Thomas Braddell

Sir Thomas Braddell (1823–1891) was an Irish lawyer, the first Attorney-General of the British Colony of Singapore.

He was born in Rahingrany, County Wicklow and called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1859. He took the role of Attorney-General of Singapore from 1 April 1867 to 1 January 1883. In 1883, his son Thomas de Multon Lee Braddell was himself attorney-general and, with his brother Robert Wallace, Lee Braddell founded the Singapore legal firm of Braddell Brothers.

In the 1850s, he published historical works on the early settlement of Singapore in the Journal of the Indian Archipelago.

Thomas Braddell, C.M.G., F.R.G.S., F.E.S.L.,was born on 30 January 1823 at Raheengraney, Co. Wicklow, the property of his grandfather, the Rev. Henry Braddell, M.A., Rector of Carnew, Co. Wicklow.

At the age of nearly seventeen he went to Demerara with his brother, George William, to learn sugar planting. The brother died there in 1840, and in 1844 Thomas Braddell arrived at Penang from Demerara to manage the sugar estate called Otaheite, in the Ayer Hitam Valley, which belonged to Messrs. Brown and Co. About this time a great impetus had been given to the sugar industry in the Straits by the new sugar duties, with the result that Brown and Co. opened in 1846 the Batu Kawan Estate, in Province Wellesley, of which Mr. Braddell became the manager and owner of one quarter ; but the estate got inundated in a very high tide, the crop was lost, and the venture ended.

On 1 January 1849 Mr. Braddell joined the service of the East India Company as Deputy Superintendent of Police at Penang. After holding various offices in Penang, the Province, and Malacca, he was promoted to the highest position which any uncovenanted servant of the Company had ever held, that of Assistant Resident Councillor, Penang, a post which had previously been held by a covenanted civilian or high military officer. He earned this promotion for an act which made him famous at the time, and gained him the quickest promotion in Government service then known. In 1854 the most serious clan riots ever known broke out in Singapore, and the feud spread to Malacca, where the Chinese broke out, took possession of the country parts, and built a stockade in one of the main roads, where they defied the police. Mr. Braddell, who was at that time stationed in Malacca, without the slightest assistance and without calling on the military, went out with all the police he could get together, attacked the Chinese, killed and wounded several of them, took the stockade, and summarily ended the riots, for which act he was publicly thanked by the Governor.

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