1944 (6 JUL) censored cover from Kalaw, Shan States to 'Mrs G. Childers, Internment Camp, Tavoy', underfranked by 1943 (1 Oct) Shan States 5c ultramarine, tied by bilingual (Shan-Burmese) KALAW cds, with very fine trilingual (Shan Burmese Japanese) horseshoe tax mark of Kalaw, completed for '10c' at left. Exceptional red Japanese censor chop (with separate seal of censor 'Kitahara') at centre. On reverse, Tavoy arrival cds and 'TAVOY/UNPAID' octagonal ds, both dated '21 JUL 4'. Trivial toning and imperfections but a wonderful cover of the highest importance and rarity, with stunning visual impact. A true star item of the entire occupation period, further enhanced by the extraordinary biography of the addressee provided below! Ex Gerald Davis (6/4/2005, Lot 371) and offered on his exhibition page, with BPA cert (1997).
Gladys Mary Childers, was one of around 200 British and Indian civilians left in the country after the chaotic evacuation of 1942. After the plane in which she was attempting to leave crashed, killing her niece, Mrs Childers returned to Kalaw by foot. Maureen Baird-Murray, then an eight-year-old Anglo-Burmese in the care of Italian nuns, remembers Mrs Childers turning up at St Agnes Convent injured and bedraggled. Mrs Childers hid for several months with the nuns before she was discovered by the Japanese and seized. The Mother Superior reached out to her to show that the nuns were not guilty of betrayal “but one of the soldiers butted her away with his rifle as a warning. We felt the brave lady understood, as with bloody head held high she was marched away.” Mrs Childers was sent to an internment camp in Tavoy (modern-day Dawei) for the rest of the war. Mrs Childers was already a widow. She and her husband Lt-Col Hugh Francis Eardley Childers had lived in a grand house in Kalaw and were known to keep elevated social standards. In the evening he would always wear a dinner jacket and she an evening gown with gloves. Mrs Childers returned to Kalaw after the war where she entertained girls from the convent with cucumber sandwiches and tea from a silver pot. She couldn’t speak a word of Burmese and would insist, “If you are not understood in English, you shout!” When Mrs Childers died she left her house to her Indian driver. This was a scandal and the house was later confiscated. You will find the house marked as ‘Mrs Childers’s House’ on most tourist maps of Kalaw.
