William Raffles Flint

William Raffles Flint, known as Raffles, was a high-ranking government official in North Borneo (present day Sabah), serving as a Postmaster, Harbour Master, Magistrate, and for many years as Sub-Commandant of the British North Borneo Constabulary. While he never served officially as Commandant, on several occasions he took up the position of Acting Commandant.

Biography

Early life William Raffles Flint was the grandson of William Lawrence Flint, an officer of the Royal Navy and the first Master Attendant for the Straits Settlements. His grandmother, Mary Anne Raffles, was the sister of Stamford Raffles, one of the founders of British Singapore.

Flint was trained in England as a Naval cadet. on 15 May 1885, Flint became the Acting Chief Inspector of the British North Borneo Constabulary. On 24 May 1885, as Acting Commandant, Flint led an armed punitive expedition from Papar to Kawang, where De Fontaine had just been killed. This expedition of retaliation lasted until 1 June, searching for the rebel leader Kandurong.

On 1 January 1888, Flint was appointed as Sub-Commandant, the second in command of the Constabulary under Commandant R. D. Beeston. During his tenure, he fought in the Padas Damit War and in several expeditions into the jungles of Borneo. In 1889, he took the posting of Superintendent of Police. Flint discovered that his brother, Charles, had married a local girl, and her father had had reservations about racial purity at the time. However, it was when the stepfather wound up in debt to Charles, that he tried to escape the area with his family. Charles went to track him down, and was murdered.

Flint found his brother's beheaded corpse and head buried in the ground not far from the trading post. He took one other white officer named Godfrey Hewett, and a force of 12 Iban constabulary to track down Numpal, the man who had killed his brother. When they got to the village of Regan, on the Kalabakan River, Kalabakan District, not far from the southern border with Dutch Kalimantan, they found a Tenggala longhouse with over a hundred people inside. Flint and his men massacred the more than 140 men, women, and children living there.

When news of the massacre reached Singapore and Hong Kong, it quickly spread to the rest of the world. The Dutch East Indies government at Batavia, Java, and the Netherlands officially rebuked the company, and sent a letter to the British government in London that this had occurred in what they officially claimed as part of Dutch Kalimantan. The British High Commissioner to Singapore condemned the act, as did the Foreign Office.

In May 1897, Flint took a contingent of the Constabulary to England to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria.

When he returned to North Borneo on 29 August 1898, he was appointed Wing Officer. On 6 December 1901, he was re-appointed Sub Commandant. Only a year later, in 1910, Flint tripped while walking down the stairs. As a result, several weeks later, he had to get his right leg amputated at the thigh.

He became a director of Kimanis Rubber Company for a short time.

He died less than five years later, a bachelor. Memorial to Flint at Sandakan. This tablet, made of bronze, was installed at the Sandakan Church in 1922.