Jail-bird jottings : the impressions of a Singapore internee. (With provenance from a Changi P.O.W.)

A$1,650 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

[Cover title]. Also titled : Jailbird Jottings (title page). [Kuala Lumpur, Malaya] : [The Author?], printed by The Economy Printers, [1947]. First (and only) edition. Small square quarto, original stiff pictorial wrappers (lightly marked, small chip with loss at foot of spine), 84 pp, illustrated throughout with reproductions of Parfitt s watercolours sketches made in the Changi prisoner of war camp, with colour and black and white plates and black and white line drawings in the text; tiny tear to lower edge of first few leaves, pale occasional foxing, internally clean and sound, a very good copy. Rare. London-born Iris Parfitt was a teacher at the exclusive St. George s School in Penang at the time Malaya fell to the Japanese (after the war she served as the school s Principal for a number of years). During the occupation she was an internee in both the Changi and Sime Road camps. In Changi, she was chairman of the camp s Entertainment Committee and played a key role in staging all kinds of entertainment in the camp. Capitalising on the variety of ages, races, nationalities, professions and social backgrounds of the internees, she put on magnificent entertainments, that were remembered as a great source of encouragement, joviality and humour. (Nakahara, Michiko. The civilian women s internment camp in Singapore . In Akashi, Yoji (editor). New perspectives on the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Singapore, 1941-1945 . NUS Press, 2008, p198). Parfitt s memoir, Jail-bird jott

• Binding: Hardcover

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