I was intrigued by a question that John Cox brought up on his blog:

• Where and when did Houdini first perform the suspended straitjacket escape?

And of course, when I am intrigued by something, this blog is what you get.

Kalush via a mention by Will Goldston says it was September of 1915 in Kansas City.  Silverman says it was hanging forty-five feet from the office building of the Minneapolis Evening Tribune on September 29, 1915 sourced to a newspaper in the Stanley Palm collection.

There is a very nice discussion on The Magic Cafe Forums but nothing is definitive.

Well the Sept 29^th, 1915 date in Minneapolis is well sourced, so that leaves the Kansas City date that needs more research.

So what is this mention by Will Goldston?

It just so happens that I have the October 1915 edition of Will Goldston’s The Magazine Of Magic, with the article “Harry Houdini – His Latest Escape”.

[Page 17]

[Page 18]

But nowhere in the above “Harry Houdini His Latest Escape” article do we see a date.

So did he perform in Kansas City in September 1915?

I checked some other sources:

• Koval (Houdini Research Diary) doesn’t mention him being in Kansas City at all in September 1915.
• Brandon (The Life and Many Deaths of Harry Houdini) mentions the following: In September 1915, “the greatest street throng in the history of Los Angeles” – 20 -25,000 people – had seen him swing from the Los Angeles Tribune building. The same month, 5,000 saw him in Kansas City, where the tie-in was with the Kansas City Post.   Los Angeles in September 1915 is clearly an error; Brandon doesn’t provide sourcing for Los Angeles or Kansas City, although Kansas City likely came from the October 1915 edition of Will Goldston’s Magazine of Magic.
• Last but not least, Kasson (Houdini Tarzan and The Perfect Man) mentions the following: He appears first to have executed this escape in Kansas City on September 8, 1915.  By this time he had been wriggling out of straitjackets for almost twenty years but never before while suspended upside down over a street in full view of thousands.  For days The Kansas City Post, known for sensational journalism, had trumpeted the coming event to its readers… Now we have a possible date, Wednesday, September 8, 1915. 

Next I contacted the Kansas City Public Library:

Jeremy Drouin, Senior Librarian of Special Collections, searched their electronic newspaper archive and found an advertisement for a September 11, 1915 afternoon show at the Orpheum Theater where Houdini was performing his water torture act.

Here is the full citation provided by Genealogybank: Advertisement Date: Saturday, September 11, 1915 Paper: Kansas City Star (Kansas City, MO) Volume: 78  Issue: 218 Page: 11

This evidence of him performing the Water Torture Cell at the Orpheum Theatre puts him in Kansas City in September 1915, which means he could very well have performed the suspended straitjacket on September 8, 1915 as sourced by Kasson.

Unfortunately, the electronic database at the Kansas City Public Library does not include copies of the Kansas City Post which based on the evidence should have an article to match Goldston’s reprint of the suspended strait-jacket event and possibly some ads leading up to event as suggested by Kasson.