCartin told a sportswriter for the Milwaukee Sentinel. “But he was afraid of Mickey Riley. And Riley was afraid of that kid Ehrich Weiss.”

NEXT WEEK: 

EHRICH WEISS & THE WORLD'S LARGEST ILLUSION

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HOUDINI'S IRON STOMACH

HOUDINI & BATMAN, CONTINUED

(Images via Google)