The search for Margery - Notes on a Strange World - medium associated with Houdini

MP: As with many of those who have studied the Margery story and the Scientific American investigation, you don't seem to have a great opinion of Malcolm Bird.

AT: I think he was a rather duplicitous person himself. He basically moved into 10 Lime street, and I suspect may have been given money by my great-grandparents (although I can't prove that--there is just a reference to a blank check to him from Mina, to which he teases her: "what would it look like if certain people saw this?") and there may have been plenty of personal reasons for them to all grow quite tired of each other's company. I find, however, I am quite curious to know what happened to him. He strikes me as a rather sad person as well, not quite able to handle the demands of the situation he found himself in ... although I suppose the situation got the better of most of the participants.... By the way, the picture in your book of Mina in the doorway is the picture I was referring to earlier. I believe it was taken by Houdini and she asked him not to reveal that fact (a collector at one of the Houdini seances showed me the same picture and told me Houdini had taken it, and I have a copy of a letter f rom Mina asking Houdini not tell anyone he was the one who took pictures of her). It is of her standing in the doorway of 11 Lime, not 10 Lime.

MP: On reading about the story from some of the original documents, what do you think now of Dr. Crandon's role and character?

AT: I'm pretty sure I know what Dr. Crandon's problems at the hospitals were--women. He was a philanderer. I suspect that in combination with too many sexual escapades with the female staff, he was argumentative with his peers. Plus I think Ken Silverman may have mentioned that Dr. Crandon was not as wealthy as he appeared to be. This also makes sense to me, as he had several previous wives and was likely to have some financial pressures on that end, which may have complicated things. There have been disappointments for me in learning more about my greatgrandfather; he was a racist and a sexist. (My grandfather inherited those traits. However the both of them hid it fairly well under the veneer of upperclass manners and propriety, but when pushed or angered, you can see it, and it is ugly.) But there have also been two things of which I am surprised to say I am rather proud: one, he was staunchly atheist and did not let social mores pressure him into believing certain things-I believe his belief in spirituali sm to be genuine, and to be based in a combination of hope and science, but not in religion. That must have made his disappointment later all that more devastating. The second thing I am proud of him for is mentioned in your last chapter. I don't know that he assisted women with abortions for a fact, but I had heard it before, and it makes sense to me, and I am proud to think that one of my ancestors did something like that gave women more autonomy over themselves, particularly in a time when women had so few choices. Sexism I find not an absolute quality but exists by degrees, and although I think he thought of women as less capable than men, I think he also thought women should have some autonomy over their bodies or minds. To his credit, he warmly welcomed my grandmother into the family--a doctor herself, and the only woman to graduate from McGill Medical School in 1939.