The word 'answer' stood for the letter 'B', for example. The other words correspond to a secret spelling code used to pass information between a magician and his assistant during a mentalism act. The code was: 'Rosabelle – answer – tell – pray, answer – look – tell – answer, answer – tell.' Bess' wedding band bore the inscription 'Rosabelle', the name of the song she sang in her act when they first met. She moved to Inwood, Manhattan, and would try to contact Harry during seances, with a code that only Harry and Bessie knew about, to be sure that the spirit medium was not a fraud.

Īfter Houdini died on October 31, 1926, Bess opened a tea house in New York, and briefly performed a vaudeville act in which she froze a man in ice. Bess's niece, Marie Hinson Blood, said Bess suffered from a medical condition that prevented her from having children. The Houdinis remained childless throughout their marriage. Bess also looked after their menagerie of pets, collected dolls, and made the costumes for Houdini's full evening roadshow. But he and Bess continued to occasionally perform their signature trick, Metamorphosis, throughout his career. The pair worked as The Houdinis for several years before Houdini hit it big as The Handcuff King. But it was the older Houdini brother, Harry, that she fell in love with and married on June 22, 1894. Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner was born in Brooklyn, New York (before New York City was consolidated) in 1876 to German immigrants Gebhard Rahner (a cabinet maker) and Balbina Rahner (née Bugel).īess was working at Coney Island in a song and dance act called The Floral Sisters when she was first courted by Houdini's younger brother, Theo (a.k.a.

Wilhelmina beatrice rahner