Hello and thank you for downloading witness from the BBC World Service.

I'm Simon Watson to mark the 90th anniversary of the death of Houdini,

the world's most famous escape artist,

I'm bringing you the story of the performance which helped make his name.

It became known as the Mirror Handcuff Challenge.

It's March the 17th, 1904, an excited audience arrived at the Hippodrome Theatre in London

for a special matinee show. The star is a 29-year-old from New York, Harry Hudini.

Not a seat was vacant in the mighty Hippodrome yesterday afternoon when Harry

Houdini, the handcuff king, stepped into the arena

and received an evasion worthy of a monarch.

This account is from a London newspaper called the Daily Illustrated Mirror.

So intense was the speculation that the 4,000 spectators present could scarcely restrain their impatience.

The Daily Mirror had only just been launched,

and the paper had organized the performance itself to drum up circulation.

A few days earlier, one of its reporters had challenged Hudini to escape from a pair of handcuffs, which he claimed no mortal man could pick.

I am ready, said Hudini, to be be manicled by the mirror representative if he be present.

A heavy burst of applause greeted a journalist as he stepped into the arena and shook hands

with the handcuffed king. Then in the fewest

possible words the pressman called for volunteers from the audience to act upon a

committee to see fair play. This done, the journalist placed the handcuffs on Mr.

Houdini's wrists and snapped them. Then, with an effort, he turned the key six times.

Harry Houdini, real name Eric He turned the key six times.

...