Description
Object description
Photocopies of 62 ms personal letters, some only excerpted, and 18 other letters, postcards and telegrams (124pp in all), each with a wordprocessed edited transcript (39pp in all), written, mostly by Mrs Riddel and mainly to their two young children in England, by a rubber planter and his wife in British North Borneo from October 1940 - March 1941, May - December 1943, September - December 1945 and August 1946 - November 1951, together with a photocopy (108pp) and edited wordprocessed transcript (45pp) of an ms memoir of their lives in Borneo from 1930 to 1951 written by Mrs Riddel in 1981, covering their lives from 1930 up to several months after the Japanese occupation of Borneo in early 1942 on the rubber estate which he managed near Jesselton; their internment separately in Jesselton (May - October 1942) and then in the men's and women's camps at Batu Lintang in Kuching (October 1942 - September 1945); their liberation by the Australians and repatriation via Labuan and India, where Mrs Riddel had to be detained for medical treatment (September - December 1945) and their return to the rubber estate near Jesselton (1946 - 1951); with interesting references to the nature of domestic life on a rubber plantation in Borneo, conditions in the internment camps in Jesselton and Batu Lintang, the considerable extent of the destruction inflicted on North Borneo during the final months of the war and the relatively slow progress of post-war reconstruction there and the publication of Agnes Keith's book THREE CAME HOME describing her experiences as an internee in Batu Lintang.
Content description
Photocopies of 62 ms personal letters, some only excerpted, and 18 other letters, postcards and telegrams (124pp in all), each with a wordprocessed edited transcript (39pp in all), written, mostly by Mrs Riddel and mainly to their two young children in England, by a rubber planter and his wife in British North Borneo from October 1940 - March 1941, May - December 1943, September - December 1945 and August 1946 - November 1951, together with a photocopy (108pp) and edited wordprocessed transcript (45pp) of an ms memoir of their lives in Borneo from 1930 to 1951 written by Mrs Riddel in 1981, covering their lives from 1930 up to several months after the Japanese occupation of Borneo in early 1942 on the rubber estate which he managed near Jesselton; their internment separately in Jesselton (May - October 1942) and then in the men's and women's camps at Batu Lintang in Kuching (October 1942 - September 1945); their liberation by the Australians and repatriation via Labuan and India, where Mrs Riddel had to be detained for medical treatment (September - December 1945) and their return to the rubber estate near Jesselton (1946 - 1951); with interesting references to the nature of domestic life on a rubber plantation in Borneo, conditions in the internment camps in Jesselton and Batu Lintang, the considerable extent of the destruction inflicted on North Borneo during the final months of the war and the relatively slow progress of post-war reconstruction there and the publication of Agnes Keith's book THREE CAME HOME describing her experiences as an internee in Batu Lintang.
History note
Cataloguer RWAS
History note
Catalogue date 2007-09