Sydney Piddington: telepathy in a Japanese POW camp (Part 3)
Part 3 explores how Piddington developed a two-person telepathy act in Changi, which became the basis for The Piddingtons’ post-war radio broadcasts.
Thai-Burma Railway and the Changi Aerodrome
At the end of 1942, Sydney Piddington was reunited with fellow Australian Russell Braddon, when the prisoners from Pudu Jail in Malaysia were moved to Changi in Singapore.
By this time, with Changi massively overcrowded, the Japanese were moving POWs to ‘lavish new camps’ in Thailand where there was better food and living conditions. They wanted thousands of men to go there.
Piddington and Braddon, fed up with life in Changi, put their names down for H Force, one of the later drafts. Some of Piddington’s friends from the concert party also volunteered.
But, when the senior Australian officer in the POW camp heard that the H Force volunteers would severely deplete the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) Malayan Concert Party, he ordered those prisoners who were performers or stage crew to stay behind.
So, as Braddon wasn’t in the concert party, but Piddington was, the friends were separated again.
In May 1943, Russell headed north to Thailand in cattle-trucks with the 3,270 other POWs in H Force (including Dick Trouvat, a Dutch POW-magician). Piddington, to his chagrin, remained behind in Changi.
This decision to keep Sydney back saved his life.
For the claim by the Japanese that the camps north of Singapore were to provide better living conditions for the POWs was a ruse. In fact, those men sent north were forced to work, in horrific conditions, building the Thai-Burma Railway…
Construction of the Thai-Burma railway (also known as the Burma–Thailand or Burma–Siam railway) began in mid-1942. This would allow the Japanese armed forces to resupply their troops fighting the Allies in Burma by land, bypassing sea routes which were vulnerable to attacks from Allied warships and submarines. Once the railway was built the Japanese planned to attack the British in India, and Allied supplies to China.
Magician-POWs, Cortini (Johan Hubert Crutzen) and Wizardus (Fergus Anckorn) also worked on the Thai-Burma Railway.
Starved of food and medicines and forced to work impossibly long hours in remote unhealthy locations, over 14,000 POWs died building the Thai-Burma railway. The number of rōmusha dead probably reached up to 94,000.
One in three Australian soldiers in H Force died.
*****
Back in Singapore, those prisoners left at Changi were forced to construct a huge airfield. The area comprised hills and swamp, bordered by the sea. The prisoners removed – by hand - the hills and deposited them in the sea, creating an area of land (part excavated from solid land, part reclaimed from the sea) to provide for two huge runways and many aircraft bays and subsidiary strips. It was a mammoth task.
For two years, Piddington – along with every man who could walk - was dragged out of Changi to build the airbase two miles away.
When the Thai-Burma Railway and its associated infrastructure were complete, the Japanese sent many of the survivors back to Singapore.
Russell Braddon, having endured months of hard labour in appalling conditions, was one of these survivors. He arrived back in Singapore, a year after he left, in May 1944.
The Changi Playhouse
By this stage, the civilian internees who’d occupied Changi Jail, had been moved out. This allowed for Allied prisoners to be housed there, alongside those in the nearby former British military barracks on the Changi peninsula.
Piddington and Braddon lived in Changi Jail, sharing a tent with two or three others, including artist Ronald Searle.
When the POWs were moved into Changi Jail and its surrounding area, the Japanese allowed the AIF concert party to build an open-air theatre with a covered stage. The Allied camp leaders appointed Piddington as stage director, while Searle took responsibility for set design, and one of their other tent companions became stage manager. They christened the theatre ‘The Changi Playhouse,’ and it was an elaborate affair (with a set of flies), constructed by volunteer labour, and seating nearly 1,000 men.
In that final year of the war, the concert parties put on many productions in the theatre, contributing much to the morale of their fellow POWs, worn down by over two years of captivity and hard labour.
Telepathy
One day, in mid-1944, Piddington read an article in an old copy of a Reader's Digest magazine. It was by Dr J. B. Rhine of Duke University, North Carolina. Rhine argued that telepathy was not nonsense but worked. The article included a few simple tests which readers could try at home.
Piddington suggested to Braddon that they experiment with telepathy, as an exercise in keeping their minds active. That evening they sat down and tried out Rhine’s tests.
“Upon the basis of the mutual confidence we built up, we commenced in 1944 a series of telepathy tests which eventually became a recognised form of Changi entertainment,” recalled Braddon after the war.
“That was the start. Thenceforward we did it every evening – after tea, just before it got dark…”
The mini-act comprised Sydney working with the audience, while Russell was blindfolded and isolated in some manner apparently receiving Sydney’s thoughts.
Reactions to their tests varied. Some prisoners accepted the demonstrations of telepathy as genuine, while others were vociferously sceptical. (As they should have been, because Piddington and Braddon were, in fact, developing and using a set of secret verbal and non-verbal codes, and basic magic techniques, to allow them to appear to read each other’s minds.)
“As far as the results were concerned, we passed from the stage of poor results and frivolity to good results and an absorbed interest. Consistently, without speaking, moving or looking, either one at the other, we passed correctly colours and numbers and objects indicated by the third person.”
Gradually, the demonstrations first performed to their close friends, attracted inquirers from the wider prison population, keen to assess the genuineness of Piddington and Braddon’s telepathy themselves.
Read about other prisoners using telepathy and occult-styled effects for entertainment here.
After about three months, the pair were asked to ‘perform’ their séance or ‘black mass’ (as some referred to their demonstrations) before Major Osmond Daltry. One-legged Daltry was the man in charge of all the shows put on in Changi Jail.
Daltry indicated that their demonstrations would play well on a stage. They were a novel form of entertainment, and one which would cause the audience to think; is this mind reading real or a trick?
But, Daltry said, to be successful, Piddington and Braddon needed to transmit words, not just numbers, objects and colours. So, the Australian pair went away to develop, learn and practice a more sophisticated two-person code.
Keen to travel the world after their release from captivity, they thought that if they developed an act in prison, they could make money performing it after the war.
A month after their first audition for Daltry, Piddington and Braddon did a second. This time, in front of an impromptu audience of senior officers in the officers’ compound, they gave a half hours’ worth of telepathy demonstrations. The officers were impressed, and Daltry gave the act a ‘green light’ to transfer to the stage.
Having a stammer wasn’t ideal for Piddington’s emerging career as a stage performer. But, according to Daltry, it made him an “interesting chap.” It enhanced the believability of the performances, creating a sense of vulnerability and sympathy in Piddington among the audience.
That was the first of many shows in Changi. Several times a week, Piddington and Braddon, describing themselves as demonstrators of thought transference, performed in different parts of the camp. Causing controversy wherever they performed, they divided the inmates between those who were convinced it was real, those who thought it was fake, and those who didn’t care either way but enjoyed watching.
Appearing with the AIF concert party, Piddington and Braddon were the hit of a production called Cheerio, put on in a former British Army gymnasium in the Selarang area of the Changi complex.
When The Changi Playhouse was closed in March 1945 (after one production agitated the Japanese), Piddington and Braddon’s demonstrations became one of the few forms of theatrical entertainments available in the camp.
“Consequently, our shows became more popular, the controversy about them more acrimonious than ever.”
Their performances in the hospital huts, where they enlivened the lives of several hundred dying men at a time particularly encouraged them:
“Piddington and I were delighted when, after our first show in the T.B. hut, we left about ninety skeleton-like men roused to such a pitch of bitter argument that their eyes flashed again and their poor, fleshless chests swelled with fury. Two of them – both due to die within a fortnight – were, for the first time in months, up off their backs on their feet endeavouring to fight,” wrote Braddon.
The more sceptical of the prisoners proposed new experiments for the pair to perform, under strict test conditions. These challenges prompted Piddington and Braddon to hone their skills further, and devise ever-devious methods.
One prisoner was a member of the British Society of Psychic Research. After setting the pair several experiments, he was so convinced of their ability; he awarded them a certificate to authenticate their telepathy.
The telepathy also provided cover for the BBC news the prisoner community received from the camp’s secret radio. The Japanese commander thought the world news that the prisoners were sharing was obtained by telepathy, not radio.
To discover how the war ended for Piddington and Braddon and the success of The Piddingtons’ post-war telepathy performances, read Part 4 of this blog.
To read Parts 1, 2 and 4, see the Magic at War blog index here.
Quoted text mainly drawn from ‘The Piddingtons’ (1950) by Russell Braddon.
Comments
Post a Comment