S'pore's Marshall dead at 87

S'pore's Marshall dead at 87

SINGAPORE (AFP): Singapore's first chief minister and popular criminal lawyer David Marshall died yesterday after a year-long battle against lung cancer, officials and family members said. He was 87.

A spokesman for the Marshall family said the cancer became active about four months after diagnosis in August last year. He died in his sleep, leaving his wife of 34 years, Jean, and four children.

Ten months after he knew he had cancer, Marshall said in a media interview published only after his death yesterday that he was willing to take death "like a man" although he hoped to live on for five years or more.

"I see life as a miracle of joy. I don't want to go," Marshall, born here to an Orthodox Jewish family from Iraq, told The New Paper, Singapore's afternoon English daily.