To Lillian Wife of J. V. G. Mills Born 1st April 1887 Died 18th July 1947
Marguerite Melanie Wife of J. V. G. Mills Born 5th February 1896 Died 10th January 1983.
John Vivien Gottlieb Mills Formerly Puisne Judge, Straits Settlements M.A. D,Litt. Oxon Born 22nd September 1887 Died 8th February 1987
An obituary in the Cambridge Journal Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society says "Ffour characteristics stood out in the personality of John Vivian Gottleibe Mills; he was by vocation a colonial administrator and judge trying to live by the ideals of the Raj; he was by profession a lawyer; he was a sinologue for the love of it; and he was an Edwardian gentleman fro head to toe."
John Vivian Gottlieb Mills (1887-1987) was educated at home by a royal Naval father until it was time to enter Oxford. He began his career in Malaya in 1911 as a Cadet in the Malayan Civil Service. Appointed to the Straits Settlements in 1924 he was selected for the Chinese side of government. After a period studying Chinese, Cantonese and Fukienese, in Canton, Mills served in the Chinese Protectorate for several years. He married and was posted to Christmas Island. Back in Singapore he also began to read Law in his spare time and was called to the Bar at Middle Temple in 1919.
After he was transferred to the Colonial Legal Service, Mills held several positions including Solicitor General in Singapore and Supreme Court Judge in Johore. He retired in 1939/40 aged 53. He went to Australia, worked in the Federal Attorney-General's offic e and returned to Enlgand after the war to take his MA at Oxford in 1945. where he lectured for a year in Chinese Law. His first wife died, and he settled in Switzerland for the rest of his life, where he married his second wife, . After his retirement, the prodigiously gifted scholar-official embarked upon another chapter in his long and brilliant life, and undertook a translation of Ma Huan's account of his voyages to Southeast Asia, a work which was published in the Indian summer of Mills' life and earned him an honorary D. Litt. from Oxford in 1970. Mills died at the age of 99 in Geneva, Switzerland, where he lived towards the end of his life.
The Overall Survey of the Star Raft by Fei Hsin, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.by Mills, J. V. G., and Roderich Ptak, Hsing-ch'a Sheng-lan:
Ying-Yai Sheng-Lan: Overall Survey of the Ocean's Shores [1433]Dec 1996 by Ma Huan and J.V.G. Mills
Malaya in the Wu-Pei-Chih Charts i.e. the charts contained in the work of that name by Mao Yüan-1937 by John Vivian Gottlieb Mills and Yüan i. Mao
