Moulton and The Hall: The Great War 1914-1918

John Coney Moulton, the eldest son of John and Alice Moulton, was
born in 1886. Like his younger brother Eric, he was educated at Eton.
He later read Natural Sciences at Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1909,
fresh out of college, he was recruited by Rajah Charles Brooke to establish
a new museum in Kuching, Borneo.
In 1914 John Coney married Beryl Latimer Greene in Sarawak. Beryl
was the daughter of Dr. Greene of Stratford-upon-Avon; and sister to Dr.
Downes Greene, Principal Medical Officer in Sarawak. The outbreak of
war curtailed their happy existence in the raffish but restricted society of
Sarawak. John Moulton saw service as a Captain in the 4th Wiltshire
Territorial Regiment in India from 1915 onwards. Beryl returned to
England and their first child, John, was born in 1916.
In 1917 John Coney was appointed to the Staff of the Military
Headquarters in Singapore as co-ordinator of the Intelligence Services
in the Far East, serving under General Sir Dudley Ridout. With a new
home awaiting on Grove Road in Singapore, Beryl made the somewhat
perilous sea passage to re-join her husband and in 1918 their daughter
Dione was born. After the war Major John Coney Moulton resigned his
commission and in 1919 accepted the post of Director of the Raffles
Museum and Library in Singapore.
John Coney and Beryl’s third child, Alexander, was born in 1920 in
Stratford-upon-Avon - clearly Beryl spent a good deal of her time
travelling between England and the East. In 1923 John Coney Moulton
was invited by Rajah Vyner Brooke to return to Sarawak as Chief
Secretary, Member of Court and Judge of the Supreme Court. He
accepted and was duly inaugurated in the August of that year.
The final tragic twist in this story is that John Coney Moulton died in
1926 having contracted peritonitis following appendicitis. He was only
39 years of age and left three children under the age of ten.
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