Nat Gould

Ralph Colin Gould

Ralph Colin Gould 1906

Ralph Colin Gould was born in 1877 in Sheffield, the son of Thomas Gould 1841-1908 and his wife nee Frances Harriet Sharpe 1850-1898.

He followed in his father’s footsteps, qualifying as a solicitor in 1900.

In 1905 he went to Malaya to become Legal Advisor to the Administration of the Straits Settlements.

He married Edith Emily Johnston on 3 August 1906 at Malacca, where they settled. Their town house was near the Straits Settlements Offices (1). They also had a weekend villa on the coast near a Government Rest House.

They had the following children:

John Brookfield Gould. He was born in Singapore in 1908. He served with the Johore Volunteer Engineers. During the Second World War he was captured by the Japanese, imprisoned in Changi, and forced to work on the Burma Railway. Further internment followed in Japan. After his release, John Brookfield Gould returned to England. In Sheffield he met Margery Welch at the home of his cousin Dr Carrick. He sailed back to the Far East in 1946, and she followed later. They married in Malaya, probably at Malacca in 1946 or 1947. He died in 1948 in Malacca.

Margaret Evelyn Gould. She was born on 26 April 1911. In 1923 aged 12 she was sent back to Europe for her schooling at Sheffield High School and then attended Thildonck Convent in Belgium for her finishing school. She trained as a nurse at the Sheffield Royal Hospital and lodged with her aunt and uncle, Dora and Jack Carrick, who apparently became her guardians; holiday photographs show her teenage holidays at various seaside locations including Filey and Sutton-on-Sea at play with her Carrick cousins Jimmy and Mary. She never returned to Malaya, and nursed during the Second World war at Queen Mary's Hospital and worked at Carshalton in Surrey.

Ralph Colin Gould died in 1923.

Obituary 1923

His published obituary reads as follows:-

"The Late Mr. R.C. Gould

We are indebted to a correspondent for the following:-

At noon on the 12th Inst, at the General Hospital, Malacca, there passed away Ralph Colin Gould, popular and well-known in the legal and social circles of the Settlement where, for the last eleven years he resided and practised as an advocate and solicitor of the Straits Settlements and F.M.S. [[Federated Malay States]. Born at Sheffield in 1877, the son of Thomas Gould of that city, and of Messrs. Gould and Coombe, one of the oldest established firms of solicitors in the United kingdom, Mr. Gould comes of a stock which has, for many generations, sent its sons into the ancient and honourable profession in which not a few have attained to distinction and renown. He was himself entered on the Rolls on August 4, 1900 and in 1905 came to Malaya, first practising in Penang until 1911, when he made Malacca the sphere of his activities. A man of great personal charm, of kindly temperament and of remarkable ability and intellectual brilliance Mr. Gould had always at once endeared himself to and commanded the respect of his many friends, and, in the course of his professional duties, his opponents. His remains were laid to rest in the cemetery at Malacca on the 13th instant when the many floral tributes sent and the large number of distinguished members of the Malacca community in attendance were an eloquent signal of the esteem and regard in which Mr. Gould was held, and of the deep sympathy which all feel for his widow and two children in their bereavement." (2).

His wife Edith Emily Gould died in 1945.

(1) The building was by 1970 a Family Planning Clinic.
(2) The Straits Times 20 March 1923 page 10.