'The Rajah of Sarawak, Sir Charles Vyner deWindt Brooke',
GCMG, (
September 26,
1874–
May 9,
1963) was the third and final
White Rajah of
Sarawak.
The Third Rajah spent his youth in the Sarawak public service before travelling to England, where he was educated at
Clevedon,
Winchester, and
Magdalene College, Cambridge. It was in England that he met and married The Hon.
Sylvia Brett, daughter of
Lord Esher, on
February 21,
1911 and returned to Sarawak with her.
Following the death of his father, the second Rajah,
Sir Charles Anthony Johnson-Brooke, Brooke was proclaimed Rajah of Sarawak on
May 24,
1917. Brooke's early years as Rajah saw a boom in the Sarawak rubber and oil industries and the subsequent rise in the Sarawak economy allowed Brooke to modernise Sarawak institutions, including the public service and introduced a penal code developed on British India lines in
1924.
Granted a knighthood in
1927, Brooke continued to run a hands off and relatively popular administration that banned Christian missionaries and fostered indigenous traditions (to an extent; cannibalism was outlawed). Sarawak however was not immune to Japanese imperial ambition, which manifested itself in Sarawak on
December 25,
1941. Reading the signs, Brooke had already evacuated his family and himself to
Sydney,
Australia, where he would remain for the duration of the war.
Brooke returned to Sarawak on
April 15,
1946 and temporarily resumed as Rajah, until
July 1 1946 when he ceded Sarawak to the British government as a crown colony, thus ending White Rajah rule in Sarawak.
Vyner Brooke died in
London at No. 13, Albion Street,
Bayswater, W2 on
May 9,
1963, four months before Sarawak was formally incorporated into the
Federation of Malaysia.
All three white Rajahs are buried in
St Leonard's Church in the village of
Sheepstor on
Dartmoor.
He was survived by three daughters:
★ Dayang Leonora Margaret, Countess of Inchcape, wife of 2nd
Earl of Inchcape and, secondly of Colonel Francis Parker Tompkins.
★ Dayang Elizabeth, a singer and actress, wife of
Harry Roy.
★ Dayang Nancy Valerie, married, firstly, Robert Gregory, an American wrestler, secondly, Senor José Pepi Cabarro, thirdly, Andrew Aitken Macnair.