Parfitt Iris (2 results)

[Cover title]. Also titled : Jailbird Jottings (title page). [Kuala Lumpur, Malaya] : [The Author?], printed by The Economy Printers, [1947]. First (and only) edition. Small square quarto, original stiff pictorial wrappers (lightly marked, small chip with loss at foot of spine), 84 pp, illustrated throughout with reproductions of Parfitt's watercolours sketches made in the Changi prisoner of war camp, with colour and black and white plates and black and white line drawings in the text; tiny tear to lower edge of first few leaves, pale occasional foxing, internally clean and sound, a very good copy. Rare. London-born Iris Parfitt was a teacher at the exclusive St. George's School in Penang at the time Malaya fell to the Japanese (after the war she served as the school's Principal for a number of years). During the occupation she was an internee in both the Changi and Sime Road camps. In Changi, she was chairman of the camp's Entertainment Committee and "played a key role in staging all kinds of entertainment in the camp. Capitalising on the variety of ages, races, nationalities, professions and social backgrounds of the internees, she put on magnificent entertainments, that were remembered as a great source of encouragement, joviality and humour." (Nakahara, Michiko. The civilian women's internment camp in Singapore. In Akashi, Yoji (editor). New perspectives on the Japanese Occupation of Malaya and Singapore, 1941-1945. NUS Press, 2008, p198). Parfitt's memoir, Jail-bird jottings, provides one of the most important published eyewitness accounts of daily life in the infamous Japanese internment camps. Her watercolours and sketches, with their accompanying explanatory notes, contain an enormous amount of highly detailed observation, and range in tone from the satirical to the deeply poignant. Four copies are recorded in Australian collections (Australian War Memorial Research Library; Deakin University Library; University of Adelaide Library; State Library of New South Wales). Provenance : A. M. Watson, her signature to title page dated December 1947. Alice May Watson was interned as a prisoner of war at Changi Prison. Embroidered sheets decorated by her and other female inmates are held in the collections of the Imperial War Museum and the Australian War Memorial.

First edition. An artist and teacher in Malaya, Parfitt was interned following the fall of Singapore in the colony's Changi and Sime Road camps. Her drawings and caricatures, executed on scrounged paper and with a borrowed paintbox, tell the story of camp life: "We have kept beauty alive in the midst of grimness" (preface). Parfitt's is the earliest known publication by a former Changi or Sime Road internee. Square octavo. Cartoons (some colour) in text. Original illustrated wrappers, spine lettered in black, front cover lettered in white with cartoon vignette. Wrappers marked, spine bumped and lifting at ends, internally toned but colour illustrations still bright: very good.