On June 13, 1871, he died of his illness, aged 65. With the stress from that and the war, his health deteriorated, and he contracted pneumonia. Later, Robert-Houdin was to find out that his son had died of his wounds. In 1870, Robert-Houdin heard news that his son had been mortally wounded at the Battle of Worth during the Franco-Prussian War.

The sight of Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin in his elegant evening attire set him apart from other magicians in their long robes and this has led many to see Houdin as the first ‘modern’ magician. He had a few failures initially in his ambitious magic shows but soon perfected his craft. Robert-Houdin was paid 7000 francs and this financial injection gave him the opportunity to finish the creations he was building for a magic theatre which he was soon to open in Paris. In 1844, PT Barnum the famous American circus impresario purchased a small android that Robert-Houdin had built for the universal exposition. This would lead to his later fascination with automata. He moved to Paris and worked in his father-in-law’s wholesale shop where he was able to tinker with mechanical toys and automatic figures.

He hyphenated his own name to hers and became Robert-Houdin. The daughter’s name was Josèphe Cecile Houdin, and it was love at first sight. It was at one such party that he met the daughter of a Parisian watchmaker, Monsieur Jacques François Houdin, who had also come from Jean-Eugène Robert’s native Blois. For a short time, Jean-Eugène worked as a watchmaker doing conjuring on the side but later, he would go on to perform at social parties as a professional magician in Europe and the United States. He was told that he was better suited as a watchmaker than a lawyer, but by then, Jean’s father had already retired, so he became an apprentice to his cousin who had a watch-shop. His employer sent him back to his father. Instead of studying law, he tinkered with mechanical gadgets. He graduated at the age of 18, and returned to Blois.Īlthough his father wanted him to be a lawyer, he was determined to follow into his father’s footsteps as a watchmaker. When Jean-Eugène reached the age of eleven, he was sent by his father, Prosper to school to the University of Orléans. Tragically, Jean-Eugene’s mother, the former Marie-Catherine Guillon, died when he was a very young child. Robert Houdin was actually named Jean-Eugène Robert on his birth in Blois, France, on 6 December 1805 His father, Prosper Robert, ran a business as a watchmaker in Blois.