Dato Thomas Vernon Alexander Brodie QC Attorney-General, Federation of Malaya, Nov 1955-Nov 1959. A Highly Important Malaya Volunteer and WWII Japanese Changi POW Medal Group

1939-45 Star, Pacific Star, Defence Medal           

1939-45 War Medal, 1953 Coronation Medal (1st Five medals unnamed)

Most Distinguished Order of the Defender of the Realm, Knight Commander, Malaysia

Dato Thomas Vernon Alexander Brodie QC

Attorney-General, Federation of Malaya, November 1955-November 1959

Member of the Volunteer Forces, POW of the Japanese 1942 -1945

Younger son of Norman Somerville Brodie formerly of the Indian Civil Service. Born in Poole, Dorset on the 9^th October 1907. He was educated at Marlborough College & Brasenose College, Oxford University. He was called to the Bar, Middle Temple, in 1931 and became an assistant Legal Advisor in the Federated Malay States in 1938.

He was the youngest of 4 children. His father worked for the Indian Civil Service as a Judge in Madras. Consequently Tom and his family spent their holidays (when not at boarding school) with their grandparents or with their Aunt Florence in Ootycamund, India. Tom went to prep school in Sussex and later Marlborough College in Wiltshire. He read law and classics gaining a first class degree in Jurisprudence and attended chambers at Middle Temple made possible by a scholarship. In 1938 he saw an advertisement for Crown Counsel Vacancies in the Colonial Legal Service and immediately applied. Setting sail for Malaya he served there for many years reaching the highest legal position in the country.

As was normal in the Federated Malay States he was encouraged to join the Volunteer Forces which he did and as a consequence was made a prisoner of war of the Japanese when Singapore capitulated in February 1942. He spent 3 and half years in Changi Prison and not unusually suffered from the deprivations imposed upon them. Illness and starvation were to have a long lasting effect for the rest of his life.

Upon his release Tom went to Bangalore and from there was rescued by his Aunt Florence who valiantly rode on Lorries searching for him and took him to her house to recover. During that time she told him that his mother had suffered a mental breakdown due to her concern for Tom when she heard of the stories of atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese. His Aunt told him that she didn’t think his mother would recognize him when he got home.

Sadly this was true when he was taken to visit her by his 2 sisters to a nursing home in Salisbury. He spoke of the agony of hearing her say “ No it is not you, Tom is dead”. It apparently broke his heart.

He returned to Malaya in April 1946 greatly affected by his mother’s incapacity to recognise him. When he reached Singapore there was a cable waiting for him advising him of his mother’s death. He joined the Legal Department in Kuala Lumpur as a legal draughtsman and was instrumental in drafting the Emergency Regulations

He married Mollie Frances Chubb elder daughter of Mr Francis O O Chubb & Mrs Chubb of Wells in Somerset in 1947.

In 1955 Tom was appointed Attorney-General after acting in the post for 3 years. During his term of office, he was responsible for drafting most of the enactments as well as the constitution for Malaysia.

He retired to Lychett Glade, Upton, Poole, Dorset with his wife and daughter in May 1959 and died in 1975.

Accompanying his medals are the following;

• OTC certificate
• Volunteer’s service book
• Letters concerning his time as a POW
• Telegram notifying his parents of his POW status
• POW postcards
• Letters from M C Hay (he escaped with Gen. Gordon Bennett and was a fellow volunteer) full of details
• University of Oxford 1^st class degree
• Letter from Middle Temple re scholarship
• Document appointing him as Puisne Justice in 1947
• Document appointing him temporary member of the Legislative Council of Malaya and signed by Gurney
• 2 letters from Gerald Templer
• Letter from the Colonial Office
• 2 newspaper clippings
• Obituary from the New Straits Times
• Various lodge medals
• Alexander prize coin from the Royal Historical Society awarded to Dorothy M Brodie in 1932
• A large bronze “Brodie” medal
• Gold Islamic medal

Further References;

http://www.agc.gov.my/agc/agc/ag/agrolls.htm

http://www.biicl.org/publications/iclq/-/vol/11/issue/3/

http://iclq.oxfordjournals.org/content/vol11/issue3/index.dtl

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=malayan+attorneys,brodie&hl=en&lr=&start=0&sa=N

Biographical References

T. V. A. BRODIE
International  Comparative  Law Q 1962 11: 906-910; doi:10.1093/iclqaj/11.3.906

Oxford Journals

Malaya and Singapore: The Borneo Territories by L. A. Sheridan

Review author[s]: T. V. A. Brodie
International and Comparative Law Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Jul., 1962), pp. 906-910

From the National Archives

Mollie Brodie, the daughter of a popular provincial solicitor, spent her happy childhood in Dorset and Somerset, until the deaths of her father and mother in 1923 and 1926 which left her an orphan with her younger sister, Cora. Taken in by an aunt living in Devonshire, Mollie was sent to a boarding school, which she left at the age of 16, attending a course in domestic science at Malvern College in the attempt to learn a trade by which she might earn a living. In 1927 she was taken in by another aunt and uncle, living in Wells, and through their contacts she was offered the task of painting the memorial chapel at Wellington School in Taunton, Somerset (1928 - 1929), followed by a similar task at Compton Castle, Somerset (1930 - 1931). Having come to the end of these painting jobs, and with there being little hope of gleaning a career from her domestic science course, Mollie undertook a course in drawing and design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London (1931 - 1932?), but this took her no closer to making a living through a profession. Between 1932 and 1936 she was employed first as a nurse/governess to the young children of friends in Somerset, before serving as a probationer nurse at the Savernake Hospital near Marlborough for six months, and then taking on a position as a lady housemaid in a titled household in Leatherhead, Surrey. In 1936 she once more returned to London, this time with her sister, and gained a place on a secretarial course at a Bond Street college. This led to employment with the Marine Society (1936 - 1937), a charitable organisation which trained poor boys for the Royal or Merchant Navy, then as secretary to a lead paint firm in London (1938 - 1939) and to the Head of the Special Areas Reconstruction Association (1939 - 1940), based near the Guildhall and concerned with the allocation of European workers throughout Britain. With the disintegration of the Special Areas Reconstruction Association and spurred on by her passion for travel, Mollie attended an interview with the Womens Royal Naval Service in 1940 before opting to volunteer her services as a driver with the Mechanised Transport Corps. She was posted to Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire as officer in charge of a small unit and employed on night duties transporting service personnel to and from their offices and billets. In early 1941 she answered an advertisement for First Aid Nursing Yeomanry to travel to Kenya as despatch riders, and sailed from Glasgow with her sister (who was now a trained physiotherapist) on the SS MANTOLA in March 1941. The sisters were both posted to Nairobi - Cora on cypherene duties and Mollie to the nearby international airport to drive trucks and fire engines. Her duties also included the transportation of VIPs who arrived at Nairobi, including Major General Orde Wingate. Following her illness with dysentery, Mollie was transferred to lighter duties in the telephone exchange until her discharge at the end of 1941, which was a result of the complaints from the FANYs about their appalling living and working conditions that were the subject of a War Office inspection. Successful in her application to GHQ Cairo as a secretary, Mollie left her sister in her job in a Nairobi hospital, and proceeded to Cairo by train, land and boat, arriving in November 1941. She was posted to an office under Lord Harcourt within the Special Operations Executive, and enjoyed a temporary secondment to GHQ as secretary to Enoch Powell during the planning for the first Battle of El Alamein, until the evacuation of Cairo in July 1942, when she was despatched to Jerusalem, where her sister joined her.

Transferred once more to Lord Harcourt's staff, this time in Jaffa, Mollie's efforts to return to Jerusalem were eventually successful, and she found herself working with the Jewish Agency under Aubrey Eban. In Spring 1943, Cora was recalled to Cairo on essential cypherene duties, and a few months later Mollie was also recalled, despite her protests at the unsuitability of the climate for her. Less than a month later she was back in Jerusalem following the recurrence of dysentery, and she returned to new duties under a Captain Gerson, still with GSI(J). She was reposted in early 1944 due to her personal grief after the death of her fiance, a member of the Palestine Police whom she had met in Jerusalem, and she arrived with her sister at the offices of SOE in Istanbul in July 1944. By the autumn, the threat of a German invasion of Turkey had receded and the offices of SOE were disbanded, and the two sisters returned once more to Cairo. Mollie was successful in an interview with the British Council based in Ankara, and flew there in December 1944 to undertake duties as a secretary running art exhibitions to promote British art in Turkey. Following the end of the war, Mollie accepted a position as secretary to the head of the British Council in Athens, Sir Steven Runciman, and joined her sister in Greece in November 1945, finally returning to England in April 1946 after 5 years abroad. Mollie met her future husband, Thomas Brodie, in Singapore around 1947 and accompanied him in his duties as Attorney General for Malaya until his resignation in 1959. Thomas Brodie had himself spent more than three years as a civilian internee in Singapore during the war, and went on to become instrumental in writing the new constitution for Malaya before independence, earning himself a Malayan knighthood. They retired to Mollie's beloved Dorset in 1960, and she was widowed in 1975.