Houdini was a headliner in the top Vodville circuits. His audiences were poor people, carriers, peddlers, policemen, children, his life was absurd. He went all over the world, accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping. He was rubbed with chair, he escaped, who chained to a ladder, he escaped. His handcuffed, his legs were put in irons, who was tied up in a straight jacket and put in a lock cabinet, he escaped. He escaped from bank vaults, nailed up barrels, sewn mail bags, he escaped from a zinc line, made piano case, a giant football, a galvanized iron boiler, a roadtop desk, a sausage skin. His escapes were mystifying because he never damaged or appeared to unlock what he escaped from. The screen was pulled away and there he stood, disheveled but triumphant beside the vialer container that was supposed to have contained him. He waved to the crowd, he escaped from a sealed milk can filled with water, he escaped from a Siberian exalvan, from a Chinese torture crucifix, from a Hamburg penitentiary, from an English prison ship, from a Boston jail. He was chained to automobiles tires, water wheels, cannons and he escaped. He dove, manicled from a bridge into the Mississippi, the sign, the mercy and came up waving.