Commander Scott-Lindsley with local children during his time in south east Asia in the early 1960s
I mentioned in a previous blog post how pleased I was to be offered this archive for Geography Photos by a niece of the photographer. It has been a pleasure to work through his images and I am proud of being able to publish them and make them available to publishers and to be viewed by the public.
Mervyn Scott-Lindsley was born in Worcester in 1914 and died in Bath in 1987. He was commissioned as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in 1940. An electrical specialist he was promoted to Lieutenant (E) on 25 December 1940 and posted to Hong Kong. Exactly a year later on Christmas Day 1941 Hong Kong surrendered to the Japanese and he became a prisoner of war. During his imprisonment he helped to secretly build a radio which, until its discovery, allowed the prisoners to keep in touch with news via the BBC. Scott-Lindsley was a talented artist and kept a record of prison life through a sketchbook and diary which are now held in National Museum of the Royal Navy at Portsmouth.
His career in the navy continued following liberation in 1945 and through promotions he became Commander ( E) in 1954. Between 1962-1965 Commander Scott-Lindsley served as Fleet Electrical Officer at H.M.S. Terror, a Royal Navy shore-base in Malaya. It is from this period that the majority of his archive of images comes.
The Geography Photos archive contains over 500 images from 35mm slides of south east Asia and a small proportion of later images from holidays in Ireland and UK. His images show Hong Kong, Malaya ( including Singapore) and Macau in pre-industrial times and record many buildings and activities of historical value. These include images of traditional tin mining in Malaya, of massive land clearances in what would become land for the economic powerhouse of Singapore, rare images of motor racing events ( which enthusiasts have been kind enough to help me caption), and fascinating travel and general images of countryside, cities and people. The archive contains a more detailed biography.
Scott-Lindsley archive on Geography Photos.