| This is what I got from Gerald Butler Madden's |  | ||
| Re: I hope someone can come up .... -- kayes | Post Reply | Top of thread | Forum |
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Posted by: avril ® 05/17/2005, 02:48:00 |
daughter, Marjorie Reece, a couple of days ago. I got it totally wrong. He was not working as a lawyer when he lived in Ipoh, but in Kuala Lumpur. When he first came to Malaya and Singapore, he worked as a clerk in Tanjong Pagar Dock Co. in Singapore. He also worked for a sultan in Johore and was presented by the sultan "with a cloth" which was passed from Gerald's son Leslie to Leslie's daughter, Ann. The cloth as Ann describes it is kain songket. This interlude with the Sultan was in Keluang.
In Ipoh Gerald was a rubber planter. I don't know which company he worked with. Later on during the war many of his sons were in the British Army. They returned after the war to Malaya. One of his sons was working at the tin mine and some became rubber planters. His son who had worked in a tin mine and then became a rubber planter, Peter, was a POW in Kwai. After the war he returned to Malaya only to be killed a few years later by terrorists during the British Emergency. Jimmy, another son, was the director of Gutheries. Jimmy was the rubber estate manager of KRU rubber estate, as what Leslie related to his daughter, Ann. Should that not have been Keroh Estate as Keroh is near the border to Thailand? Jimmy also had to defend himself against the terrorists during the British Emergency. Another son Geoffrey died during this period and is buried in Sungai Patani. Why Sungai Patani and not Kru Estate or Keroh as I suspect it is? Is Kru or Keroh just a little village? Before the war broke out Gerald and my grandaunt Beatrice also lived in 18, Bukit Bintang Road around 1931, and 30, Parry Road around 1942. Gerald and Beatrice have only 2 children left. Marjorie in UK remembers the race course nearby Jln. Parry. Her father, Gerald, was an official at the race course. She also vaguely remembers the convent nearby their home in Jln. Parry. A convent with big pillars like in the picture of Convent Light Street, Penang. Which convent is this, does anyone know? Was there a convent at Bukit Bintang which was close to Jln. Parry? Or was this Cheras Convent? I am not at all familiar with K.L. Gerald had his own law firm, says Marjorie. This was not in Ipoh as I thought but in K.L. where he hada little office. She was only a child in Ipoh where she was born, and remembers her mother saying that his income was not enough for their big family because Gerald wanted to help the poor. Gerald came from an aristocratic family of earls and dukes in Kilkenny in south Ireland. His marriage to my grandaunt was definitely frowned upon and he was cut off from the family. She being the daughter of a defrocked Roman Catholic priest and all, and he coming from a Protestant family. Someone could write a book and make a soap opera of this family history. Gerald died of dengue fever in 1947 and was buried in Singapore. Beatrice went with her daughter Kathleen to live in UK. They lived with Marjorie in Aldershot for a while. There were other members of the Butler Maddens in Malaya. Gerald's siblings, Lucy, Frederick, Fanny, Darby came to the Far East with Gerald.
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