Benjamin Henry Sheares (12 August 1907 – 12 May 1981) was a Singaporean obstetrician, gynaecologist, and academic who served as the second president of Singapore between 1971 until his death in 1981.
Born in Singapore under British rule, Sheares graduated from the King Edward VII College of Medicine in 1929. He specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology and worked at the Singapore General Hospital and Kandang Kerbau Hospital (KKH), eventually serving as the acting professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Malaya in Singapore. He later became the professor of obstetrics and gynaecology in 1950, becoming the first local to rise to such a position as high-ranking colonial officers were usually appointed instead.
Sheares retired in 1961 due to health complications and went into private practice before being elected as the president of Singapore by parliament following the death of incumbent president Yusof Ishak. Sheares was sworn in on 2 January 1971 following a unanimous agreement by Parliament and served as the president of Singapore for three terms, from 2 January 1971 till his death in office on 12 May 1981. He was succeeded by Devan Nair on 23 October 1981. During his presidency, he officiated multiple events and ceremonies such as the 1971 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and the 1973 South East Asian Peninsular Games.
Regarded as "the father of obstetrics and gynaecology in Singapore", Sheares was known for standardising the lower Caesarian section in Singapore and creating an artificial vagina. The lower Caesarian section has since become the standard procedure in Singapore whilst his method to create an artificial vagina has been dubbed the "Sheares operation" and is used to help women who suffer from birth defects such as vaginal agenesis or in sex-change operations. Sheares remains the only president to have been elected for three terms. Both the Benjamin Sheares Bridge and Sheares Hall at the National University of Singapore (NUS) are named after him.
Early life and education
Sheares was born on 12 August 1907 in government housing in Singapore, when it was a part of the Straits Settlements, to Edwin Henry and Lilian Jane Sheares (née Gomez). Sheares and his family were Eurasians. Sheares's grandfather was from England but went to India to work with East India Company. According to Sheares's grandmother, her brothers had a dispute with the family, which led them to move out of England and change their surname from "Shears" to "Sheares".
Edwin was born in 1863 in Madras, India. Edwin moved to Penang as a teenager, where he met and married Lilian in 1902; she was born in Singapore and raised in Sumatra, Indonesia. They later moved to Singapore, where Edwin worked as a technical supervisor with the Public Works Department. Edwin and Lilian had six children; they died in 1940 and 1971, respectively.
In his youth, Sheares was known affectionately as Ben or Benny and had showed ambition to become a doctor. His sister Alice encouraged him to follow his dream against his mother's wishes, as she wanted Sheares to start work as a clerk to support the family as soon as he completed his Senior Cambridge examinations (present-day Singapore-Cambridge GCE Ordinary Levels). He attended Methodist Girls' School, when it still allowed mixed-sex education, from 1912 to 1917, following the completion of his Fourth Standard Government Grant in Aid School Examination in 1917. He was then transferred to Saint Andrew's Secondary School in 1918. After four years with Saint Andrew's, he transferred to Raffles Institution in 1922 to study to qualify for the King Edward VII College of Medicine (KECOM).
In 1923, he successfully enrolled at KECOM as a government scholar; the scholarships were provided by the Council of the Medical College. He performed well at KECOM, earning four medals for his results and passing the obstetrics and gynaecology final examination with distinctions. Sheares donated most of the he earned monthly from his scholarship to his mother to support the family. He graduated from KECOM in March 1929 and was among nine graduates sent to work at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) as their first batch of trainee doctors.
Medical career
Upon his graduation in March 1929, he worked as an assistant medical officer at SGH. Sheares was paid a month as a local, whereas a British assistant medical officer would be paid twice his salary. The journalist K. C. Vijayan theorised that the difference in pay could be "to maintain parity with their counterparts in London", among other reasons. After getting his Licence in Medicine and Surgery, Sheares had wanted to pursue internal medicine, but was unable to during his work as a medical officer at an outpatient clinic in Malacca. He worked there for two years, but was unhappy. In 1931, he was transferred to Kandang Kerbau Hospital (KKH), but was later transferred to SGH's obstetrics and gynaecology unit at the request of professor J. S. English on 8 April 1931. English sought Sheares due to his academic performance at KECOM.
Sheares subsequently specialised in obstetrics and gynaecology, becoming the first Singaporean to do so. He told New Nation in 1976 that "you were just ordered to specialise by the professor if you had good marks", but that "once I got involved, I loved the discipline". He continued to study midwifery and gynaecology under English, later becoming the only assistant in the obstetric and gynaecology unit. In 1937, English posted Sheares to KKH – which was converted to a maternity hospital in 1935 – to take responsibility for all obstetric patients at KKH. Sheares divided his time between practising gynaecology at SGH and dealing with obstetric cases at KKH. In 1939, he was awarded the Queen's Fellowship, which granted him two-years of postgraduate training in London. Sheares was to use the Fellowship to prepare for the Member of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists's (MRCOG) examinations, but the outbreak of World War II in Europe postponed his trip.
During the war in 1941, he continued working at KKH and was in charge of its two obstetrical wards. The hospital was damaged by the bombing from the Japanese military and was then converted into an emergency general hospital for injured civilians. Following the fall of Singapore in 1942, the Japanese interned British doctors, leading to local doctors taking up larger roles in the medical service. During the Japanese occupation, KKH was renamed the Chuo Byoin () and served both Japanese and Singaporean patients. Sheares was made the Deputy Medical Superintendent, which was responsible for all the Singaporean patients; the Medical Superintendent was responsible for Japanese patients. In August 1942, the Syonan Shimbun reported that Sheares was a part of the Japanese's "travelling dispensaries", which were mobile medical units sent to the rural areas of Singapore.
After the war, Sheares received the Good Service Certificate from the British for his "good service rendered during the war to the cause of the Allies and the liberation of Malaya". He was also made the acting professor of KECOM, a role he held while English was recovering in Britain after the war. In April 1947, he left the post and went to England to resume his postgraduate studies under the Queen's Fellowship, where he was admitted to the Royal Postgraduate Medical School in Hammersmith under professor James Browne. He went on to pass the MRCOG examinations in January 1948, becoming the first Singaporean to do so. He had planned to take an examination at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh to join the Fellowship of the Royal Colleges of Surgeons – he had registered for it in March 1948 – but returned to Singapore after being called on by then-governor of Singapore Franklin Gimson to return to his post as acting professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at KECOM following English's retirement.
Upon his arrival back to Singapore, he was appointed the acting professor, with the job of professor being advertised in the British Medical Journal. Sheares faced prejudice as, despite serving as the acting professor for two years prior, the role of professor was not given to him as he was a local, and high-ranking colonials usually held such positions. He needed two referrals and asked English and KKH's Principal Medical Officer, who both refused and instead preferred a British medical officer. Sheares noted that the British medical officer had no experience in gynaecological surgery and poor knowledge in obstetrics. Sheares eventually got his referrals from two British physicians: Sir Eardley Holland, the chairman of the Board of Examiners who had previously examined him for his MRCOG, and Browne of the Royal Postgraduate Medical School.
With these referrals, Sheares met with the Selection Board in London and, in January 1950, became the first local professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Malaya in Singapore. In December 1951, Sheares used the remainder of his Queen's Fellowship study to go to the United States for a year. During this period, he studied at different teaching institutions in the United States, such as the Mayo Clinic. He remarked from his visit that "[KKH] was at least 50 years behind any American maternity hospital". Sheares returned in July 1952 to KKH and went on to improve their maternity services; he enhanced the antenatal supervision services and created a network of clinics that would be linked back to KKH. In 1952, the School of Midwifery was established, with Sheares serving as its chairman of the board, and he improved the training of midwives.
From 1953 to 1955, Sheares helped design new additions to the KKH building such as the out-patient department and the front block of the hospital, stating that, "[KKH] was initially just a maternity hospital and I had to design the new buildings in such a way that the maternity operating theatres were in a different block from the gynaecological operating theatres." In 1955, Sheares became the first Singaporean to be awarded a fellowship by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, following his contributions to the sector. In March 1956, he founded the Bulletin of Kandang Kerdau Hospital, which later become the Singapore Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and served as its first editor. In 1959, Sheares advocated for voluntary sterilisation as a way to reduce population growth instead of legalising abortion, which he garnered criticism for. Sheares explained that even if abortions were made legal, people would still perform abortions illegally. He later stated that he believed that his critics assumed he was advocating for forced sterilisation, when he was really advocating for voluntary sterilisation, further saying, "they also did not understand the consequences of letting the population grow un-checked."