MYSTERIES OF MILWAUKEE

We're off to Milwaukee to take part in the Official Houdini Séance on Halloween and also to try to solve some of the mysteries of Harry's life in Cream City.

We've uncovered evidence that when the Weiss family first moved from Appleton to Milwaukee, at the end of 1882, they appear to have been more or less solvent. Presumably, Samuel, Harry's father, had been paid some severance after losing his job as rabbi of Appleton. We have learned that in Milwaukee the family was flush enough to afford a "servant girl," as Harry called her, named Minna Shamer.

We also know that the family moved numerous times during their five years in Milwaukee. Two of those moves appear to have been into back-to-back buildings. Earlier researchers have speculated that they were running from rent collectors, and that does seem to fit the pattern. 

Harry himself wrote that "such hardship and hunger became our lot that the less said on the subject the better." So it sounds like things started out OK, then got much worse. We'll do our best to find out what happened.




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