Magic at War

In 1945, Major Douglas Kelley was sent to examine Hermann Göring and the other leading Nazis awaiting trial at Nuremberg. Kelley was an American Army psychiatrist experienced in treating combat casualties. He was also an accomplished magician and prominent figure in American amateur magic, a prize-winning performer who became a national officer of the Society of American Magicians. Doctor and magician Douglas McGlashan Kelley was born at Truckee, California, on 11 August 1912 and grew up in San Francisco. He studied at the University of California, Berkeley, qualified in medicine at the University of California School of Medicine in 1937, and later undertook postgraduate work at Columbia University, receiving a Doctor of Medical Science degree in 1941. Magic had been part of his life long before then. As a student Kelley performed escapes, card magic and public stunts. Contemporary newspaper reports record Houdini-style feats, including freeing himself while restrained inside a mail s...

From wounded soldiers learning card tricks to psychiatrists, occupational therapists and modern clinical trials, the idea that magic might aid recovery has a surprisingly long history. They cost threepence each. One taught tricks with the hands and string; the other used matches, coins and playing cards. On their covers, a British soldier sits with a magician’s wand across his knees. Published in 1915, Tricks for the Trenches & Wards might look like another piece of First World War ephemera. Yet behind the tricks was an idea that would later develop into the deliberate use of magic in rehabilitation. Image: Tricks for the Trenches & Wards (1915) (author ’ s collection) Their author was Charles Folkard, an illustrator and former professional magician who wrote as ‘Draklof’ – Folkard backwards. The material was simple and portable. A wounded soldier needed no elaborate apparatus: a piece of string, a coin, a pack of cards or simply his own hands would do. Folkard had been prom...