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Synopsis :

This version is the unaltered digital transfer of the VHS Tape. The film was digitised through the taping of a projection of the film reels.

Tyrrel Adrian Goskar - Singapore 1937

Biography for National Archives Singapore, by Thomas A. Goskar FSA

Tyrrel Adrian Goskar was born in 1904 in London, UK. He was Managing Director of Alexandra Brickworks (then owned by the Borneo Company Ltd) in Singapore from 1935 until the Japanese invasion in 1942. Adrian, as he preferred to be called, was interred in Changi until the end of WWII when he moved to join his evacuated family - his wife Irene and young daughter Anne - in Sydney, Australia. The Goskar family moved back to the UK shortly after. Adrian became Managing Director of Goonvean China Clay and China Stone Company Ltd in Par, Cornwall. He died in Lostwithiel, Cornwall in 1976.

Adrian and Irene arrived in Singapore from London aboard s.s. Rawalpindi on 21 June 1935. They lived in the Alexandra Brickworks Manager’s House on Alexandra Road. By all accounts, they led a comfortable lifestyle, as parts of their film demonstrate. Adrian and Irene were soon accepted into the privileged ‘society’ of colonial Singapore. Irene was a sharp shooter, winning trophies with the Singapore Women’s Rifle Association. Their charitable donations were frequently recorded in Singaporean newspapers. In 1936 Adrian’s discovery of a seam of anthracite coal at Pasir Panjang made headlines. In 1938, Adrian and Irene’s daughter Anne was born in the Singapore Maternity Hospital and christened at St Andrew’s Cathedral. Adrian learned to fly and gained his pilots licence: the Straits Times records his participation in a Royal Singapore Flying Club landing competition in April 1940. He even presented an episode of The History of Everyday Things about brick making on Singapore’s only radio station.

Adrian was known by his friends and colleagues as an enthusiast of new technologies. In early 1937 he bought a 16mm cine camera, and through his contacts he acquired the very latest in film technology of the time: colour cine film. He can’t have had a lot of it, and he used it sparingly. In this 55 minute film, spliced together with reels of conventional black and white footage, are some bursts of colour from that year: Relaxing in the garden of their house on Alexandra Road with their pet monkey and a litter of Siamese cats; a stroll in a park; swimming with friends in the mangroves; splashing about at the Mount Emily Swimming Complex; Alexandra Brickworks and its quarry alive with people hard at work; latex extraction from trees; a car journey; a beautiful Singaporean sunset with fiery skies; a boat trip out on the water; and ending with a lengthy colour sequence of a holiday on an ocean liner to Sri Lanka and along the Suez Canal to Cairo complete with vivid colour views of the pyramids, mosques, and bustling scenes of streets and markets.

Adrian’s black and white sequences show his curiosity and love of the city of Singapore. Ordinary people working and going about their business, landmarks, street scenes, and even a flight to Kuala Lumpur in a Wearnes Air Services De Havilland DH.89A Dragon Rapide aeroplane known as “Governor Raffles”.  This footage shows the plane on the ground, inside the plane in the air, and aerial views before landing at the Kuala Lumpur Flying Club. Given that this sequence is early on in the footage, it is possible that this is a record of the first ever commercial flight to take off from Singapore in June 1937.

That the film has survived until today is remarkable. It is likely that Irene took the reel to Australia when she was evacuated. Poignantly, it would have been precious memento indeed. It was a record of the memories of a wonderful and privileged life that is so vividly captured in the film - and one that she must have known was gone forever. Singapore had surrendered and her husband had been captured and imprisoned. Everything would change.

Miraculously those memories survived what must have been sub-optimal conditions for delicate film. Long journeys by ship, constant moving as evacuees in Australia, and many moves within the UK upon their return as they tried to rebuild their lives. When Adrian died in 1976 the film was passed to his daughter, Anne.

By 1990 the condition of the film was very bad, and it had not been seen since the 1950s. It was dirty with mould, and the colour segments had suffered in the heat and damp of various long journeys and attic storage. Anne, had a copy made on VHS so that it could be enjoyed once again. It was simply projected on a wall and filmed with a domestic camcorder. The original 16mm film was then simply thrown away. Whilst the resulting VHS cassette was not of the best quality, it enabled the footage of Singapore in 1937 to survive for a further 30 years.

Luckily, the VHS cassette had been looked after well since it was made. In 2007 another transfer was made - this time copying the VHS to DVD. After Anne died in 2018 the VHS and DVD were given to Adrian’s grandson, Thomas Goskar.

Fascinated by the footage, Thomas spent a month digitally restoring the footage, including rebalancing and restoring the colour sequences, and upscaling them to HD. Fascinated by the footage, it has helped him to develop a connection to the grandparents whom he never knew, and gain an affinity to Singapore. This has led him to donate the film to National Archives Singapore in recognition of the opportunities that the country gave to Adrian and Irene, and to allow the people of Singapore to see the country through the eyes of his grandparents - some of it in vivid colour - in 1937.