Sounds like Hodgson was quite a character. No doubt he would be visiting
those who steal his writings without paying royalties and kicking their
butts if he were able!
Excerpt: http://archive.thisislanca****re.co.uk/2000/3/6/738389.html
Back then, the huge and cavernous 2,500-seat Palace was the town's top
variety theatre, but of all the unusual acts performed on its stage in its
pre-cinema era none was more sensational than that when the American
magician known as the Handcuff King almost met his match at the hands of
Blackburn mighty-atom strongman William Hope Hodgson that October night in
1902. Hodgson was a quite a character. Aged 24 and the son of a clergyman,
Houdini's 5ft 4in challenger had joined his family at their home in Park
Road, Revidge, in 1899, eight years after running away to sea as a
13-year-old to become a cabin boy. While in the Merchant Marine, he took
up
weightlifting and body-building to help defend himself from bullying
crewmen
and on arrival in Blackburn opened his School of Physical Culture in a
gymnasium he set up next door to the Theatre Royal in Ainsworth Street,
with
members of the town's police among his pupils. He was later to earn
literary
acclaim as a writer of science fiction, but was killed in the First World
War at the age of 40 when he was blown to bits by a German shell at Ypres
in
1918. Houdini, then aged 28, was making his first appearance in Lanca****re
and on arrival at Blackburn, to promote his week-long run at the Palace,
offered the then-considerable reward of £25 if he failed to escape from
regulation restraints as used by the police of Europe and America. Hodgson
responded with his own challenge - that of placing Houdini in irons that
he
would bring along and put on him himself and for the money to be given to
Blackburn Infirmary if the stage star could not escape from them.
Defending
his reputation as the man no chains or locks could hold, Houdini accepted.
And this newspaper's forerunner, the Northern Daily Telegraph, was given
the
task of holding the challenge money.
The magician ended up being trussed up like a turkey on stage shortly
after
10 pm at the close of the final performance on the Friday night. Hodgson
bound him with six pairs of heavy irons that were complete with chains and
padlocks, fixing his arms firmly to his side and then clapping two pairs
of
handcuffs on him. Then, making Houdini kneel, he clamped two pairs of leg
irons on him.
Houdini was later to protest that the irons were not regulation ones and
that the locks had been plugged and wrapped with twine. But when he set
about trying to escape while covered by a canopy placed over him in the
middle of the stage, he was at the start of a one-and-a-half-hour struggle
that ended up with him free, but with his arms red and swollen and chunks
of
flesh missing from them - and claiming the next day that the doctor who
examined him had told him that if his ordeal had lasted only a few minutes
more, his arms might have been left paralysed. It was a test that
certainly
excited the old-time theatregoers. The town's Daily Star newspaper told
how
"the crowd which came together to witness it crammed the theatre literally
(sic) from floor to ceiling."
"Trussed Till Midnight" was the headline in another and the Blackburn
Times
re****ted "disgraceful scenes" as the orchestra played musical selections
to
accompany Houdini's exertions and the police had to ask Hodgson to leave
the
theatre because they feared a disturbance.
At last, the escapologist emerged to deafening cheers at midnight - his
sleeves in tatters and his arms and wrists streaked with blood. He had
beaten the test, but controversy followed with claims that he had been
slipped some sort of tool by his brother, Theo, as he gave him a drink
during his struggles.
Hodgson, too, did not escape controversy. The following week he wrote to
the
Blackburn Times to answer Houdini's charge of brutality. "So long as Mr
Houdini kept still, he was in no danger of suffering; it was his own
struggles which caused him any degree of painful inconvenience," he said.
So Houdini literally wriggled out of the £25 challenge.
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