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now.

1:16

Thank you very much for doing this. Oh my

1:18

pleasure. Thank you so much for thinking

1:21

of me. Margalit

1:23

Fox is a writer. For many

1:25

years she wrote obituaries for the New

1:27

York Times. You

1:29

know that we're not live and so if

1:32

I get anything wrong or you want to take anything

1:35

again feel free to let

1:37

me know. Wonderful. It means I can

1:39

swear if need be. Well

1:41

you can do that and we won't even cut it out.

1:44

You know that's a great thing. That's true. It's not

1:46

FCC. That's right. We can do whatever

1:49

we want. Although swearing isn't really

1:51

that

1:52

germane to this story. Well

1:54

who knows what they were saying to each other. I mean

1:56

if any two guys could have sworn what

1:59

have we gotten ourselves into?

1:59

It sounds like these two could have. In 1915,

2:05

two British men, Elias Henry

2:07

Jones, or Harry Jones, and

2:09

Cedric Waters Hill signed up

2:11

to fight in World War I. They

2:13

were sent to fight the Ottoman Empire. The

2:17

two men had never met, but when

2:19

they were captured, they ended up in the

2:21

same prisoner of war camp, in

2:23

what is today Turkey.

2:26

The camp was so remote, people said

2:28

it was escape proof. About

2:31

a hundred British prisoners were locked

2:33

up in empty houses in a small

2:35

town called Yosgåd. The

2:38

Ottomans did not use

2:40

barbed wire camps. What was used

2:42

to house their prisoners of war were existing

2:44

buildings like schools, hotels,

2:47

and private homes.

2:49

The camp was run by a man named Kazim

2:52

Bey, a retired Ottoman army

2:54

officer. He always wore a gray

2:56

uniform coat and a gold braided Turkish

2:59

cap.

3:00

He was, by the

3:02

accounts of various British

3:05

prisoners in that camp, cold,

3:08

aloof, basically

3:12

unapproachable. The

3:14

British prisoners had to pay for their meals

3:16

at the camp. When they complained

3:18

that the prices were too high, Kazim

3:20

Bey's response was,

3:22

eat less. And

3:25

the most severe thing

3:27

he did, and this was done by

3:29

camp commandants on both sides,

3:32

Allied

3:33

commanders also

3:35

did this as well in their camps, an

3:37

escape attempt by any

3:40

one captive, even just an attempt,

3:43

would bring down the most severe

3:46

reprisals, lockdown,

3:49

solitary confinement, and even

3:52

execution on every

3:54

single prisoner who remained

3:56

behind. And so these British

3:58

captives were

3:59

men of the war. of honor. They didn't

4:01

want to get their comrades

4:04

in danger, so they swore

4:06

to one another that they would not

4:08

flee. But Harry Jones

4:10

and Cedric Hill wanted to go

4:13

home.

4:15

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

4:22

Margalite Fox says Harry Jones and

4:24

Cedric Hill were very different from

4:27

one another.

4:28

Harry Jones had gone to Oxford. His

4:30

father was a British Knight and a professor.

4:33

Cedric

4:34

Hill hadn't gone to college.

4:36

He grew up on a cattle ranch in Australia

4:39

and described himself as painfully

4:41

shy.

4:43

He liked airplanes and magic. When

4:47

the war broke out in 1914, Cedric

4:49

Hill wanted to become a pilot, so

4:51

he went to London to enlist.

4:55

He spent weeks in London waiting for his assignment

4:58

and spent his time going to magic shows.

5:01

He would sometimes notice a woman who he passed

5:04

in the street. They talked a few

5:06

times and he liked her. He wanted

5:08

to ask her out and was trying to build up the

5:10

courage. When

5:13

she asked him when he was going off to war, he

5:15

said he was still waiting for his posting. She

5:18

leaned close to him and he said, gosh,

5:21

you're beautiful. I want to kiss you.

5:24

And then the woman put a white feather in his

5:26

buttonhole, a symbol of cowardice.

5:31

Cedric Hill went straight to the war office,

5:34

demanding an immediate posting. Two

5:37

days later, he joined a pilot training

5:39

program. He

5:41

did well as a pilot. He was made second

5:43

lieutenant, but said he felt

5:46

very much like a fish out of water in an officer's

5:48

uniform. One

5:51

day, his plane was hit and he had to

5:53

make an emergency landing. He

5:55

was captured and moved to the prison camp

5:58

in Yosgåd.

7:59

when they arrived at the Yosgad

8:02

prison camp. The camp

8:05

was made up of abandoned houses. Private

8:08

homes were empty because

8:10

their Armenian owners had

8:13

been murdered or driven out.

8:15

The POWs stayed in the empty houses.

8:18

The walls had traces from pictures or paintings

8:21

that had been hanging there,

8:23

and they found things left behind by the villagers.

8:27

One officer writes

8:29

of seeing exercise

8:31

books where French

8:33

was translated into Armenian

8:36

and Armenian was

8:36

translated into French, all

8:39

written out in what was clearly a

8:41

child's hand. And he said,

8:44

it was so distressing to think of

8:46

the cruel fate of the little

8:48

writer.

8:50

For the first several weeks, the captured

8:52

officers were not allowed to leave the houses,

8:55

which were crowded with about seven men sleeping

8:58

and living in each room. The

9:01

camp commandant, Kazim Bey, didn't

9:04

speak English, so he gave

9:06

orders to the prisoners through the camp

9:08

interpreter.

9:10

The prisoners at the camp had a nickname

9:12

for the interpreter.

9:13

The British officers, in

9:16

turn there, called him

9:18

the pimple. One of the

9:20

British POWs said the pimple

9:22

was

9:24

sharp as a needle and remarkably

9:26

observant, but

9:27

also conceited and patronizing.

9:32

When they asked if they could go outside for exercise, he

9:34

told them, lie on your mattresses,

9:37

read your books, smoke your cigarettes, and

9:39

be happy. Over

9:42

time, the British prisoners were given more

9:44

freedom, and they tried to make

9:46

life more comfortable for themselves. They

9:50

built furniture out of empty packing crates. Cedric

9:53

Hill made a bed by nailing legs to an old

9:55

door. Some of the

9:58

officers knew how to knit and would have known how to sew.

9:59

unravel old sweaters and re-knit

10:02

them into socks. They

10:04

began a lecture series. The

10:07

prisoners took turns explaining a subject they

10:09

knew about. Beekeeping, sleeping

10:11

sickness, and wireless telegraphy.

10:15

They put on shows with singing and clog dancing.

10:18

Cedric did magic tricks.

10:21

They

10:21

resorted to any kind of homemade

10:23

amusement they could find, playing

10:26

chess with hand-whittled chess

10:29

sets made out of scrap lumber. They

10:31

even played roulette

10:34

with a wheel made out of a discarded

10:37

door. But after a while,

10:40

these amusements paled.

10:42

They looked forward to the mail. Letters

10:46

and packages could take six to eight months to

10:48

arrive. Sometimes they never made

10:50

it at all.

10:52

The POWs received clothes, food,

10:55

and money from home. But

10:57

the pimple could often be seen around

11:00

camp wearing socks and clothes

11:02

sent to the prisoners.

11:05

Around the holidays, the prisoners

11:07

performed a secret musical mocking

11:09

the commandant and the guards.

11:11

Someone played the pimple and sang

11:14

a song about how much he loved looting packages.

11:17

The pimple had heard about the show and

11:20

said he wanted to come. The

11:22

prisoners lied and said they'd

11:25

decided to cancel.

11:27

The acting had been too bad.

11:29

The pimple told them, you

11:31

English are too easily discouraged. The

11:36

primary problem was

11:38

boredom, depression, hopelessness,

11:42

the crushing on way of being

11:45

with the same people and in

11:47

the same routine with nowhere

11:49

to go and nothing to do. Strikingly,

11:53

this psychological syndrome

11:56

was named Barbed

11:58

Wire Disease by a Swiss scientist.

11:59

a psychiatrist who in 1918 studied prisoners of war. And

12:05

so by the winter of 1917, they're

12:09

all really depressed

12:11

and just kind of emotionally exhausted.

12:15

And then one day in early 1917, Jones

12:19

gets a postcard from his aunt

12:21

in Britain.

12:24

Now the aunt knows that Jones

12:26

and his comrades have these long

12:29

empty days in captivity

12:31

with nothing to fill them. So she

12:34

suggests something

12:34

he had never but fore-considered, that

12:37

he and his fellow officers

12:40

try experimenting with a

12:42

Ouija board.

12:45

That was the beginning of it. We'll

12:53

be right back. Support

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for Criminal comes from

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15:22

For people who don't

15:24

know, what is a Ouija board? And

15:28

were they popular? I had no idea when

15:30

Ouija boards came about. Ouija

15:33

boards are a product

15:35

of the spiritualist fervor

15:38

that permeated both sides

15:41

of the Atlantic from the mid-19th

15:43

century on. They

15:46

were used either just as a light-hearted parlor

15:49

entertainment, but they were also used

15:51

by spiritualists who

15:53

believed that they were communicating

15:56

messages from the dead.

15:58

comes 1914

16:01

and the Great War, and there is

16:04

this huge uptick of

16:07

interest in spiritualism because

16:10

people have fallen loved ones.

16:13

Gold Star family is desperate

16:15

to contact their fallen husbands

16:17

and

16:18

sons and sweethearts. Starting

16:21

in the late 1800s, Ouija boards were

16:23

manufactured and sold in stores in

16:25

the U.S. and Europe. In

16:28

her 1917 postcard, Harry Jones'

16:31

aunt explained how a Ouija board worked

16:33

and what it looked like. Where do you

16:35

get a Ouija board in a prisoner

16:37

of war camp in the mountains of

16:40

Anatolia in 1917?

16:42

You can't go to World War II and buy one,

16:44

as I did when I was a kid. So

16:47

you make one, as you've made everything

16:49

else, your tables, your chairs,

16:51

the bed you're sleeping, you make it from

16:54

found objects.

16:56

They made it out of a piece of wood.

16:58

They added the letters of the alphabet in

17:00

random order.

17:03

The men in the camp were excited to try the board.

17:06

They started gathering at night to experiment

17:08

with it.

17:09

They found an old glass jar that had been used

17:11

for potted meat and put it on

17:13

the board.

17:14

They would all crowd around a small table.

17:18

Harry Jones sat in front of it with

17:20

his hand on the jar.

17:21

Night after night men gathered around

17:24

the table, and night after night the

17:26

glass refused to move. Finally,

17:29

it starts moving, seemingly

17:32

of its own accord,

17:33

and the men get a ripple

17:35

of excitement, but it spells gibberish. It

17:38

just goes to meaningless strings

17:40

of letters, you know, B, R,

17:43

X, Z.

17:43

So the men are

17:46

increasingly frustrated and disappointed.

17:48

This is not working out as

17:50

the promised entertainment

17:52

and relief from boredom it purported

17:54

to be.

17:55

One by one they drop out.

17:58

So one night, the men were

17:59

When they say, let's give the

18:02

board one last shot, and if not,

18:04

we're going to jettison it, somebody

18:06

says to the board, who are you?

18:10

And the glass is now moving apparently

18:13

of its own accord, touches

18:15

the letters S, A,

18:17

L, L, Y. And

18:21

there's the first ghost, and a woman.

18:24

These men are desperate for female company.

18:26

They've been locked up for years,

18:29

some of them.

18:30

Sally the ghost told the men in the camp

18:32

that she preferred sailors over soldiers,

18:35

and made, according to Jones, quote,

18:39

one or two most unladylike

18:40

remarks. Sausie

18:43

Sally is just

18:45

what the doctor ordered. She flirts

18:48

with them, truly a

18:50

delight. Soon

18:53

other ghosts started speaking through the Ouija board

18:55

too.

18:56

They called one of them Demure Dorothy.

19:00

The prisoners began holding seances almost

19:02

every night, and more and more officers

19:05

joined. So once

19:09

Sally emerges with Jones

19:12

helming the board, do people

19:15

in the camp start to,

19:16

does word start to get around that Jones, that

19:19

Jones might be kind of a medium?

19:22

It does, and while many

19:25

of his fellow British officers are skeptical

19:27

at first, when you're in

19:30

a situation of hopelessness,

19:32

you're with the same people day after day,

19:35

you haven't seen your family for years, you

19:38

want to believe anything.

19:41

Harry Jones insisted that he had no control

19:44

over the board. He invited the other

19:46

officers to test him,

19:48

so they blindfolded him.

19:50

They changed the position of the board and

19:52

even turned it upside down.

19:55

But no matter what they tried, the

19:57

board spoke to them in perfect sentences.

20:01

as long as Harry Jones was holding the glass.

20:05

One of the things that made the

20:07

possibility of communication with the

20:10

world of the dead so believable

20:12

was that the late 19th

20:15

century had seen this

20:18

eruption of new

20:20

communications technologies.

20:23

With

20:24

the telephone, you had these

20:27

widely separated voices

20:29

able to communicate over unimaginable

20:32

distances. With the

20:35

phonograph, you had bygone

20:37

men and women speaking as if

20:40

from beyond the grave on whack

20:43

cylinders preserved for all time.

20:46

And so spiritualists

20:48

would say, well, if all of these miraculous

20:52

technologies are possible, what's

20:54

to say that communication

20:56

between

20:57

the world of the living

20:59

and the world of the dead? What's to

21:01

say that these miracles aren't possible too?

21:04

And there is a very beautiful

21:06

moving quote

21:09

from Jones's memoir where

21:11

he says, he

21:13

realized it behooved

21:15

him to keep his ghosts

21:17

alive, not

21:20

to come clean and say, this

21:22

is just a trick. I've been guiding

21:24

the glass myself.

21:26

And the reason for it was he said,

21:29

being with these ghosts, we could

21:31

converse with Shackleton on his

21:34

polar expedition. We could

21:36

converse with ships on

21:38

the wide seas. We could walk

21:40

down Piccadilly and it was

21:42

the nearest we could get outside

21:44

our dreams to a breath of

21:47

freedom.

21:50

One day, Harry Jones heard that a

21:52

group of officers in another house had

21:55

held a seance without him.

21:57

A window had suddenly broken during the seance.

21:59

seance. Everyone ran

22:02

out of the room terrified.

22:05

Harry Jones investigated and found

22:07

footprints on a ledge outside the broken

22:10

window. Harry knew

22:12

that Cedric did magic and went

22:14

to talk to him. Cedric

22:17

came clean and Harry did

22:19

too. They promised not to

22:21

tell anyone

22:22

and they came up with a plan for something

22:25

new.

22:27

They would convince the camp that not only were

22:29

they spirit mediums but also mind

22:32

readers. Cedric Hill

22:34

had studied telepathy acts along

22:36

with magic. They

22:38

performed their act in front of the whole camp.

22:41

Jones sat blindfolded on a chair. Hill

22:44

would walk around the room and ask random

22:47

officers to empty their pockets asking

22:49

Jones what is this?

22:53

And Jones, concentrating

22:55

fiercely and receiving all

22:58

of the mental waves that one

23:00

does in telepathy, would say, oh you

23:03

have a piece of wood and

23:05

sure enough the prisoner would be holding

23:07

up a piece of wood. And so it went

23:09

with Jones identifying keys

23:12

and eyeglasses and

23:14

you name it, handkerchiefs,

23:16

whatever prisoners had. This

23:19

act of course centered on a covert

23:21

verbal code. The

23:24

code had taken three

23:26

months of creation,

23:29

rehearsal, preparation, memorization.

23:33

For example, if Hill used the

23:35

words quickly what have I here,

23:38

it meant the object was a piece of wood. If

23:41

Hill said tell me what this is,

23:43

it

23:44

meant the object was a pipe.

23:47

They created hundreds of variations on the

23:49

code for different items. The

23:52

pimple had heard about these performances and

23:55

he knew about the messages that Jones received

23:57

on the Ouija board.

23:59

One day, he had asked Jones if

24:02

it was true that he was, quote,

24:04

a student of spiritism. Jones

24:07

got nervous. He worried he was going

24:09

to get punished for using the Ouija board. But

24:13

instead, the pimple said he wanted

24:15

to ask the board some questions about

24:17

his romantic prospects.

24:20

So Jones agreed and invited the pimple

24:22

to a seance.

24:24

The pimple showed up with a whole list

24:26

of questions,

24:28

and the spirits told him what he'd hoped

24:30

to hear. Jones

24:32

later wrote, the answers created

24:35

a deep impression on him. This

24:38

is an aha moment for Harry

24:41

Jones. He thinks if

24:44

one of my captors is

24:47

interested in this board, maybe

24:49

I

24:50

don't know how, I don't know

24:52

when, but somehow,

24:55

maybe I can use it

24:57

to open the door to freedom. At

25:02

this point, the prisoners had been in the camp

25:04

for about a year. They wanted

25:06

to know what was happening in the war. They

25:09

wrote and received letters, but they were censored,

25:12

and they couldn't share war news.

25:15

But then, one of the spirits

25:17

who spoke through the Ouija board

25:19

began telling them what was happening.

25:22

Jones, who is by this

25:24

time totally skilled

25:27

in working the glass

25:29

without being seen to move it on its

25:31

own, he knows where all the letters are

25:33

around the board, he has his

25:35

primary

25:36

ghost who is a towering,

25:39

fearsome figure known only

25:42

as the spook. He has

25:44

the spook start to

25:46

deliver war news,

25:48

and the war news the spook delivers,

25:51

which supposedly is obtained

25:53

from the military gossip swirling

25:56

around the beyond, the

25:58

war news is authentic.

26:00

The Spirit told the prisoners that the

26:02

British had taken Baghdad in

26:04

March of 1917, which

26:06

they had.

26:09

Where it's actually come from is these

26:11

brilliant coded letters

26:13

in both directions that the POWs

26:16

have been exchanging with their families

26:19

in Britain because mail

26:21

in both directions was vetted by military

26:24

censors. Anything that

26:26

families

26:27

from Britain told them about the progress

26:29

of the war had to be written in

26:31

code and likewise anything

26:33

that the prisoners wanted to relay

26:36

back to Britain about their own condition.

26:39

When Harry Jones wrote to his wife or his

26:41

parents and wanted to let them

26:43

know to look for a code, he

26:45

used words in odd ways he

26:48

knew his family would notice. Then

26:50

his family knew that the first letter of each word

26:53

put together would spell out new words

26:55

and contain his real message.

26:58

His wife responded in the same way.

27:01

She wrote, have sent parcels

27:04

of the following. She then listed

27:06

a number of items like malt, elastic,

27:09

novels, tea.

27:11

The initial letter of each of these words

27:13

spelled out

27:14

England very strong now,

27:16

enemies collapsing.

27:19

Harry Jones would then use these updates

27:21

on the war in his ouija seances.

27:24

Along with updates, he had heard from other officers

27:27

who wrote similar letters to their families.

27:30

After this had gone on for some time,

27:33

an extraordinary memorandum

27:36

was posted in the camp and

27:39

it forbade the British officers

27:41

from relaying quote,

27:44

news obtained by officers

27:47

in a spiritistic state.

27:50

And that was the second great aha

27:52

moment

27:53

for Harry Jones. He

27:56

knew that that memorandum would have been

27:58

issued by the Commandant, Kizzim

28:01

Bey, and that meant

28:04

that the Commandant believed

28:07

in the spirit world, saw

28:09

the spirit world as a force to

28:11

be reckoned with. And when Jones read that

28:13

memorandum, his heart leapt

28:16

because he thought, aha, you

28:19

know, the pimple is a low-level officer.

28:22

He's gullible. It's easy

28:24

to convert him to spiritualist belief,

28:26

but he doesn't really get me

28:28

anywhere. He has no real authority here, but

28:31

the Commandant, my goodness.

28:35

One day, the pimple came to talk

28:37

to Harry Jones.

28:39

He wanted to know if the spirits could find

28:41

buried treasures. Jones

28:43

asked if they were looking for an Armenian treasure.

28:47

The pimple was surprised.

28:49

Did the spook tell you, he asked?

28:52

It had long been rumored in the camp

28:55

that

28:56

the wealthy Armenians of the town,

28:58

anticipating the coming genocide,

29:01

had buried their riches

29:04

somewhere in the area, and that

29:06

the local Ottomans, including

29:09

the Commandant, had been searching

29:11

for them in vain.

29:14

Harry Jones knew that if he had information

29:16

the Commandant wanted,

29:18

he might be able to use it to get himself,

29:21

and his friend said, Raquel,

29:22

out of the camp.

29:26

Harry hoped the Commandant would show up to

29:28

one of his regular séances, but

29:31

only the pimple came. Harry

29:33

wrote that the pimple had great

29:36

respect for the Ouija board and would

29:38

address it,

29:39

sir. Then,

29:41

one day months later, Harry was

29:43

called to the Commandant's office. He

29:45

walked in and told the Commandant he

29:47

already knew what the meeting was about.

29:51

How can you know what's in my mind, Kazim

29:53

Bey asked? Harry

29:55

said that he was both a spirit medium and

29:57

a mind reader. He said,

29:59

You are going to ask me to find a treasure

30:02

buried by a murdered Armenian of Yozgad

30:05

by the aid of the spirits."

30:09

They

30:09

made an agreement. Harry

30:12

would help the Commandant find the buried treasure.

30:15

But Harry's spiritual powers were

30:17

not strong enough to find the treasure by himself.

30:21

He would need a partner. The Ouija

30:23

board suggested a name. Cedric

30:26

Hill.

30:27

Harry knew he could trust Cedric.

30:30

He wrote that he had loyalty

30:33

like the sea.

30:35

Plus, Cedric Hill had been ready to

30:37

go for a long time. He

30:40

had been training by running around the grounds

30:42

every day before breakfast. At

30:44

night, he walked around an empty basement

30:47

carrying a bunch of tiles over his shoulder. He

30:50

saved canned food to take with him

30:52

on his escape. But there

30:54

are no secrets in a prisoner of war camp.

30:57

The senior British officer

30:59

in turn there one day

31:01

took him aside and said, I know all your plans.

31:04

You will be putting the entire camp

31:07

at risk if you escape. And

31:09

so you must give

31:11

me your word of honor that you won't escape. Which

31:14

Hill did, but he seethed for

31:16

months and months and months. So

31:19

when Harry Jones approached him about the escape

31:21

plan,

31:22

Cedric Hill worried what the other prisoners

31:25

would think.

31:26

He said he'd already become the most unpopular

31:29

officer in the camp when people heard

31:31

he was thinking about escaping.

31:34

But Harry told him he'd been thinking

31:36

about a way they could escape without

31:38

anyone getting hurt.

31:41

It was risky, but Cedric

31:44

agreed to join him. I'll

31:46

go all out, he said. They

31:48

shook hands. And

31:51

so you have Jones's

31:54

mastery of psychology,

31:58

and then you have Hill.

31:59

who can do anything

32:02

with his hands, including

32:05

make objects appear and

32:07

disappear. Together they are an unbeatable

32:10

combination.

32:19

We'll be right back.

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34:37

Harry Jones and Cedric Hill spent

34:39

months secretly working on an escape

34:41

plan.

34:43

Harry wrote that they had never been happier

34:45

in the camp. We no longer

34:47

merely existed. We were partners

34:50

in a great enterprise.

34:53

The whole plan hinged on the

34:55

Ouija board. The

34:57

Commandant and the Pimple requested private

34:59

seances with Harry and Cedric.

35:02

The seances could take almost five hours.

35:05

And Harry and Cedric presented the detailed

35:08

story that they'd spent months creating,

35:10

one

35:10

letter at a time.

35:13

A

35:14

certain rich Armenian of

35:16

the town of Yozgat, anticipating

35:19

the coming genocide, converted

35:22

his wealth to gold and

35:24

buried it in a spot known

35:26

only to him. Now he didn't tell

35:29

even his family where

35:31

this was because he didn't want them

35:33

tortured for it. So what he

35:35

did was he made up three

35:38

clues that only together

35:41

would reveal the treasure's whereabouts.

35:44

Harry and Cedric had the Ouija board say that

35:47

the three clues were buried in

35:49

different places.

35:51

The board said that the rich Armenian

35:53

man had chosen three friends.

35:56

Each friend knew how to find one clue.

35:59

didn't survive the war, his

36:02

three friends could get together and find the treasure.

36:05

But you needed all three of them,

36:07

and two of them had died.

36:11

Jones

36:11

and Hill can use the

36:13

Ouija board to contact

36:15

the spirits of the two dead

36:17

friends, learn the locations

36:20

of the

36:20

buried clues,

36:22

and dig them up. And then they

36:24

can all, with

36:27

their captors, set out to

36:30

find the third friend who is still

36:32

living. But

36:34

it would mean leaving the camp.

36:37

What Jones and Hill are actually

36:39

planning to do is travel

36:42

with their captors to the Mediterranean coast,

36:45

get a boat, drug their captors,

36:49

bind them, stick them

36:51

in the boat, and sail to join the British

36:53

forces at Cyprus, turning

36:56

over their captors, who now themselves

36:59

will become British prisoners of

37:01

war. However,

37:04

they also knew that if

37:06

at any point the

37:09

slightest false move gave

37:12

their hoax away, it would

37:14

mean a bullet in the back

37:16

for each of them. They

37:18

found a way to sneak out and bury the first

37:20

two clues close to the camp.

37:24

One day, they all met exactly

37:26

at noon in Yo's God's graveyard,

37:29

as the spirit had told them to do.

37:31

They brought a shovel and followed the directions.

37:35

When they had found the right spot, they

37:37

started digging.

37:40

Suddenly, they hit something. It

37:42

was a small tin can. Inside

37:46

the can, the pimple found a slip of

37:48

paper with a clue written on it, an Armenian. Harri

37:53

and Cedric had used an Armenian dictionary to write it.

37:56

The clue was a compass direction.

37:59

The commandant shook hands

38:02

with each of us several times over, Harry

38:04

wrote. The pimple was ecstatic.

38:08

The next day, they found the second clue,

38:11

another tin can with a clue written on a

38:13

slip of paper. That

38:15

night, the commandant sent them a bottle of

38:17

wine.

38:20

Now they all needed to go further away

38:22

to find the third clue.

38:25

After a year of planning, Harry

38:28

and Cedric would finally be getting out. But

38:32

the night before the trip, the commandant

38:34

panicked. He

38:36

got scared that something was spiritually

38:38

wrong. He thought that the spirits

38:41

weren't happy. He was scared that if

38:43

he moved forward, the spirits would punish

38:45

him, maybe even kill him. And

38:48

he canceled the trip.

38:50

The trip is off. The

38:52

escape is off. It is

38:54

completely devastating. But

38:58

as all good calm men do, Jones

39:01

and Hill from nearly the beginning

39:04

have had a Plan B. Plan

39:08

B

39:09

is to go insane. There

39:12

is a slender chance that

39:14

they will both be repatriated to Britain

39:17

in an official exchange of sick prisoners. That's

39:20

their Plan B. And so the

39:23

day the treasure

39:25

hunt falls through, they

39:28

embark

39:28

on losing their minds. How

39:31

do they do that? How do they convince

39:33

people that that's what's happened? Oh my goodness,

39:36

what they do to themselves

39:38

in terms of

39:39

mortifying their own persons,

39:43

they don't bathe for weeks on end.

39:45

They don't shave for weeks on end. They

39:48

pour pails of slop

39:51

all over the place. The

39:53

one fellow prisoner

39:56

whom they take into their confidence is a wonderful

39:58

Irish army

39:59

doctor named Doc O'Farrell.

40:02

And so he schools them and

40:05

he says, it'll be more convincing

40:07

if each of you boys comes down

40:09

with a different type of madness.

40:12

And so Hill

40:14

becomes a religious melancholic.

40:17

And his job

40:18

is really the harder of the two. He

40:20

has to sit motionless

40:23

for hours and hours on end, praying

40:26

and reading the Bible and weeping.

40:29

He makes himself

40:30

cry by covertly blowing cigarette

40:33

smoke into his eyes when no one is looking. Jones

40:36

comes down with what was then called general

40:39

paralysis of the insane. It's

40:42

a disease that results from syphilis

40:46

and its mental hallmarks are rampant

40:49

egoism, delusional

40:51

boastfulness and just

40:53

generally running around and

40:56

making a pest of yourself. So each one

40:58

of them for weeks starts

41:00

playing his respective madman

41:03

role. Local doctors

41:05

are brought in and Jones and

41:08

Hill play their role so well that the local

41:10

doctors are clearly scared

41:12

out of their wits. And so they immediately

41:15

issue them

41:15

to certificates of

41:18

lunacy signed and sealed. And

41:20

that allows Jones and

41:22

Hill to be dispatched to

41:25

Constantinople.

41:27

Margalite Fox says that part of

41:29

why this plan worked was because

41:31

many people believed that being able

41:33

to talk to spirits could damage

41:35

your mind.

41:37

They wound up having to

41:39

stay in the hospital, shaming

41:42

insanity for six full

41:45

months, during which time their

41:47

doctors who suspected them of

41:50

malingering, they were after all enemy

41:52

combatants,

41:53

their doctors subjected

41:56

them to all sorts of really

41:59

arduous, One

42:01

of the doctors gave Harry Jones a bottle of ink

42:04

and said it was medicine. He

42:06

drank the whole bottle and smiled. The

42:09

doctors constantly watched them.

42:13

Harry Jones later wrote about their stay at

42:15

the hospital.

42:17

We did not attempt to talk. We

42:19

were too closely watched for that. But

42:22

at night, under a cover of darkness, sometimes

42:25

he and sometimes I would stretch out

42:27

an arm. And for a brief moment

42:29

gripped the other's hand. The

42:32

firm, strong pressure of my comrade's

42:34

fingers used to put everything right.

42:39

They

42:39

were very, very worn physically.

42:43

And of course, they were very, very

42:45

worn psychologically. As Jones

42:48

says, when you sham madness

42:51

for that long, the real danger is

42:53

slipping into authentic madness in yourself.

42:56

And they both clearly came

42:58

close to that. But in the end, after

43:00

six months, the

43:03

doctors there finally certified

43:05

them

43:06

as insane.

43:09

And they were repatriated to Britain. They

43:13

actually wound up being repatriated

43:16

on two separate ships. The

43:18

minute each of their ships

43:19

cleared Ottoman

43:21

waters, first

43:24

hill and then Jones made

43:26

a miraculous recovery. They

43:29

were just fine. They were

43:31

just fine.

43:34

They reached England. And

43:36

then two weeks later, the war

43:38

ended. In a sense,

43:42

their whole escape

43:45

with first the spiritual

43:47

con game and then the

43:48

sham insanity. It

43:52

literally bought them two weeks, but it

43:54

probably saved their lives because

43:56

they're both very articulate

43:58

about the fact that it

43:59

It gave them hope in

44:02

a world otherwise devoid of hope. It

44:04

gave them something to live

44:06

for, something to get up and work

44:08

toward every day.

44:16

Before Harry Jones and Cedric Hill left

44:18

the Yosgad prison camp for the hospital in

44:20

Constantinople,

44:22

they had secretly confessed to some of the

44:24

other prisoners in the camp that the

44:26

Ouija Board had all been a con.

44:29

But the other prisoners

44:32

didn't want to hear about it. The

44:35

officers in the prison camp, these

44:37

are educated British men,

44:40

refused to believe that

44:43

the spiritualism had been a sham. That

44:47

was how good Jones's

44:50

powers of persuasion had

44:52

ultimately been. Mrs. Hill

44:55

later said, true believers

44:58

remain true believers

45:00

through everything.

45:03

They just need it. They

45:06

just need it.

45:41

The

45:53

Confidence Men. How two prisoners

45:55

of war engineered the most remarkable escape

45:58

in history. We're

46:00

on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and

46:02

Instagram at criminal underscore podcast.

46:06

We're also on YouTube at youtube.com

46:08

slash criminal podcast. Criminal

46:11

is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public

46:13

Radio WUNC. We're

46:15

part of the Vox Media Podcast

46:17

Network. Discover more great shows

46:20

at podcast.voxmedia.com.

46:23

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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