Up until the 1910 era there were few European women in Malaya. There were plenty of Asian women, who had come with their men or by themselves to work, often in prostitution. (Most boom towns had this problem, didn't they? Lots of lonely young men with money.)

With so beautiful obliging women all over the place, sexually transmitted diseases were rampant. Many European men, feeling isolated and with few social boundaries fell into madness or depression or alcoholism. Of course, these young men could not marry their lovers, for they would be ostracized and forced to give up membership in all "the clubs." Obviously some men did, but at a price.

In the book Sinister Twilight, about the Fall of Singapore,the author,Noel Birk, tells the story of a man who married a stunningly beautiful Eurasian women - who did give up his clubs, but who didn't care.The same book tellst the sad story of a suicide pact between a young European planter and a Chinese girl. And this in 1942!(My grandmother arrived in Malaya to find my grandfather had an Asian mistress. No problem. She eventually took her own lover!)

The Powers That Be decided that the colony needed the civilizing influence of white women if only because the Rubber Industry needed productive stable employees.

The first white women who came down to Malaya found it very hard. Rubber Estate Managers worked long hard hours. Their wives led lonely lives. As women, they weren't allowed 'to work', in this case not even in the home, so they didn't have much to do except write letters. (Indeed, they weren't allowed to do much of anything except breed).

They weren't wanted for the most part by the established male colonials, especially in the social Clubs, where they apparently lowered the level of discourse with their small minded gossip and petty rivalries and class and race snobbery.

Eventually these once all male bastions had to open up to the female sex, allowing weekly dances and the like. At Kuala Lumpur's Royal Selangor Club a dance was held in the reading room each Saturday. My aunt recalls a Christmas party at the elegant Royal Selangor, in around 1925, when she was four years old. She remembers most all the big bright fluffy stuffed toy animals! (Funny, because I was living in the wilds of Labrador at 4 years of age in 1958 and I recall clearly the Christmas party (in a big warehouse) where bright stuffed animals were given as gifts. All little girls are alike, I guess. ) Dorothy (her mom,my grandmother) was the only woman ever let into the men's bar at the Selangor Club, to score their cricket matches!

Colonial women were blamed, even, for raising the cost of living with their need for comfort and protection. Servants, whether a Malay driver, or Chinese Cook or Tamil Ayah or nurse were relatively easy to procure, but costly, 40 dollars a month for a lady's maid, for instance.

Many male colonials believed that Malaya was no place for a white women. Still more and more women went out to Malaya. After all, after the First World War there weren't many marriageable men in England, 1 man for ever 10 women. In the book Return to Malaya, published in 1936, Bruck Lockart observes the changes that took place on the penninsula between 1911 and 1936 and states outright that the worse change of all, is the arrival of British women

The price of rubber fluctuated wildly during the early decades of the 20th century, and the cost of living kept going up UP UP in Malaya. And then the Depression. So the European men, like my grandfather who went out their to make their fortune as youths, hoping to return to England, often couldn't afford to go back home.

In many ways, they were as exploited by the rubber companies, it seems, as the native workers, the Tamil tappers and weeders, the Chinese bushwackers and cooks. And others didn't want to go home, having gotten used to the East.

My grandparents were both interned in Changi Prison after the Fall of Singapore during the Second World War. I am writing a radio play about my grandmother's experiences.

I still know nothing about my grandfather, except that, by all accounts, he was a nasty piece of work. My grandmother, who like me was called Dorothy Nixon, I met once in 1967, when she came to visit. We didn't get along back then.

She hated me in fact. But that's all in the past. And I have gotten to know her better, after 40 years, because I have her war diary

Even Giles Playfair in his book Singapore Goes off the Air, 1943, a first hand account of The Fall of Singapore in January, February 1942, from the perspective of a radio producer at the MBC (and an excellent read) has some mean things to say about some colonial women who are not –in his view – doing their fair share during the siege. (My grandmother worked at MBC and he writes about her in the book, describing her courage and obstinance.)

Of these colonial women Playfair writes Page 89 “They have possessed (or still possess)all the advantages of wealth but never been trained in the responsibilities,”leadership and courageous example.” He says these women come from the Scottish and English middle classes and (had they stayed at home) would have been sweeping out a four bedroom villa. But in Malaya they have servants and are chauffeured around in large cars. “They are pampered and admired all out of proportion to their desserts in an open market.”

They don’t even have to look after their own children he writes. To be fair, this is a diary and Mr. Playfair’s book shows no signs that he is in any way a misogynist, quite the opposite for he speaks admiringly of his female co-workers at MBC. But this is a perfect example of how colonial women were generally described, even outside of the war context. (Few outsiders understood that they didn’t have much choice in this matter.)

Click for Tighsolas Family Saga