Magic at War

Australian’s Sydney and Lesley Piddington were one of the most famous mentalism acts of all time. They claimed to communicate telepathically and perform other feats of mental ability. Popular performers in the UK, Australia and around the world, their act was a radio and television sensation in the late 1940s and early 1950s.   “You are the judge!” was their moniker, calling on their audiences to decide for themselves if telepathy was real or not.   Incredibly, the origins of their act were developed during World War Two, in a prisoner-of-war camp in Singapore.   Learning magic   Born in Sydney near the end of World War One, Sydney George Piddington (14 May 1918 – 29 January 1991) trained and worked as an audit clerk after finishing school in 1934.   Alongside his day job ‘Sid’ or ‘Syd’ Piddington became interested in magic.  As a  teenager, he joined a local magic society called the Independent Magical Performers of Sydney (known as the...

Continuing a short series of blogs about magicians who were prisoners-of-war in the Far East during World War Two, this blog looks at Anton Trouvat. A Dutch semi-professional magician, he got caught up in the war when Imperial Japan invaded the Dutch East Indies. A promisin g young magician Anton Hugo Trouvat was born in November 1913, a year before the end of World War One. He was born to Dutch parents in Padang, a city in western Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies  (an area now known as Indonesia). In the late 1930s, Trouvat worked  for Lindeteves-Stokvis, a large Dutch trading company.  Part-time, Trouvat was a magician. A member of the Society of Indonesian Magicians, he was regarded by his peers as a promising performer and a leading light in a new younger generation of magicians. When war broke out in Europe, The Netherlands’ government bolstered the defence of the Dutch East Indies colony. It was concerned about Japanese interest in the colony's rich natural resource...