There are few more potent symbols of confinement than the straitjacket. And few more potent symbols of liberation than escaping from one.
Which is why doing so was one of the most thrilling spectacles Harry Houdini employed in his act.
Houdini first conceived of escaping from a straitjacket — which restrains a person with sleeves that enclose their hands, cross their arms over their chest, and get secured with straps or buckles behind their back — while touring a mental hospital and seeing a patient fight to get out of one. The image obsessed him, and he wondered how an audience would react to seeing the same.
Yet when Houdini first introduced the straitjacket escape to his repertoire in 1899, it wasn’t a hit. Believing that the audience didn’t want to see him struggling to remove the restraint, he initially performed the escape behind a curtain. But the spectators figured an assistant was helping Houdini while he was out of view. The feat was significantly more thrilling when he demonstrated it in front of the crowd, sweating and writhing on the stage. He added even more anticipation, tension, and suspense by escaping from straitjackets while suspended from buildings and cranes (you can watch him in action here).
Houdini played up the intensity of his struggle to make the escape seem nearly impossible and heighten the dramatic effect, even spreading the rumor that he had to dislocate his shoulder to get out. But while escaping from a straitjacket is no easy feat, it isn’t quite as difficult as Houdini made it appear, and popping body parts out of sockets is not required. There’s no magic to it; it just takes the creation of some literal wiggle room and a lot of physical exertion.
