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Mrs Houdini Dies

Only a few days after she gave an inter­view to the press in Los Angeles, Mrs. Beatrice Houdini, widow of the world-famed Harry Houdini, died February 11, near Needles, Calif., while she was on a train bear­ing her to New York. She was 67 years old.

For weeks before her death she had courageously battled for life in an oxygen tent at the Cedar Rest Lodge in Los Angeles, and her last interview was given during one of the periods she emerged from the oxygen treat­ment. At that time, she acknowledged that she felt that her days "were numbered" be­cause she was failing rapidly in her fight against a heart ailment from which she had suffered for some time.

According to Dr. U. L. Chilini, her phy­sician, death was not unexpected. "Both she and her sister were prepared for it" he said. "But Mrs. Houdini was determined to at­tempt to reach New York before dying."

Her sister, Mrs. Marie Hinson, of New York, was with Mrs. Houdini when the end came.

Mrs. Houdini assisted her husband in his performances and with him exposed many fake "spiritualists." Together they duplicated the seances of so-called mediums by mechanical means known to most Magicians.

However just before Harry Houdini died in 1926, he made a pact with his wife that which­ever one was taken first, that one would at­tempt to contact the other, and they arranged secret codes by which they would know the genuineness of any message. Each year then, for ten years, on the anniversary of his death (Hallowe'en), Mrs. Houdini held seances, one or two of thern open to newspapermen and at­tended with much publicity, but the message agreed upon never came through, she said.

She remained a skeptic to the end. In her last interview she said, "Yes, I would like to believe very much that I am going to see my mother and Harry, but I have seen so much fraud in the world that I still am a bit skep­tical. No one has been able to prove that there is a hereafter."

Associating herself with magical activities even since her husband's death, Mrs. Houdini was interested in keeping alive the "Houdini tradition" and with the help of the late Ed­ward Saint amassed a great collection of Hou­dini memorabilia. She was honorary president of the Magigals, women's Magic sorority, and was an honorary member of the Houdini Club.