By Dorothy Nixon

"For their own good, of course." I always thought it was terrible that my father was sent away at 5 to live with 'strangers' and his sister with him at four. I saw firsthand the damage it caused. Or was that the war experience? For instance, he kept a light on all night as an adult.

The story goes he tried to tie his mother to a chair when she was about to leave for Malaya. He also had a series of 'nervous' breakdowns as a child. (Boys are much more fragile than girls at that age, I believe.)

My aunt tells about them being shuttled from person to peron, relation to relation. (It as the Depression, after all

But exploring the background of this issue, I have learned to forgive my grandmother.From what I have read, British people who could't afford to send their children to school to England felt embarrassed about it: it was considered somewhat dangerous for a child's health to keep him or her in the tropics and schooling was EVERYTHING. Some people sent their kids to Australia (closer) and others to Hill Station Schools (but later on, in the 30's).

Apparently, during the Depression my Grandmother travelled to England on a boat in steerage to see her children!

Funny, in her biography, Retired Except on Demand, Sally Craddock,(1983) Dr. Cecily Williams is not so forgiving. This honoured colonial pediatrician (and spinster) writes, rather unkindly, that colonial women used their relatives back home to raise their children. From Chapter 3, Page 16... "The unsung maiden aunts of the Edwardian era deserve a very special place in British history. There would have been thousands of sad, unfulfilled women who were forbidden to take a career yet where blatantly exploited by the more fecund members of their families. Without these devoted slaves the children of Empire Builders could not have been educated in England because it was impossible to go home every holiday in those days of sea travel." Whoa!!

Well, from what my aunt says, my father and his sister were 'taken care of' by a series of relations,in and around Carlisle, I believe, none of whom wanted them. One such relation was their Aunt Nora, who was a concert pianist, I believe.

According to a footnote in Margaret Shennan's Out in the Midday Sun, 2000, the October 1922 issue of The Planter says that having to send you kids away 'is the tragedy of colonial life.' (I wasn't able to track down a copy to confirm.) Ironically, my father was born on October 23, 1922.

Even Giles Playfair in his book Singapore Goes off the Air, 1943, a first hand account of the fall 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 he says 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 understood that they didn’t have much choice in this matter.) And for some reason it always came down to one ugly fact, they did not take care of their children. Oddly, few British women did, by modern standards. It was the best kind of parenting to send your kids away at 5 to boarding school. The only difference was, you saw they during the summer.