Life in an internment camp

Six years after the founding of Bedford Physical Training College in 1903, former students agreed to establish a Bedford Physical Training College Students’ Association (BPTCSA), primarily to form “a bond of union between all students trained in the College.”  It is an association which continues to this day and the publication of its Annual Report, first produced in 1911, provides an increasingly comprehensive chronicle of the life of the College and the means with which to trace the employment history of former students and small details of their family lives with records of marriages and births.  Occasionally, former students, particularly from those who were working or living overseas, would submit letters giving accounts of their activities.  One such correspondent was (Charis) Veronica Rynd (née Warmington-Reed) who attended Bedford Physical Training College in 1927-1930.

We know from the BPTCSA Annual Reports that Veronica’s first teaching post after leaving the College in 1930 was at Château Mont-Choisi, a finishing school in Lausanne, Switzerland.  And we also know that in 1939 Veronica married Patrick G. Rynd, an employee of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation and moved to Manila in the Philippines.  On 8 December 1941 the Japanese invaded the Philippines and Veronica and her husband spent the next 3¼ years in Japanese internment camps.  The 1945 BPTCSA Annual Report published extracts of letters from Veronica giving an account of her internment and eventual release in February 1945.

The BPTCSA Annual Reports held in the Archive provide the means to discover something of the careers and personal lives of former students from Bedford Physical Training College.

Incidentally, if you are interested in learning more of Veronica’s experiences, an account of her story based on her recollections and those of fellow internees has been written by her youngest daughter, Merilyn Brason.  The Bamboo Bracelet: A True Story is scheduled to be published in June 2020 by Matador.

Extract of letters from Veronica Rynd published in the 1945 BPTCSA Annual Report
Ref: BPEA OSA 6/1