PIDDINGTONS, The (Sydney, 1918 – 91 and Lesley, 1926 – 2016). Notebook Chronicling the Performances and Secrets of Sydney and Lesley Piddington, and Archival Material. Written in the hand of magician and journalist Bayard Grimshaw, and being a lined pocket memorandum book chronicling ten performances by the celebrated Australian mind-reading duo in mid-1949 and early 1950, when the couple was at the height of its power and popularity in England. Grimshaw records each appearance on the BBC in exacting detail, describing individual effects, basic procedures of the various “tests,” as well as technical minutiae, recording successes and failures alike, while both divulging and guessing at methods used to perform the apparent feats of thought transference.
With regards to the presentations, Grimshaw records many of the best-remembered feats of The Piddingtons, including their famous Tower of London appearance (in which Lesley was locked in the tower yet was able to read minds via radio at a great distance); regarding their methods, he divulges at least a portion of the secret verbal code employed, hints strongly at other methods put to use, guesses at still others (nail nicks, signals, accomplices), and points out the Piddingtons’s use of a few choice (but well-known) published methods, including those of Annemann, for various feats of thought-transference.
Approximately 60 pages in printed publisher’s wraps, the bulk of the content recording the performances of The Piddingtons, primarily completed on rectos only. Housed in a chemise-lined folding cloth box, the spine lettered in gilt. A remarkable chronicle of the two-person mindreading act that took England – if not the world – by storm in the post-war era, written by an insider who himself was a practiced exponent of the art of theatrical thought-reading.
Sold together with an archive of Piddington-related material, including a cache of BBC scripts (photostats) for the Piddingtons and their broadcasts, newspaper and magazine clippings regarding the couple and their shows, a handful of programs for their theatre appearances, BBC file photographs of the Piddingtons, a quantity of manuscript letters from Sydney Piddington to Bayard Grimshaw, telegrams, two contemporary photographs of the mindreading duo (one SIGNED), a RPPC of The Piddingtons, SIGNED by the duo in the lower margin, a Piddingtons Christmas card SIGNED by the couple, and a photographic oversize calling card of Bayard & Marion Grimshaw, advertising their act of “Radio Vision.”
The many subtle secrets behind the Piddingtons’ feats of mental magic were only revealed in 2015, and yet Grimshaw, himself an accomplished presenter of a two-person code act with his wife Marion, not only took a front row seat (along with the rest of the listening audience) to these amazing performances, he was perhaps the best-informed audience member, as this notebook makes clear. Unofficially, he was also a link between the Piddingtons and the magic world, as he was the couple’s closest friend in the United Kingdom, and served as an unofficial program associate to their broadcasts. This notebook is among the best records of what many magicians and students of popular culture consider – arguably – the best and most popular mindreading performances of modern times.