Harry Houdini a boarding house on East 79th Street. He was joined by the rest of the family once Rabbi Weiss found permanent housing. As a child, Ehrich Weiss took several jobs, making his public début as a 9-year-old trapeze artist, calling himself "Ehrich, the Prince of the Air". He was also a champion cross country runner in his youth. When Weiss became a professional magician he began calling himself "Harry Houdini", after the French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, after reading Robert-Houdin's autobiography in 1890. Weiss incorrectly believed that an "i" at the end of a name meant "like" in French. In
John Weiss & Son Elisabeth Wamkross. John Weiss married Mary Kirby on 5 May 1805 and they had two children Frederick Foveaux Weiss, baptised 10 May 1807, and Mary Weiss, baptised 21 January 1810. John's father, Georg Berend Jacob Weiss, had served an apprenticeship in the cutlery trade and was admitted as Master Cutler to the Rostock Guild of Smiths in 1765. On moving to London, John Weiss began making surgical instruments and in 1795 conducted business under the name of 'White'. The company's first catalogue was published in 1823 and listed a variety of greatly improved and newly invented instruments. By 1825 the