IN 1823, Raffles was forced to intervene after his Resident in Singapore, William Farquhar, allowed gambling and slavery to run riot; Raffles, who regularly corresponded with William Wilberforce, had been officially reprimanded for his anti-slavery measures in Java,* but as Lieutenant-Governor his word was now law. Farquhar was fired, and when John Crawfurd became Resident in 1824 the city was leading economic and social progress in the British Empire and the world.
Stamford and his wife Sophia retired to England that year in poor health.* A keen naturalist, Raffles helped found the Zoological Society of London and the London Zoo, but any political ambitions were dashed after Farquhar loudly accused him of corruption. Though exonerated, Raffles was required to reimburse the Company for over £22,000 in losses while in office. His health worsened, and he died on 5th July, 1826, the eve of his forty-fifth birthday. The local vicar, whose investments in Jamaica had suffered thanks to Raffles’s Abolitionist friends, refused him burial; but Sir Stamford Raffles already had an eloquent and enduring monument: Singapore.
abridged
As the British authorities fully intended to hand Java back to the Dutch, they believed they should not make major changes to its governance (in fact, when the Dutch recovered Java they left Raffles’s progressive policies in place). Raffles felt that the cause of Abolition in Africa and the Caribbean should not be allowed to obscure the need to tackle slavery in the Far East. “I will not say I envy the unfortunate African” wrote Raffles to Wilberforce in September 1819 “because he enjoys so much larger a portion of your thoughts and attention, but I cannot help adding that I wish they were, even for a short time, directed to the Malay, the Javan, the Sumatran, the Bornean, the Avanese, the Siamese, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the millions of others with whom I am in daily communication, and to whom the name of William Wilberforce, if not entirely unknown, is only coupled with that of Africa.”
Sophia was his second wife. His first wife, Olivia Mariamne Devenish, was the widow of a surgeon from Madras. She was ten years older than Stamford, and died, to Stamford’s lasting grief, in 1814, the year that his tenure in Java ended. See Mr and Mrs Raffles. Three years later he married Sophia Hull in England, the year that he was knighted and returned to Bencoolen as Lieutenant-Governor. After Stamford’s death, Sophia worked hard to vindicate his reputation, publishing his memoirs and correspondence.