This caricature is of the escapologist Theo Hardeen when he was performing at the Grand Theatre of Varieties, Hanley, during the week of 10 July 1905. He topped the bill as ‘The King of Handcuff Kings and Jail Breaker’, and offered £100 to anyone who could open his handcuffs. It is one of the many superb caricatures of Edwardian music hall performers that were drawn by the artist George Cooke when he was based at the Grand Theatre. He compiled them in a series of albums. The highlight of Hardeen’s act there was his 30-second escape from a box into which he was handcuffed, within a tied bag, and his substitution by a female assistant. Carlton the card manipulator, another of Cooke’s subjects, was also on the bill at the Grand that week.

Hardeen was born Theodore Weiss (1876-1945), the younger brother of the Jewish American escapologist Harry Houdini (1874-1926) who set him up with his act and later bequeathed him his equipment. Despite achieving less fame, Hardeen was an extremely accomplished escapologist and the first to realise the dramatic potential of straitjacket escape in full view of the audience. Hardeen gave up escapology in 1919 to run his brother's Fim Developing Corporation but returned to performing as 'Houdini's Successor' after his brother's death. He continued to perform for several years before turning the act over to Douglas Jeffery (aka Houdini Jnr., but not his son) in May 1945, a few months before his own death.