Edric Medley Selous

England, Andrews Newspaper Index Cards, 1790-1976 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.

UK, WWII Civilian Deaths, 1939-1945 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: 2013. Original data: Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Civilian War Dead in the United Kingdom, 1939–1945. 7 volumes. 1954-195

• E M Selous
• Born c 1910
• Died 2 Mar 1943
• Death Place - Borneo
• Age. 33
• Father Late Dr. and Mrs. C F Selous
  

Civilian SELOUS, E M

• Died 02/03/1945
• Aged 33
• Civilian War Dead

Son of the late Dr. and Mrs. C. F. Selous. Died at Kuching, Sarawak.

St. George's Chapel In Westminster Abbey

Location: England, London

https://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/3168951/selous,-/

Edric Medley Selous, was appointed at the age of 20, to the position of Secretary for Chinese Affairs in the Sarawak Civil Service in Malaysia. A few months before there had been an announcement in the Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser of his engagement to Daphne Sidebottom. However, his passenger sailing to Kuching shows he was alone, and Daphne appears to be single and living with her mother in 1939, so it seems the engagement was broken off.

Edric spoke several languages and was recognised as a leading authority on the Chinese people and their language.

In 1942, shortly after the fall of Singapore to the Japanese, he was arrested, along with several colleagues, and taken prisoner. Edric appears in a notice from The Scotsman on 18th April 1942 as missing, believed prisoner.

According to Defying the Odds: Surviving Sandakan and Kuching by Charlotte Nash, those arrested in Kuching were kept locally. He appears to have kept his sprits up in the early days as the anecdote from an internee describes in Kuching in Pictures 1841-1946, compiled on behalf of the Sarawak State Library, -

One day we were paraded and addressed by a Japanese General. He told us how badly the war was going for our side and tried to explain that we were extremely well treated. According to him, the British had treated their Japanese prisoners very badly in Malaya. They had been made to travel in open trucks and many of them had been squeezed into kerosene tins! Just what he was driving at no one bothered to enquire, but the whole show was most amusing as Mr. Selous stood by the Japanese and interpreted. Mr. Selous prefaced his translation by “The General says” and when he came to the kerosene tins we were in fits of laughter internally. Mr. Pengilley, not so amused as some of us, I fear, happened to be examining his finger nails at one period and so received a hearty kick from behind from Captain Kassia, who had decided to impress the General.

They were moved to the Batu Lintang camp in July 1942, where conditions were worse.

He would have been held in the men’s civilian camp, whose camp master (the appointed captive responsible for liaising between the internees and the Japanese authorities) was his colleague, Cyril Drummond Le Gros Clark, Chief Secretary of Sarawak, who was arrested at the same time.

Because of his special knowledge he faced two long periods of torture by the Japanese, which at the time was known to be particularly brutal, but never revealed what he knew.

In March 1945, according to later newspaper reports, rather than risk betraying the Chinese under another period of torture, he committed suicide. His death record (attached) says he died of multiple self inflicted wounds – although some of them may well have been a result of torture. He was 35, six months before the Batu Lintang camp would be liberated by the Australian Army

The Sarawak Gazette in 1947

When Edric Selous died in internment in March, 1945, the Chinese in Sarawak lost a friend and a protagonist who will not easily be replaced. Selous, and the other officers who served in that department, rendered advice and settled disputes in a way which was so generally acceptable that many matters, which now involve tedious and difficult litigation, were in those days kept out of the courts. His great services were always recognised both by the Government and the public, but then he still remains on those men the value of whose work is not fully appreciated until after they have gone. The presence of such and independent, fair, and hard-working arbitrator is really indispensable amongst a people who are expected to adapt themselves to modern law but still cling tenaciously to their ancient customs.

His father heard the news in October 1945. He had been aware of his capture. On Monday 12th November 1945, he went into the pathology lab where he worked as normal. After lunch a colleague returned and found him dead. He had left a note addressed to the coroner saying he had taken a potion of sodium cyanide.

By not revealing information to the Japanese, Edric Selous probaby saved many lives - one of thousands of unsung heroes of the war.

https://ancestryresearchblog.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/edric-medley-...