Sydney Piddington: telepathy in a Japanese POW camp (Part 2)
In Part 1 of this article about Sydney and Lesley Piddington, one of the most famous mentalism acts of the Twentieth Century, we learned how Sydney’s early interest in magic was disrupted by World War Two. And how he ended up in the Australian army, fighting to defend Malaya and Singapore.
In Part 2, we discover how Piddington rekindled his interest in magic as a prisoner-of-war (POW) and the role he played in operating a secret radio.
Prisoner-of-war
After his capture, Sydney Piddington and the other captured Allied troops were force marched to Changi in the island’s east.
Over the next few weeks and months the captured soldiers, some 87,000 - many more than the camps were design to accommodate - organised themselves as best they could and established a routined camp life, watched over by Japanese guards.
But the prisoners despised their captors and resisted them in a myriad of small ways.
Agitated by this, the Japanese introduced measures to humiliate their British and Allied prisoners. They made them load bombs onto ships in Singapore’s port (contrary to the Geneva Convention) and forced them to do other hard labour.
Piddington was selected to join a work party tasked with building a shrine on Bukit Timah, a hill where the Japanese had suffered heavy casualties during the battle for Singapore. The prisoners had to remove thousands of tons of soil and rock from the top of the hill, by hand, to level off its tip.
“If this goes on much longer,” Piddington announced, after the third slice off the top of the hill, “Bukit Timah’s going to change from the highest hill on Singapore to the deepest hole.”
The prisoners didn’t know it, but this hard labour on the island was a precursor to the horrific situation which faced them later in the war, when they were forced to build the Thai-Burma Railway and other military infrastructure for the Japanese in the jungles and paddy fields of Thailand and Burma.
Eventually, Piddington succumbed to the months of severe work. He developed pellagra, a physical condition which, if untreated, could lead to mental confusion and dementia. Sydney was removed from the labour gang for treatment in Roberts Hospital, the pre-war British military medical facility in Changi.
A return to magic
After recuperating, Piddington remained in Changi, relieved from construction duties at Bukit Timah.“The fall of Singapore in those dark days in early 1942 left most of us stunned. Something was needed to take us away from the inevitable questions that came tumbling out and to help us meet the bad news we felt must come. Spare-time educational schemes and lectures were started, a library was established, and the AIF Concert Party was reformed,” wrote Sydney in 1947.
“By this point, the Australian Command (in common with the British Commands) had decided that an essential form of maintaining the high morale of the many prisoners in Changi was entertainment. To this end, they determined to juggle the figures of workers obtainable for Japanese tasks so that they could set aside about thirty men as a concert party.”
Concert parties were groups of entertainers, some amateur and some professional, drawn from the ranks of the units held as POWs or the civilians held alongside them. They performed plays, musicals, variety shows, concerts and other entertainments to boost the morale of their audiences.
“In this Piddington saw an ideal opportunity both for doing a valuable job and for not helping [the Japanese]… He was persuaded to volunteer his services… [as a conjurer].”
“‘Are you any good?’ asked the officer in charge of entertainment. ‘No, not very. I haven’t done anything since I was at school,’ Piddington answered frankly. ‘But I could do a couple of shows with practice.’ ‘That’s all you’ll need,’… commented the officer,… ‘This war’ll be over in three months, anyway!’”
It wasn’t, of course.
“And, being essentially conscientious, Piddington at once set about practising steadily and learning the art to which he had professed so glibly. His work, despite poor patter caused by his stammer, became polished and assured.”
The AIF Concert Party was originally formed in October, 1941, and had been about to embark on a tour of Malaya when the Japanese attack sent the actors and musicians scurrying back to take their places in the front line.
He wasn’t the only POW-magician on the Changi peninsula. There were at least three others who performed in concert parties: Cortini (Johan Hubert Crutzen), Dick Trouvat (Anton Trouvat), and Wizardus (Fergus Anckorn).
The Selarang Incident interrupted the performances. On 2 September 1942, the Japanese ordered all the POWs held on the Changi peninsula to assemble on the parade ground of the Selarang Barracks. The Japanese administration demanded that every POW sign a form swearing he would not attempt to escape. They rounded up some 17,000 POWs on the parade square and threated to shoot all those who didn’t comply. A stand-off ensued as, en masse, the Allied POWs refused to sign. The situation lasted two days until the Japanese and POW leaders reached a compromise.
Towards the end of 1942, with most of the Australian contingent having seen Piddington’s act, he transferred to a stage management role. In addition, he took minor parts in plays and shows, probably due to his stammer limiting his versatility as a performer. A lack of access to specialist props likely also contributed to his stepping back from performing magic.
But, we know that he polished off his magic skills for a 1942/43 Christmas run of the pantomime, Cinderella, where he appeared as a magician. His act included the linking rings trick (although we don't know where he got these props from).
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Secret radio
One day, the Japanese raided the prison camp searching for a secret radio, which they suspected existed. The prisoners were paraded in rows outside while the guards search their quarters. Concurrently, other guards search those men on parade.
When the raid started, the prisoners split the radio into its parts. Piddington’s section had, as their responsibility for the instrument, two valves. As the guards inspected the group, the valves were passed between each man, ahead of the searching guard.
Unfortunately, Piddington was at the end of the row. So, when the guards got to him, there was no one he could pass the parts too. If the Japanese found the valves, there would be severe punishments for those prisoners involved and the radio would be out of action.
As the man next to him thrust the two valves firmly into Sydney’s hands, he muttered, “Sorry Piddo! But you’re the bloody magician – vanish those!”
Piddington needed to act fast, as the guard was just about to search him. But what could he do?
Seconds later, to the astonishment of his fellow prisoners, as the guard search Piddington’s boots, shorts, clenched fists, armpits and mouth, the valves had disappeared.
With no radio parts found, the Japanese dismissed the prisoners and allowed to return to their accommodation.
“As the guard vanished round the corner Piddington found himself encircled by riotously happy fellow prisoners who only a few seconds ago had clearly foreseen their own imminent destruction…”
How had he vanished the valves? Everyone waited for an answer.
Finding himself unable to speak because of his stammer and the pressure of so many people surrounding him, Piddington brought out the valves, passed them to the man responsible for hiding them, and moved silently off.
Within days, as the legend spread, Piddington became known as the magician who’d completely vanished a whole wireless set.
(In reality, he’d just deftly flicked the valves into a close-by bush, moments before the guard searched him!)
Months later, Piddington was given with the unsavory task of being responsible for concealing the secret radio.
Along with a select group of others, the team hid the radio safe from the Japanese guards, operating it to listen to the latest war news from the BBC, and then passing that news onto other POWs. This was a vital role, giving the prisoners knowledge of what was going on outside the confines of Changi.
It was also a dangerous role. If the radio was discovered and Piddington associated with it, the Japanese would likely condemn him to death.
Read about another POW-magician who operated a secret radio here.
Listening to the BBC nightly, and one of the few to do so in Changi, left a tremendous impact on Piddington and helped him maintain his mental health while in captivity. It also foreshadowed Piddington’s ambition to perform on the BBC in his post-war career.
There were many close calls, but the radio stayed undiscovered by the guards until the end of the war.
To learn how Piddington and Braddon developed a two-person telepathy act in Changi, which became the basis for The Piddingtons post-war radio broadcasts, read Part 3 of this blog article here.
To read the other blogs in this four-part article on The Piddingtons, see the Magic at War blog index here.
Quoted text mainly drawn from ‘The Piddingtons’ (1950) by Russell Braddon.
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