Newlywed Battered to Death

A man from Liverpool was battered to death during riots in Singapore just four days after he had got married.

On 9th December 1950 Timothy Crowley, who was employed as a clerk by the Air Ministry, married Josephine Maher at the Cathedral of the Good Shepherd in Singapore, which was then a Crown Colony. Two days later he was battered in the Katong area by Muslim rioters. They were protesting after a court had ordered that a girl adopted by Muslims during the 2nd World War be returned to her biological parents who were Christians. 

Josephine was rescued by a policeman and taken to a police station for shelter but Timothy's body was found in a drain the following day. His best man was also killed. Timothy was just 29 years old and the son of a family from Kingsway in Waterloo, while Josephine's parents lived in Aigburth Hall Avenue. She worked as a receptionist in a doctors surgery in Aigburth Road and had flown out to Singapore, where her fiance had been stationed for two years, at the end of November

Timothy was buried at the Kranji Military Cemetery in Singapore. His headstone has the inscription 'Our beloved son, killed in  the Singapore riots'. In total the riots claimed the lives of eighteen people and injured over 200. Five people were arrested and sentenced to death, but their sentences were later commuted to life imprisonment.