A scrapbook of clippings, correspondence, and ephemera documenting the world of magicians and spiritualist mediums
What the Work Is
American Magicians — Harry Houdini is a scrapbook assembled in 1827, likely by Harry Houdini himself. The volume compiles newspaper and magazine clippings, letters, letterheads, handbills, programs, and brochures focused on magicians and mediums. Though the title emphasizes American magicians, the contents are more international in scope, with material appearing in English, French, Spanish, German, and other languages. The scrapbook contains manuscript annotations in Houdini’s own hand, marking it as a personal working document rather than a published work.
What the Book Is About
The scrapbook serves as a documentary record of the magic and spiritualist worlds during Houdini’s era. Its subject matter spans two related but distinct communities: professional magicians and the mediums who claimed to communicate with the dead. The inclusion of letters chiefly addressed to Charles L. Burlingame and Jasper Bamberg suggests the scrapbook functioned as a repository for correspondence from significant figures in the magic community. Burlingame was a noted magic historian and collector, while Bamberg—known professionally as a member of the celebrated Bamberg magic family—was himself a prominent magician. The collection of handbills, programs, and brochures indicates an effort to preserve the promotional materials that circulated within these communities, offering a glimpse into how magicians and mediums presented themselves to the public.
Key Ideas and Themes
The scrapbook’s dual focus on magicians and mediums reflects a central tension of the period. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, stage magicians and spiritualist mediums occupied overlapping cultural territory. Both performed seemingly impossible feats, yet they operated from fundamentally different premises: magicians acknowledged their effects as illusions, while mediums claimed genuine supernatural powers. Houdini’s personal interest in this distinction is well documented—he spent considerable energy exposing fraudulent mediums—and the scrapbook’s assembly of materials on both groups suggests it may have served as research material for his investigations.
The international character of the collection points to the global nature of the magic and spiritualist circuits. Magicians traveled extensively, performing across national borders, and the scrapbook captures this cosmopolitan professional world. The multilingual contents indicate that Houdini, or whoever assembled the volume, was tracking developments in magic and mediumship beyond the English-speaking world.
The letters addressed to Burlingame and Bamberg hint at the importance of correspondence networks within the magic community. Magicians shared techniques, discussed performances, and maintained professional relationships through written communication. The scrapbook preserves these exchanges, offering insight into the social infrastructure that sustained the magic profession.
Structure and Approach
As a scrapbook, the work is organized around the physical accumulation of materials rather than a narrative structure. Newspaper and magazine clippings sit alongside personal correspondence, promotional handbills, programs, and brochures. The manuscript annotations in Houdini’s hand suggest he actively engaged with the materials, adding his own observations and notes. This format makes the scrapbook a primary source document—a window into how a working magician collected, organized, and interpreted information about his profession and its spiritualist counterpart.
Significance and Influence
The scrapbook’s value lies in its documentary character. It preserves ephemeral materials—newspaper clippings, handbills, programs—that were never intended to survive. These items offer modern readers a direct connection to the everyday workings of the magic and mediumship trades. The letters to Burlingame and Bamberg preserve correspondence that might otherwise have been lost, while the multilingual contents document the international reach of the magic community.
For scholars of magic history, the scrapbook provides insight into how magicians of the period understood their own profession and its relationship to spiritualism. The juxtaposition of materials on magicians and mediums in a single volume reflects the cultural proximity of these two practices, even as their practitioners often defined themselves in opposition to one another. Houdini’s annotations add another layer of significance, revealing his personal engagement with the materials and his habit of documenting the world around him.
The scrapbook’s focus on American magicians finds a significant real-world counterpart in the Society of American Magicians (S.A.M.), an organization with which Houdini was deeply involved. Founded on May 10, 1902, in the back room of Martinka’s magic shop in New York City by W. Golden Mortimer and Saram R. Ellison, the S.A.M. is the oldest fraternal magic organization in the world. Ellison created the name, while Mortimer wrote the ritual of the order. The Society expanded under Houdini’s leadership during his term as National President from 1917 to 1926. Houdini sought to create a large, unified national network of professional and amateur magicians, and wherever he traveled, he would give a lengthy formal address to the local magic club, make speeches, and usually threw a banquet for the members at his own expense.
For most of 1916, while on his vaudeville tour, Houdini, at his own expense, recruited local magic clubs to join the S.A.M. in an effort to revitalize what he felt was a weak organization. He persuaded groups in Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City to join, with the Buffalo club joining as the first branch (later, an assembly) of the Society. In 1917, he signed Chicago Assembly Number Three’s charter, and that charter and this club continue to provide Chicago magicians with a connection to each other and to their past. Houdini dined with, addressed, and got pledges from similar clubs in Detroit, Rochester, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Cincinnati and elsewhere. By the end of 1916, magicians’ clubs in San Francisco and other cities that Houdini had not visited were offering to become assemblies. In July 1926, Houdini was elected for the ninth successive time President of the Society of American Magicians, a feat unmatched by any other president, who has typically served only one year. He also was President of the Magicians’ Club of London.
The S.A.M. has a formal purpose: “to advance, elevate, and preserve magic as a performing art, to promote harmonious fellowship throughout the world of magic, and to maintain and improve ethical standards in the field of magic.” Membership is open to professional magicians, amateur magicians, youth magicians, magic collectors, magic historians, magic inventors, magic manufacturers and magic dealers. Over 30,000 people worldwide have been members, and currently the S.A.M. has 5,000 members worldwide. Despite the word “American” in the name, S.A.M. includes magicians from around the world. The organization pays tribute to Harry Houdini with a broken wand ceremony on the anniversary of his death (by the Jewish calendar) at his grave in Machpelah Cemetery in Ridgewood, Queens, New York City.
Related Organizations and Publications
The S.A.M. also sponsors the Society of Young Magicians (SYM), an organization devoted to assisting magicians aged seven through seventeen. The SYM has clubs, known as “assemblies,” located throughout the world, commonly jointly associated with an adult SAM assembly. When a member turns 18, they have the option to graduate to full membership in the Society of American Magicians. The purpose of the SYM is to promote interest in magic as a hobby that develops skill and self-confidence, the ability to speak in public, discipline that comes from learning, practicing and performing magic, and a sense of service to others. The SYM has nearly 100 local chapters, or assemblies, around the world, and adult members of the S.A.M. supervise and instruct members. In 2023, the S.A.M. National Council renamed the youth program SAMY, for Society of American Magicians Youth.
The S.A.M. has a history of publications. In September 1902, Mahatma became the official publication of S.A.M. In November 1902, The Sphinx became the ‘Western Organ’ of S.A.M., and in March 1909, it became the ‘Official Organ.’ In October 1911, S.A.M. started publishing M-U-M, a monthly print magazine originally published independently until July 1927. M-U-M stands for Magic, Unity, Might, a slogan of the S.A.M. From October 1927 to February 1942 and July 1947 to June 1951, M-U-M was published as part of The Sphinx, and from March 1942 to June 1947, it was published as part of Genii. In June 1951, M-U-M became an independently published magazine again and is still in publication. In July 2023, the Society published Magic In America: The Story of the Society of American Magicians as a record of its own historical origins and development.
