User:1swamphen/Ethel Mulvany

Ethel Mulvany (born Ethel Cannard Rogers 22/12/1904 - 22/10/1992) was a Canadian Red Cross worker in Singapore at the time of the Japanese invasion in 1942. She was interned in Changi Prison until the end of the war, during which time she organised the women to record their favourite recipes and create patchwork quilts.

Early life

Ethel Mulvany was born on Manitoubin Island, Ontario on 22 December 1904 to Henry and Mary Jane Cannard. Her mother died eight days after the birth. Her father felt unable to care for the child and gave her to the Rogers family to raise. The 1911 census shows her as part of this family with parents Henry and Isabel and their children Harvey and Margaret.

She became a teacher and in 1933, travelled to various countries in Asia to study foreign education systems and to promote Canadian literature and poetry. She met Denis Mulvany, a British Army doctor on board the ship taking her to the east and they married in Lucknow on Oct 10 1933. In 1935, Ethel helped to organise the Indian exhibition at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto which she saw as important in promoting trade between the two countries.

Life in Singapore

In March 1940, Ethel Mulvany arrived in Singapore where her husband was stationed at the Alexandra Hospital. They moved into a house in Pasir Panjang in the Queenstown area of Singapore. They also purchased a small island named Pulau Hantu (Ghost Island) which they quickly renamed Pulau Shorga (Heavenly Island). They built a small cottage on the island where they spent many weekends and held parties.

By 1941, the Japanese had moved into Indochina (now Vietnam) and were preparing to attack Singapore from the north via the Malay Peninsula however Singapore's defences were focussed on a sea attack. As the city became more vulnerable, Ethel Mulvany decided to join the Red Cross so as to be in a position to help with relief work. Since there was no British or Canadian Red Cross presence in Singapore, she was accepted by the Australian Red Cross and became a superindentent at the No 1 Malayan General Hospital. As the Japanese advanced, she worked mostly as an ambulance driver picking up wounded soldiers brought by train from fighting further to the north in Malay. When the Japanese began bombing Singapore on Dec 7 1941 her work became even more dangerous.

The Allied forces protecting Singapore could do little to repel the Japanese army advancing from the north and Singapore surrended to the Japanese on 15 Febuary 1942. Along with other civilian women, Mulvaney was housed in the Roxy Theatre for about three weeks before being marched fourteen kilometers to the Changi Prison.

Life as a POW

The Quilts

During 1942, Ethel Mulvany implemented a quilt making project among the women prisoners. Using a six-inch-square of fabric cut from rice bags and threads pulled from clothing, the women made small embroidered squares which they signed. Three quilts were made, each one consisting of 66 squares. Mulvany negotiated with the Japanese commandant of the prison to gift the qulits to the wounded men in the hospital wing of Changi. By giving the first one to wounded Japanese soldiers, she was confident that he would allow the other two to be given to the wounded Australian and British soldiers. The fact that the squares all had names on them was a way of communicating to the men that these 400 women were alive.

The three quilts survived and at the end of the war were handed over to the Red Cross. The Japanese and Australian quilts are now housed in the Austalian War Museum and the British quilt in displayed in the British Red Cross Museum in London.

The square containing Ethel Mulvany's signature is part of the Australian quilt and is described as "Red, yellow and green satin-stitch maple leaves with 'CANADA' above them. Below signatures in satin and stem-stitch 'M.Burns' [Margaret Burns] and 'E.Mulvany' [Ethel Rogers Mulvany].

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