[HOUDINI, His Copy] "Lawlessness on Trial." A Scrapbook of Crime Stories and Clippings Owned by Houdini and Lewis A. Lawes. Circa 1910 [?]. A bespoke scrapbook collecting dozens of magazine stories and clippings regarding famous criminals and outlaws and their exploits. One quarter pebbled calf (with the title "Lawlessness on Trial" lettered in gilt on the spine), over grey cloth. Illustrated. Includes extracts from popular magazines of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, together with a handwritten title page and index in a flowing, readable cursive hand. 296pp., thick 8vo. Chipping to head of spine and wear and soiling to leather, contents generally clean and bright with contemporary penciled page numbers. SIGNED by Houdini on the front pastedown in pencil, together with the bookplate of Lewis Lawes, the longtime warden of Sing Sing Prison.

Tipped to the front pastedown is a clipping about the death of Giovanni Ferraro and his execution at Sing Sing in the electric chair. Houdini has penciled in an attribution of the clipping to the New York World at the top of the clipping. It was Lawes that supervised the execution of some 303 prisoners during his 21-year tenure as warden at Sing Sing. 

A wonderful association item linking the great escape artist and his fascination with prisons and prisoners to a man who spent his life advocating for prison reform and working in the institutions from which Houdini would escape throughout his careeer.