This book captures personal accounts by 15 legal personalities of their lives in the law in the decades leading up to 1959, when Singapore gained full internal self-governance. It draws on interviews by Singapore’s Oral History Centre with these change-makers who provide specific insight into our legal community and environment during those decades. Legal Tenor is not about hard-core history, but rather an attempt to extract and share some of the flavour of Singapore’s early legal years as told in the words of some of its earliest lawyers. Through a series of overlapping stories and perspectives, their tale is told with – for the most part – minimal intrusion, thus allowing readers to glean for themselves the tenor of the times. 

Curator: Eleanor Wong

Interviewees:

Abdul Wahab Ghows, Frederick Arthur Chua, Choor Singh, Kenneth Hilborne, Howard Cashin, Graham Starforth Hill, Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, Tharumaratnam Chelliah, Tan Wee Kian, Tan Lian Ker, Phyllis Tan, Joseph Grimberg SC, Alec Fergusson, David Marshall and Wee Chong Jin

Contents
Chapter 1           Judges-to-Be
Chapter 2           Expats and Residents
Chapter 3           The Last Colonials
Chapter 4           Domestic Service
Chapter 5           Inns and Outs
Chapter 6           Malacca Street
Chapter 7           The Two Chiefs

Note: The print (softcover) version contains the text of the work and pictures.

Author(s)/Editor(s)/Contributor(s):

Curator: Eleanor Wong

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