The Piddingtons

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The team has been keen to find evidence of Piddington’s Roman gardens. Their search took them to the villa’s courtyard, where they found rows of small pits or postholes, which must have been dug for planting fruit trees or supports. These were of two sizes. On the outside, there was a single row of larger pits that have been traced around all four sides of the garden. Roy argues that these larger ones were for espalier apple trees — Pliny, in his description of his seaside villa at Laurentum, notes that the apple trees were planted round the edges, and Cunliffe’s work at Fishbourne in the 1960s also identified likely espalier apple trees within the courtyard. Inside this outer larger row, there are five rows of smaller post pits, which could have been for supports for soft-fruit bushes. Samples of the soils were sent away for pollen analysis but, sadly, the results were negative, as Piddington’s soil is highly alkaline. The garden was irrigated by water from the well, running through timber-lined channels leading from a tank. Sydney served in an artillery regiment in Singapore. After the fall of Singapore he was imprisoned for over 3 years in the Changi POW Camp. Changi was one of the more notorious Japanese prisoner of war camps and was used to imprison Malayan civilians and Allied soldiers. The treatment of POW’s at Changi was harsh but fitted in with the belief held by the Japanese Imperial Army that those who had surrendered to it were guilty of dishonoring their country and their families and, as such, deserved to be treated in no other way.

Last night Syd Piddington, the tall slim 31-year-old man who first learned of telepathy when he was in a Japanese prison camp, and his beautiful 26-year-old actress wife, Lesley, convinced a panel of judges in a BBC studio that their “act” is genuine. During last night’s half-hour broadcast there appeared to be no possibility whatsoever of collusion between the pair. Any “cheating” during the broadcast would have entailed the cooperation of the panel of judges. a b c Lamont, Peter. (2013). Extraordinary Beliefs: A Historical Approach to a Psychological Problem. Cambridge University Press. p. 221. ISBN 978-1-107-01933-1 Davidson had been approached by an agent on behalf of a couple of performers from Australia, Sydney Piddington and Lesley Pope, who had had some success with their mind-reading act on Australian radio. Their agent “wondered if it would be possible to do anything with them” on the BBC. “I cannot sincerely endorse the Piddington show as a feature of long-term radio interest,” Davidson replied. How wrong he was. But even after their last program in 1952, a journalist in Two Worlds headlined an article, “Amazing Success of BBC Thought Transference Test: Triumph for Psychical Research.” The article continued: “A great step forward towards nation wide recognition of the powers of ‘extra-sensory perception‘ was achieved by the most impressive and successful demonstration of ‘Thought Transference’ on the Light Programme last Thursday evening.”And of course, they were among the first of a succession of conjurors whose acts filled audiences in the second half of the twentieth century with the hope that there was something science couldn’t explain. These acts were fundamentally different from those of James Randi, David Blaine, Penn and Teller, and David Copperfield, who use(d) their consummate skills to achieve effects that are often impossible to explain but never assumed to be paranormal. I won’t attempt to prove the genuineness of the Piddingtons’ telepathy; I will just say it is genuine. Having produced five programmes, knowing every detail and every precaution taken, I can say quite truthfully that there never had been a single instance of fake thought transference by Sydney Piddington and his wife. The Stratocruiser Broadcast - A famous experiment where Lesley was taken to cruising altitude in a plane above a British military base. Amongst other demonstrations, she was able to determine the personal possessions of an audience member chosen at random by the panel of judges in the studio. [10] Secrecy of the Act [ edit ] All this was swept away at the Roman Conquest, with a number of pieces of army equipment reinforcing the significant body of evidence for military activity in the area — in Roy’s view, almost certainly a fort, as discussed below. But the military occupation did not last long, and around AD 55-60 a three-roomed timber structure was erected, later developed into a seven-roomed timber building: the beginnings of a ‘proto-villa’ in which the inhabitants lived before the main villa was constructed in c.AD 100. One of the late Iron Age roundhouses, found below the earliest phase of the proto-villa, is shown bottom left.

Dr. Soal was partly moved to make his first para psychological studies following the death of one of his brothers in the First World War. Like many of the bereaved at the time, he made inquiries of mediums concerning communication with the departed; but conducted his observations with a scientific approach. His observations surprised conventional understanding even within psychical research. Most especially, he reported a case of apparently precognitive telepathy of a situation yet to occur for a long-forgotten, but still living, friend of his, Gordon Davis. This suggested, in line with earlier speculations, that the statements of mediums had nothing to do with "spirits of the departed," but only knowledge gained - by telepathy, if need be - from the sitters themselves. What was particularly surprising was that this information was yet to be learned by Soal himself.Fifteen to twenty years later, further timber-walled rooms were erected in the middle. The doors are marked by ‘doormats’, several rectangles of limestone cobbles placed at strategic points just outside the walls, where a door might be expected to be. Nevertheless, it was a building of some pretension. Within the foundations of the Phase 1b wall was found a quantity of painted wallplaster rubble, which must have been taken from the nearby remains of a military building that had fallen into disrepair and was being demolished. Looking across a room within the villa identified as a workshop because of the line of bowl furnaces discovered within it. Of course, it isn’t news. There is a 1989 Columbo episode that explains one permutation of it in some depth, “Columbo Goes to the Guillotine.” Is it really ugly? I don’t think so. I think that the Radio Lab people are just following from Jillette’s lead. Love grabbed them both and Lesley Elizabeth Pope said 'yes' when Piddington asked for her hand in marriage in 1946. They married in Woollahra, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and the combination of a talented actress and master Manipulatist morphed into 'The Amazing Piddingtons,' a telepathy act second to none, baffling to all and credited to one man whose secret methods shook the conjuring world into submission, to this day. During the entire period of their radio programs, TV specials, and stage shows, there was no real resolution of the “genuineness” of the Piddingtons’ act. The BBC tried to undo the damage, as they saw it, of Piffard’s statement, as some kind of imprimatur of telepathy, by pointing out that it was all good, light-hearted fun. However, with each new demonstration in ever more contrived location, more people, some of them invited judges, gave personal testimony to the miraculousness of the events. If a Mr. J.H. Davidson, assistant head of variety (music) at the BBC, had had his way in 1948, the British public would never have experienced a two-year media frenzy—as it wasn’t called in those days—over the mind-reading abilities of a personable young couple whose deeds baffled everyone who tried to explain them.

The second segment is about “The Piddingtons”— a husband and wife mentalism act from Australia that was huge on BBC Radio in the 1950s. The story is told from the perspective of their grandson and his search for how they did their act. At australia 247 our purpose is to help people find great local businesses like dentists, hair stylists, restaurants, bars, hotels, local businesses. In the years after they disappeared from the British scene, long after their names were regularly in the headlines, I would occasionally try to find out if they, or someone else, had ever revealed the secret of how they did it. J B Rhine (Joseph Banks Rhine) is widely considered to be the "Father of Modern Parapsychology." Along with his wife Dr Louisa E. Rhine, Dr J B Rhine studied the phenomena now known as parapsychology at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. J B Rhine collaborated with Professor William McDougall who served as the Chairman of the Department of Psychology. Dr. J B Rhine coined the term "extrasensory perception" (ESP) to describe the apparent ability of some people to acquire information without the use of the known (five) senses). He also adopted the term "parapsychology" to distinguish his interests from mainstream psychology. At the heart of all these stories, with the Piddingtons as a classic example, is the simple issue of “claims of the paranormal.” If you say you are doing something paranormal—or even, as in this case, if you refuse to deny it—people would rather believe you, however extraordinary the claim, than accuse you of lying.At the far northern end, there is a substantial piece of wall, which looks like the evidence for an external staircase. All this points to a high-status building, as does the fact that, in the few places where the wall survives, it appears to have had a damp course made of crushed secondhand opus signinum (concrete), which must have come from an earlier building. The day finally came for liberation to begin. One night, around midnight, came the news that Emperor Tenno Heika of Japan had surrendered unconditionally. I can only imagine the wide-eye smile on Piddington's face as his secret radio ended this destroying chapter in his life. Many of the original radio broadcasts are still available. Among the more famous demonstrations undertaken by the Piddingtons were: