We're going to the ball!

Second World War illustration of three women. One of the women has been drawn to represent Cinderella, she is wearing rags and has bare feet. The other two women are drawn to represent the ugly stepsisters. They are dressed in ball gowns and have elaborate headdresses. The inscription below the image reads 'We're going to the ball'. This drawing was created to illustrate one the scenes of a play called 'Cinderella and the magic soya bean' that the soldiers acted out at the Cathay Theatre in the Sime Road prisoner of war camp in Singapore. George Napier Sprod (1919–2003) was an Australian cartoonist, for many years active in England, who signed his work "Sprod". He was one of the many captured by the Japanese in the fall of Malaya and spent the years 1942 to 1945 as a POW, conscripted to work on the Thai-Burma Railway and in Changi Prison, where he developed his artistic talents. While there he ncontributed to the fortnightly camp magazine 'The Exile'. After the war Sprod returned to Sydney, where he sold illustrated articles on his experiences to the Australian press, first to the 'Sydney Morning Herald' and then to the 'Australian Women's Weekly'. In 1949 he left for London.