Sybil Kathigasu was born Sybil Medan Daly to an Irish-Eurasian planter (Joseph Daly) and a French-Eurasian midwife (Beatrice Matilda Daly née Martin) on 3 September 1899 in Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia. Her middle name reflects her birthplace, Medan. Her paternal grandparents were an Irishman and a Eurasian woman while her maternal grandparents were a Frenchman (Pierre Louie Martin) and a Eurasian woman (Evelyn Adeline Martin née Morrett). She was the fifth child and the only girl. She was trained as a nurse and midwife and spoke Cantonese fluently. She and her husband, Dr. Abdon Clement Kathigasu, operated a clinic at No 141 Brewster Road (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah) in Ipoh from 1926 until theJapanese invasion of Malaya.She is the only Malayan woman to be ever awarded with the George Medal for bravery.
Sybil Kathigasu died on 4 June 1948 aged 48 in Britain and her body was buried in Lanark, Scotland. Her body was later returned in 1949 to Ipoh and reburied at the Roman Catholic cemetery beside St Michael's Church opposite the Main Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (now SMK Convent) on Brewster Road (now Jalan Sultan Idris Shah) in Ipoh. Her published works are No Dram of Mercy (Neville Spearman, 1954; reprinted Oxford University Press, 1983 and Prometheus Enterprises, 2006) and Faces of Courage: A Revealing Historical Appreciation of Colonial Malaya's Legendary Kathigasu Family by Norma Miraflor & Ian Ward (2006).
No Dram of Mercy is Sybil Kathigasu's autobiography
No Dram of Mercy is a book, written by Sybil Kathigasu, describing what the Japanese did in Malaya and how the Kathigasu family and other Malayans endured and responded. It powerfully laid out how the Japanese targeted theChinese community in Malaya and how this drove the Chinese into the jungles to collaborate with the communists against the Japanese. Published in Britain in 1954, about 5 years after Sybil died, No Dram of Mercy contains a foreword by Richard Winstedt and an Introduction by Geoffrey E Cator.
Why 'No Dram of Mercy' was written: A prayer that Sybil records in the book reveals why she wrote No Dram of Mercy, a title derived from a few lines in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice:
- "Great Saint Anthony, please intercede for me with the Infant Jesus to give me the strength and courage to bear bravely what God's Holy Will has ordained for me. Let me face death, if I must, in the spirit of the Holy Martyrs. But if I am spared to write a book about what I have undergone, I promise that the proceeds from the sale of the book shall go to building a church in your name, in Ipoh, and, if there is any over when the church is completed, to the relief of the poor and suffering, whatever their race or religion. Please help me, Saint Anthony." — Kathigasu, Sybil. No Dram of Mercy (2006), pp. 162. Prometheus)
- At the time Sybil uttered the prayer, she was being held in Batu Gajah prison, awaiting trial against the 3 charges proffered against her:
- acting as a spy on behalf of and in cooperation with the enemy agents in Malaya;
- giving medical attention and other assistance to the Communist guerrillas and outlaws; and
- possessing a radio set, listening to enemy broadcasts, and disseminating enemy propaganda.
No Dram of Mercy inspires because it shows us that if we are true humanitarians, we can help our needy neighbors, even if we do not agree with their goals (Sybil herself was an ardent supporter of the British imperialists)
No Dram of Mercy is readable. Written in the first person in simple English, it is broken into 20 short chapters, with an average length of 9 pages, illustrated with evocative photos of people and places.
No Dram of Mercy is relevant because it comes across as honest storytelling by a "race-less" (Eurasian) lady who expended her life on behalf of people of different ethnicities in multi-racial Malaya.
An enigma: No Dram of Mercy is somewhat enigmatic because it is not clear how the manuscript took shape. It does not have an author's preface, so we don't know who reviewed her manuscript, who worked with her on it, and who endured neglect, while she was writing. It doesn't have a foreword by her husband or daughters, whom we know outlived Sybil.
No Dram of Mercy is also enigmatic because it does not reveal why she was treated so kindly by the British. Was it because her father was Irish and her brother, a soldier who died on the battlefield in Turkey (Gallipoli)?Perhaps the Brits did what the Communists requested.
During their interrogation and trial, Sybil and her husband did not reveal anything which could expose and weaken the resistance. It is no wonder that the communists called Sybil "mother" (page 80).
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