Sheffield medic solves murder mystery of 152 medical colleagues in Singapore hospital, 15 February 1942

Private George Poole, RAMC -- the only witness to what happened to survivors of the Alexandra Hospital Massacre -- lay in a storm drain near the Sisters' Quarters in sight of the burning oil tanks.

George Poole's quick-thinking saved him when the Japanese Army rampaged through the British Military Hospital in Singapore, bayoneting staff and patients.

He hid in a linen cupboard. Then his quick-footwork from playing football in the Medical Corps team helped him dash outside where he hid in a storm drain for two days. What he saw that Sunday, February 15, 1942 could never be unseen.

New light has now been shed on the fate of 152 British, Australian, New Zealand and Indian medics, patients and soldiers herded into the Sisters’ Quarters Outhouses of the British Military Hospital Singapore (Alexandra Hospital) when it was overrun by the Japanese on the February 14, 1942.

A cold-blooded massacre ensued the next day.‘At the Sisters’ Quarters Outhouse, medics and a few walking wounded patients had been bound and sardined into three tiny rooms overnight, without food nor water,’ says author and military history writer, Stuart Lloyd, who’s been researching this episode for the past decade.

The following morning, systematic bayonetting of these inmates started and, when stray artillery shells shook loose door and window hinges, some ran for their lives.

Most were machine-gunned down, only five survived to tell their harrowing tale. But they knew nothing of what became of those 152 left behind in the Quarters. The Sisters’ Quarters were around 300 metres from the main hospital building, across the Ayer Rajah Road, now the Ayer Rajah Expressway in Western Singapore.‘In all, approximately 260 were murdered during the rampage, but only around 108 bodies were retrieved in and around the hospital and given a burial,’ says Lloyd.

‘So the question is — where are the rest, those 152 from the second Sisters’ Quarters site?’

Witness accounts filed post-war had it that there were slit trenches at the back of the hospital where it was believed they were buried.

In 2021, two areas of most potential were shortlisted as potential grave sites — one being the football field, and the other a patch of land behind Elizabeth House (Block 19) at the hospital.The ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute conducted the detailed archeological studies and forensic examination of two areas for the the National Heritage Board.

Their final report showed no human remains were found, although there was evidence of Japanese artefacts destroyed and buried in the Block 19 area.

‘This non-finding is actually very important,’ says Lloyd.

‘It means that the dominant theory now becomes the witness account of Private George Poole, a Royal Army Medical Corp medic.

Having hidden in a linen cupboard during the hospital massacre, the 34-year-old from Manor, Sheffield, dashed outside, and dived into a storm drain, where he lay and hid for two days.

From that position he had line-of-sight to the Admiralty Oil Tanks which had been burning ferociously for days.

‘Behind the building were petrol storage tanks that the Japs had set alight and any survivors they found were made to walk into the blazing oil,’ Poole said.

The Japanese used fire in Hong Kong and Malaya as an effective means of disposal immediately prior to this.‘In my research I look for corroboration of outlying incidents, so originally did not put much weight in his 1973 newspaper article.

‘But Poole was the only survivor in a position to be able to see it,’ says Lloyd, who has published the definitive book on the massacres, A Bleeding Slaughterhouse.

‘Sole survivor accounts also helped solved the Part Sulong massacre and the Bangka Island nurses massacre so I believe, by George, he’s done it!

‘Poole’s version is now the most probable explanation — a very awkward truth.’Lloyd points to an interesting aside by a paranormal group, GlobalSoundis, who studied the area a few years back and reported: ‘Paranormal activity extra at secondary forest site of oil tanks.’

Lloyd sees this as being not strictly scientific, but a useful adjunct to bolster the Poole story.

‘This episode was already an atrocity, but this method of disposal of prisoners in the oil tank fires takes it to a whole new heinous level. Unimaginable horror! But hopefully it can now bring better closure to the relatives and families of those poor defenceless souls.’