Ethel Mulvany and the Changi Prisoner of War Quilts
On the 15th of February 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese. Thousands of civilians and allied soldiers (including 1,000 women) were imprisoned in the notorious Changi Prisoner of War camp. For the first few months of captivity the prisoners were treated fairly well with food, medicine and events, however, that all changed as the prison became more and more overcrowded. It was built to hold 600 prisoners but, by 1944, it held over 4,000. Food and medicine became scarce and the Japanese, who had not signed the Geneva Convention, ran the camp however they wished. Malnutrition, diseases, brutality and deaths from dysentery, malaria and vitamin deficiencies abounded.
The women were separated from the men and communication was forbidden between the groups. In 1942, an inmate, Ethel Mulvany, came up with the idea to create quilts to pass messages to their men disguised as an act of womanly kindness. Mulvany was a Canadian who moved to Singapore during WWII with her husband, a military doctor. She became a Red Cross ambulance driver and, when Singapore fell to the Japanese, she was imprisoned in the Changi POW camp from 1942 until the end of WWII. She endured torture, solitary confinement and deprivation but she sought to boost the morale and spirits of her fellow prisoners.
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| Ethel Mulvany 1904-1992 |
Before the making of the quilts, Mulvany helped women to battle the extreme starvation they were enduring by dreaming up feasts. The women planned their imaginary feasts, swapping recipes and feasting on imaginary meals of sausages and pies and cream and raisins all dripping with butter and salt. The women started to write their recipes down, paper was scarce so they stole scraps of old newspaper from the dungeon of the jail. They’d snip off the plain edges and write the recipes all over them. She badgered the Japanese for more paper and they gave her a couple of logbooks. When Mulvany was released she had thousands of copies printed into recipe books, raising over $18,000 to help former prisoners of war hospitalised in Britain. In December 2020, Suzanne Evans will be releasing "The Taste of Longing: Ethel Mulvany and her Starving Prisoners of War Cookbook" to keep their story alive.
Ethel Mulvany didn’t stop at the imaginary feasts. In 1942, mainly between March and August, the women created three quilts, one British, one Australian, and one Japanese. The making of the quilts was meant to decrease boredom, boost morale and pass information to the men they were separated from. They wanted to pass the message to the men that they, and their children, were alive. Initially, only wives of military men were asked to contribute because they were in an entirely separate camp so didn’t know the fate of their families (civilian men were kept in a separate section of the Changi prison). However, there were not enough military wives to make up a full quilt so other women contributed. They were all asked to contribute at least one square but many made more. Each woman who wished to contribute was given a square of plain cotton using any fabric they could lay their hands on including flour bags, bedsheets etc. Each woman was asked to put something of herself and her signature on the square. Shrewdly, Mulvany instructed the women to make three quilts, one British, one Australian and (importantly) one Japanese. This meant that Mulvany managed to convince the Japanese commandant to pass the quilts to Changi hospitals. These quilts were very important because it not only boosted the women’s morale, but also boosted the morale of the men with the knowledge that the women were alive.
Each woman stitched something unique and personal into the quilt, many messages had hidden meanings. One woman stitched into the quilt two rabbits, one depicting a mother and the other a baby with a blue ribbon. This has been interpreted to show that their son had been born in the prison. Another image that was often embroidered onto the quilt was the ‘address’ of their cell and an image to show what it looked like. Other symbols that were embroidered on frequently were the “V for Victory” “Thumbs up” and “gaol”. Although the Japanese allowed the word “gaol” (it is assumed that they didn’t know the meaning of the word) they forbid the word “prison” even forcing Mulvany to unpick the word on a square.
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| Image of a quilt on the British Red Cross website |
The British Red Cross website shows one of these quilts and some of the meanings hidden inside of them. These messages included patriotic messages such as union jacks, shamrocks and thistles to show where the women were from. In addition to this, some women would sew patriotic verses or images to show that the women’s spirits had not been defeated, one includes “It’s a long way to Tipperary.” One woman, a nurse called Elizabeth Burnham, embroidered the date that she’d entered the prison (8.3.42) and then a question mark to show the uncertainty the women faced and to show that they didn’t know when they may be released. If you would like to read some more detailed messages and stories you can find them on the informative British Red Cross website (https://changi.redcross.org.uk/). In contrast to the British and Australian quilts, the Japanese quilt, made as a decoy to the Japanese guards, were tailored to appeal to the Japanese such as a picture of the rising sun and Mount Fuji.
After the war, the Australian and Japanese quilts fell into the possession of Colonel Collins, a British medical officer. He passed the Australian quilt on to the Australian Red Cross and gifted the Japanese one to his wife, she donated it to the Australian War Memorial in 1968. The British quilt was taken to England after the war and is now on view at the British Red Cross UK office in London.
In 1943, on the 27th of September, six Japanese ships were destroyed in the Singapore harbour. The Japanese authorities were convinced that the prisoners were to blame and they retaliated with force. On October 10th, they arrested and tortured 57 civilian prisoners, 15 died. After that food decreased rapidly and people suffered immensely. As the harsh punishments grew in the following months, Ethel Mulvany was put into solitary confinement where she was tortured with electric shocks and her prison number was branded onto her arm. She was left in solitary confinement until the camp was liberated in September 1945, this was six months later. Ethel Mulvany returned to Canada in 1946 where she printed her cookbook. Mulvany suffered mental illness as a result of the atrocities she suffered during her captivity and she died on Manitoulin Island in 1992.
Thanks to Ethel Mulvany’s ideas and work in the prisoner of war camp the legacies and stories of many of the women imprisoned there have lived on, both through the cookbook and the stories embroidered into the quilts. This is a further inspiring example of how sewing needles have been raised in defiance and human endeavour has surmounted incredible hardship.
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