Papers of Sir Percy Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke

• Correspondence and papers relating mostly to Hong Kong and the Seychelles, 1929-1950
• Correspondence, press cuttings and printed material, 1929-1972
• Speeches and certificates, 1921-1972
• Typescript of memoirs, [?1970s]
• Photographs, including Malaya and Hong Kong, 20th century
• Cassettes and tape recording, mostly of lectures, 20th century
• Printed material, 1921-1975

Sir Percy Selwyn Selwyn-Clarke (1893-1976), medical official and colonial officer, joined the Medical Service after the First World War and was posted to the Gold Coast. There he served successively as Medical Officer of Health, 1919-1923, Senior Health Officer, 1924-1928 and Assistant Director of Health, 1929. In 1930 he was posted to Malaya as Chief Health Officer. In 1932 he returned to the Gold Coast as Assistant Director of Medical Services as well as Director of the Gold Coast Central Council Branch of the British Red Cross Society. In 1933 he was promoted to Deputy Director of the Gold Coast Health Service. After three years he moved to Nigeria, where he held the same post. In 1937 he became Director of Medical Services in Hong Kong, where he was later imprisoned and tortured by the Japanese during the Second World War. After leaving Hong Kong, he was made Governor of the Seychelles, where he remained for three years till his retirement in 1951. After his retirement, he remained actively involved in the field of medicine, becoming Principal Medical Officer at the Ministry of Health, 1951-1956 and Medical Secretary to the Society of Medical Officers of Health, 1956-1961. He was in charge of the medical care of the King's Troop of the Royal Horse Artillery, 1962-1969 and in 1969 he became a prison visitor. He was awarded the CMG and KBE. In 1935 he married Hilda Browning, with whom he had one daughter.

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Collection level description created by Paul Davidson, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

Listed as no. 613 in Manuscript Collections in Rhodes House Library Oxford, Accessions 1978-1994 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1996). A handlist is also available in the library reading room.

No reproduction or publication of personal papers without permission. Contact the library in the first instance.

• Photographs relating to medical service in the Gold Coast and Hong Kong, with an atlas of the Gold Coast, 1915-1945 (ref. MSS. Brit. Emp. t. 4)
• Under the Japanese, a talk given to the annual dinner of the Isle of Wight division of the British Medical Association about his experiences of wartime internment in Hong Kong, c1946 (ref. MSS. Ind. Ocn. s. 318)
• Personal letters to Hilda Selwyn-Clarke in the papers of the Fabian Colonial Bureau, [20th century], held by the library