Female missionaries in colonial Singapore have made their mark in areas such as education, welfare and health services. Jaime Koh looks at some of these intrepid trailblazers.

Nineteenth-century Singapore was a thriving centre of commerce that held much promise. Soon after the British established a trading post in 1819, Singapore’s status as a free port and great emporium grew, attracting many who were drawn to the economic opportunities the island offered. Besides workers and merchants, the settlement also attracted Christian missionaries from the West who saw an opportunity to spread their message “among heathen and other unenlightened nations”¹ in Asia.

As early as 1820, missionary societies of various denominations began to dispatch their representatives to sow the seeds of the Christian faith in Singapore. The Protestants were among the earliest to arrive, establishing churches and printing presses, and evangelising through preaching on the streets and home visits. Over time, the Protestant missionaries started schools and provided medical and social services for the poor and the displaced. Catholic missionaries followed, and similarly established churches and schools in Singapore.

Most of the early missionaries who came were men. In the early 19th century, the few women who ventured to Asia were the wives, sisters or relatives of Protestant missionaries who supported the men in their work abroad.²

The Catholic sisters of the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus with some orphans and their Malay nanny in 1924. In addition to a school, the convent also ran an orphanage that accepted and cared for orphans and abandoned babies. Sisters of the Infant Jesus Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Male missionaries were encouraged to bring their wives with them for several reasons. The first was the perception that missionaries who came with their families were better received in foreign lands as they gave the impression of coming with “peaceful intent”. The second was that missionary wives were seen as models of solicitous female behavior, thus demonstrating the virtues of good Christian families.³

Conversely, mission groups were initially reluctant to send unmarried female missionaries abroad. It was feared that they would either get married, or, being of weaker disposition, would not be able to cope with the rigours of living in a strange land and liable to suffer a nervous breakdown. The belief at the time was that women were “more emotional and less controlled, more anxious minded, more easily ‘worried’, more given to overtax their strength… more depressed by heathenism”.⁴

Things began to change from the 1850s onwards when missionary societies started to actively recruit and send unmarried female missionaries overseas. This was a result of a growing need for specialised services in education and medical work as well as increasing calls in Western society and within the church there to give women a more prominent role in mission work.⁵

Singapore in the 19th century was clearly a male-dominated society, with men outnumbering women by as many as four to one.⁶ There is no known data on the number of children before 1871 when the first of a series of regular census was taken. The population censuses of 1871, 1881 and 1891 put the number of children (under the age of 15) as 18.1 percent, 16.4 percent and 14.3 percent of the total population respectively.⁷

There was little public demand for education and the Bengal government in Calcutta – the capital of British territory in India until 1911 – was unwilling or unable to channel any money into developing education, much less education for girls, in Singapore. Most people in Singapore at the time did not even think that girls needed to be educated. Likewise, social welfare services were very basic. In fact, social welfare and education provisions in 19th-century Singapore were considered “below even the rudimentary standards” expected of governments at the time.⁸

The first female missionaries sent to Singapore from the West were well positioned to fill these gaps, and many went on to make tremendous contributions to society. In several cases, their legacies persist to the present day in the form of schools and institutions they founded.

The London Missionary Society
The earliest female missionaries in Singapore were the wives of missionaries from the London Missionary Society (LMS), a Protestant society founded in London in 1795. One of the LMS’s most important contributions in Singapore, apart from the introduction of the printing press, was setting up schools.

Bessie Osborne, wife of a London Missionary Society (LMS) missionary William D. Osborne, who worked with the Indian leper community in Trivandrum, India, c. 1900−1910. LMS, founded in 1795 in London, is one of the earliest Christian missionary groups that went out to Asia to proselytise. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

Mrs Claudius Henry Thomsen, who accompanied her LMS missionary husband, Claudius Henry Thomsen, to Singapore, is credited for starting the first school for girls in 1822. Known as Malay Female School, it was designed chiefly as a day school for girls “of any class or denomination” where they were taught needlework, catechism, hymns and prayers, reading and writing in Malay, and arithmetic. Although the school had only six students, its establishment marked the beginning of formal education for girls in Singapore.'>⁹

The LMS missionaries went on to start several other schools here. In 1830, there was reportedly a school for Chinese girls under the care of a Miss Martin. Nine years later, in 1839, a boarding school for “girls of European fathers and Malay mothers” was established. It was run by Mrs A. Stronach and Mrs J. Stronach, wives of the Stronach brothers, Alexander and John, who were both LMS missionaries. The subjects taught included English and Malay languages, and hygiene. There are few surviving records of these schools beyond the dates when they were established. They were likely short-lived too and closed down when the LMS withdrew from Singapore in 1847.¹⁰

But one school started by the wife of an LMS missionary has survived until today. This was the Chinese Female Boarding School, established in 1842 by Mrs Maria Dyer (nee Tarn), wife of LMS missionary Reverend Samuel Dyer. Mrs Dyer had been in charge of several girls’ schools in Penang and Melaka in the 1820s and 1830s when the Dyers were posted there for missionary work. Mrs Dyer was prompted to start the school in Singapore when she moved here and encountered young girls being sold as slaves on the streets.¹¹ The Chinese Female Boarding School began with 19 girls in a rented house in North Bridge Road, where they were given a basic education in English and homemaking skills.

Mrs Dyer’s association with the school ended in 1844 when she left Singapore after the death of her husband. The school was placed in the care of Miss A. Grant, a missionary from the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East (SPFEE; see text box below) who took over the running of the school.

Under Miss Grant, the school, which had been renamed Chinese Girls’ School, operated as an orphanage for unwanted girls as well as a boarding school.¹² One of Miss Grant’s students was Yeo Choon Neo, the first wife of Song Hoot Kiam, the noted Peranakan community leader after whom Hoot Kiam Road is named.¹³

Sophia Cooke
After Miss Grant left Singapore in 1853, the SPFEE sent another missionary, Sophia Cooke, to run the school. Miss Cooke would manage the school for the next 42 years, and her name became synonymous with the institution − “Miss Cooke’s School”, as people would come to call it.¹⁴ By this time, the school had moved several times, from North Bridge Road to Beach Road, before settling down at 134 Sophia Road in 1861.

An undated portrait of Miss Sophia Cooke, a missionary from the Society for the Promotion of Female Education in the East (SPFEE). In 1853, Miss Cooke took over the management of Chinese Girls’ School – initially established as the Chinese Female Boarding School in 1842 – and would run it for the next 42 years. Her name became synonymous with the institution and came to be called “Miss Cooke’s School”. Image source: Walker, E. A. (1899). Sophia Cooke, or, Forty-Two Years’ Work in Singapore (frontispiece). London: E. Stock. Collection of the National Library, Singapore. (Accession no.: B29032405C; Microfilm no.: NL 11273)

In addition to running the girls’ school, Miss Cooke also started a Chinese “ragged school”¹⁵− a charitable establishment providing free education for poor children − that took in children as well as their mothers. Inspired by similar schools in London, the ragged school opened on 6 March 1865.¹⁶ Buoyed by its success, Miss Cook started a second such school but there are no records of what happened to these two ragged schools.

Students from the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society School or the CEZMS School playing netball at its premises in Sophia Road, c. early 1900. The school has changed names and moved locations several times since its founding in 1842 as the Chinese Female Boarding School. In 1949 it was renamed St Margaret’s School, after Queen Margaret of Scotland. Courtesy of St Margaret’s Secondary School.

In 1900, the SPFEE was dissolved and the Chinese Girls’ School was taken over by the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS) and became known as the CEZMS School. In 1949, the school was renamed St Margaret’s School (after Queen Margaret of Scotland), and is today the oldest girls’ school in Singapore in existence.¹⁷

Besides education, the indefatigable Miss Cooke also helped improve the welfare of women, sailors, policemen, soldiers and the sick. She visited women in their homes and hosted regular meetings for young girls and mothers as part of a social support group. During these meetings, the girls would pray and listen to Christian messages from young women missionaries, whom locals called the Bible women. In turn, the local women were taught English and skills such as sewing and cooking.¹⁹ By 1897, these meetings developed into a formal organisation that became known as the Singapore branch of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA).

Another group Miss Cooke worked with were police, sailors and soldiers. She held Bible classes for them as well as attended to the needs of destitute and sick sailors. In 1882, together with a Brethren missionary Mr Hocquard, Miss Cooke started the Sailors’ Rest to provide shelter and food for homeless sailors. The Sailors’ Rest became the Boustead Institute in 1892 – named after the English businessman and philanthropist Edward Boustead – and continued to look after the welfare of destitute sailors in Singapore.²⁰

The Boustead Institute, at the junction of Anson Road and Tanjong Pagar Road, succeeded the Sailor’s Rest started in 1882 by a missionary named Miss Sophia Cooke to provide shelter and food for homeless sailors. The Boustead Institute, named after the English philanthropist Edward Boustead, continued to look after the welfare of destitute sailors. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Sophia Blackmore
Another missionary society that left a deep impact on Singapore was the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS; see text box below) of the Methodist Episcopal Church of America. More familiar is the name Sophia Blackmore, its most well-known missionary in Singapore.

Miss Sophia Blackmore (seated, middle), a missionary of the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS) of the Methodist Episcopal Church of America, posing with students of Methodist Girls’ School in this photo taken in 1915. She started the Tamil Girls’ School in 1887, which later accepted girls of other nationalities. By the 1890s, the school had been renamed the Methodist Girls’ School. Lee Brothers Studio
Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

In 1887, the Minneapolis branch of the WFMS sent Miss Blackmore, who was Australian by birth, to Singapore. This was in response to a call from Reverend William Oldham for a woman missionary to work with the mothers Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) that he had started in 1886. Miss Blackmore was a true pioneer in that she was the first unmarried female Methodist missionary sent to Singapore.²¹

In August 1887, Miss Blackmore started the Tamil Girls’ School in a shophouse at 33 Short Street.²⁴ Over time, the school took in girls of other nationalities. It relocated several times, first to the Christian Institute on Middle Road, then back to a purpose-built building in Short Street. By the 1890s, the school had been renamed Methodist Girls’ School.²⁵ In the 1920s, the school relocated to Mount Sophia and remained there for the next seven decades.²⁶

Not one to rest on her laurels, just a year later, in August 1888, Miss Blackmore started a school for Chinese girls in the home of businessman Tan Keong Siak – known as Telok Ayer Chinese Girls’ School. In 1912, the school moved from Cross Street to Neil Road and was renamed Fairfield Girls’ School in honour of a donor named Mr Fairfield.²⁷

Fairfield Girls’ School at its Neil Road premises. c.1920. Miss Sophia Blackmore started the school in 1888 for Chinese girls and called it Telok Ayer Chinese Girls’ School. When the school moved from Cross Street to Neil Road in 1912, it was renamed Fairfield Girls’ School. The school was renamed Fairfield Methodist Girls’ School in 1958. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

It was one thing to set up schools, but it was another to convince parents to send their girls to be educated. At the time many parents thought it was pointless for girls to go to school. Not to be defeated, Miss Blackmore went from house to house (particularly in the Telok Ayer and Neil Road areas) both to proselytise and to convince parents of the value of education and to send their daughters to school.²⁸

The work was exhausting, but the women were motivated by a higher calling. One of the teachers in the school, a WFMS missionary, wrote:

“It was not easy work. It has meant patient working and praying. It has meant going to the homes and bringing them to school by love and sometimes almost by force. Day after day we have had to go to each home for the girls. It has meant outside work and assistance in trying to keep dull ones up to the level of the others. Many times I have left my classroom alone and gone to a home to get back a girl. Sometimes, after getting her part of the way, she would run home again and leave me, but I have never gone back to school under such circumstances without taking her back in a gentle, loving way.”²⁹

Between 1887 and 1892, Miss Blackmore was the sole representative of the WFMS in Singapore although she was helped by local Eurasian ladies. In 1892, the WFMS sent out two more female missionaries – Miss Emma Ferris and Miss Sue Harrington – to Singapore to assist Miss Blackmore.³⁰

In 1890, Miss Blackmore established the Deaconess Home as a base for WFMS work in Singapore. The home served as a residence for female missionaries (known as deaconesses) and also took in abandoned babies, orphans and young girls sold into slavery (known as mui tsai in Cantonese). In 1912, the home was renamed Nind Home after Mrs Mary C. Nind, the secretary of the Minneapolis branch of the WFMS.³¹

Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society The Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS) of the Methodist Episcopal Church of America was founded in Boston by Mrs William Butler and Mrs Edwin Parker, both wives of missionaries, in 1869. Both saw the need for female missionaries to work with women in India as teachers, doctors and even preachers. Thus, they established the WFMS with the aim of “engaging and uniting the efforts of the women of the church in sending out and supporting female missionaries, native Christian teachers and Bible women in foreign lands”.32 The WFMS was critical to the success of Methodist Girls’ School (MGS) and Fairfield Methodist School, especially in the period before World War II. The society provided both the funds and personnel to keep the schools running. All the principals of MGS and Fairfield in the pre-war period were WFMS missionaries, and most of them were unmarried. Several of its principals and teachers worked at both schools, either concurrently or at different points in time.33 Besides the school in Singapore, WFMS missionaries also managed Methodist schools in Malaya, such as those in Taiping (Perak), Ipoh (Perak) and Kuala Lumpur.34 Miss Sophia Blackmore (back row, middle) with fellow missionaries from the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society (WFMS) of the Methodist Episcopal Church of America and charges at the Deaconess Home, 1890s. She had established Deaconess Home as a base for WFMS work in Singapore in 1890. Morgan Betty Bassett Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. In addition to their work in schools, WFMS missionaries were active evangelists.35 Miss Sophia Blackmore, for instance, helped Methodist pastor Reverend William Shellabear set up the Baba Church (later known as Middle Road Church) in Middle Road. One little known accomplishment of the WFMS was the establishment of the Rescue Home for “fallen” women in 1894. Two years earlier, WFMS missionary Miss Josephine Hebinger had been sent to Singapore to rescue Chinese and Japanese girls sold into prostitution. Miss Hebinger was released from her work in 1894 when she announced her plans to get married.36 It is not known what happened to the rescue home.

Sisters of the Holy Infant Jesus (IJ)
Besides the Protestant missionaries, Catholic nuns were also among the pioneers who provided education for girls. In February 1854, four nuns from the Institute of the Charitable Schools of the Holy Infant Jesus of St Maur in France arrived in Singapore. Reverend Mother St Mathilde, Sister St Appollinaire, Sister St Gaetan and Sister St Gregoire formed the core team that ran the school that came to be known as the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus. The convent was the idea of Reverend Father Jean-Marie Beurel of the Missions Étrangères de Paris, who had started St Joseph’s Institution for the education of boys in 1852. He wanted the convent to be a safe place that would house a school for girls, an orphanage and an asylum for destitute widows.³⁷

Orphans having a meal at the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus in 1924. In addition to a school, the convent also ran an orphanage that accepted and
cared for orphans and abandoned babies. Sisters of the Infant Jesus Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Established in 1854, the convent, known as Town Convent due to its location on Victoria Street in the city area, was the first Catholic mission school for girls in Singapore. In addition to running a day school, it also had an orphanage that accepted and cared for orphans and unwanted babies. Many of these babies were found on the doorsteps of the convent wrapped in rags or newspapers, abandoned by their mothers who could not care for them. The babies were often disabled, deformed or weak, and were usually girls.³⁸

The IJ Sisters, as they came to be known, provided moral and domestic education for their charges, including classes in sewing, knitting and cooking as well as simple reading, writing and arithmetic. Gradually, the Sisters went on to establish several more convent schools throughout Singapore.³⁹

The IJ Sisters were also actively involved in medical work. In his 1885 report, the Resident Surgeon of the General Hospital outlined in his report the Sisters’ work as nurses in the hospital:

“I am glad to report that, during this year, the introduction of Female Nurses has become an accomplished fact. The Nurses are Sisters from the Convent in Singapore, and they entered on their duties on August 1st. They have shewn [sic], and are shewing [sic], great interest in their work, and are very careful, and quick to learn. The improvement in the appearance of the hospital wards since the Nurses came is very marked, and the relief given to the Surgeon, and the Apothecaries in their attendance on bad cases is already great, and will in time be greater.”⁴⁰

Up to that point, nursing work at the General Hospital was mainly carried out by apothecaries, dressers, ward stewards, servants and even convicts.⁴¹ The Sisters, although not professionally trained, became the first group of dedicated nurses in Singapore, and their services helped ease much of the staff’s workload. As part of their duties, the IJ Sisters attended to the patients, received hospital rations and looked after the servants. ⁴²

Nonetheless, the IJ Sisters’ involvement in nursing was short-lived. In May 1900, the Convent withdrew the Sisters’ services following a disagreement with the government. Trained nurses from the Colonial Institute in England replaced the Sisters.⁴³

Catholic Schools for Girls Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ) on Victoria Street – also known as Town Convent – founded in 1854 was the first of the CHIJ schools to be established in Singapore for girls. In the 20th century, the Catholic order of the Holy Infant Jesus Sisters from France established eight more CHIJ schools: CHIJ Katong Convent (1930), CHIJ St Nicholas Girls’ School (1933), CHIJ St Theresa’s Convent (1933), CHIJ St Joseph’s Convent (1938), CHIJ (Bukit Timah) (1955), CHIJ Our Lady of the Nativity (1957), CHIJ Our Lady of Good Counsel (1960) and CHIJ Kellock (Primary) (1964).44 In 1964, the Town Convent was separated into primary and secondary schools and, in 1983, moved from its Victoria Street premises to Toa Payoh, where it remains today. A music class in session at the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus in 1924. Sisters of the Infant Jesus Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

 Notes

Capitol Theatre was the premier venue for film and stage when it opened in 1930. Bonny Tan uses oral history recordings to piece together pre-war narratives of the theatre.

Capitol Theatre opened to much fanfare on 22 May 1930, marking the dawn of a new era in entertainment and lifestyle in Singapore. Although there were several existing cinemas, such as the Alhambra and Marlborough, the Capitol sought to be the epitome of the high life in the city by showcasing the best in both film and live performances. Completed at the outset of the Great Depression, the Capitol was instrumental in transforming Singapore’s entertainment landscape in more ways than one.

Capitol Theatre and the adjoining Namazie Mansions at the junction of Stamford Road and North Bridge Road, c.1950. By 1946, the new owners had replaced the sign “Namazie Mansions” with “Shaws Building”. In 1992, it was renamed Capitol Building. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Dressed to the Nines
The idea of building a high-end theatre for both stage and screen was conceived by S.A.H. Shirazee, an Indian-Muslim merchant and community leader. The Capitol boasted the largest seating capacity for a theatre in the Far East at the time – with 1,100 seated on the ground floor and another 500 upstairs − and the very latest in technology and comfort. Adjoining it was a complex with high-end shops on the ground floor and 48 apartments occupying two upper floors.

The Capitol was commissioned and financed by Mirza Mohammed Ali Namazie, a well-known Persian businessman. Besides managing various business ventures, Namazie was himself a film buff, having been the distributor of UFA, a German film agency, since 1919.¹

Capitol Theatre was commissioned and financed by Mirza Mohammed Ali Namazie, a well-known Persian
businessman. He had moved to Singapore from Madras, India, in the 1910s to set up M.A. Namazie &
Co. Courtesy of Mirza Mohammed Ali Namazie.

Many people have mistaken the distinctive street-facing façade as the theatre, a perception created by the gigantic movie billboard hanging over the entrance to the building. In actual fact, what is visible at the corner of Stamford and North Bridge roads is the four-storey complex of apartments and shops known as Namazie Mansions. Early photos of the building show “Capitol Theatre” emblazoned above the billboard with “Namazie Mansions” in smaller typeface above it. The actual theatre, a rather nondescript-looking structure from the outside, is found at the rear of the building.

Namazie Mansions was built in November 1929, a few months before the theatre behind it was completed in February 1930. The total construction cost of the theatre and apartment complex amounted to 1,250 Straits dollars. The theatre took up two-thirds of the cost as it incorporated the latest innovations in cinema and theatre technology.

Designed by British architects P.H. Keys and F. Dowdeswell and constructed by Messrs Brossard and Mopin, the architects drew inspiration from Roxy Theatre in New York. Capitol had the largest projection room in the world when it opened, extending the length of the building and housing the latest Simplex deluxe projectors. Located below the balcony was the projection room, built entirely of reinforced concrete, a newly introduced construction material.

The theatre also featured an innovative ventilation system in which purified, cooled air was blown into the auditorium without the aid of fans, while its domed roof could be opened to let in fresh air, except on rainy days. Most importantly, Capitol was the first cinema in Singapore to be purpose-built for talkies. It was installed with state-of-the-art soundproofing, acoustics and sound systems – constructed just as this new genre of film was becoming popular.²

The Capitol was dressed to the nines – as was expected of its patrons – with wider and more luxuriously upholstered seats, multi-hued lights that cast a magical glow on the silk drapings on stage, and even the latest in wall paint to allow easy cleaning. Changing rooms and organ chambers were also built into the theatre to facilitate stage productions.

Much of the external and interior design was influenced by Joe Fisher (see text box below), a South African who had been in the film industry for more than two decades. Fisher was instrumental in bringing in the latest Hollywood films and theatrical performances that helped cement Capitol as Singapore’s premier entertainment venue. Namazie, Shirazee and Fisher formed Capitol Theatres Ltd, which ran the business, with Namazie as the company chairman, Shirazee as director, and Fisher as managing director.

Crowds thronged to watch the musical comedy Rio Rita on opening night on 22 May 1930. The 1929 film, which starred American artistes Bebe Daniels and John Boles, was RKO Radio Pictures’ topgrossing box office hit of the time, featuring the latest in technicolour and sound. A journalist was so thrilled by the magnificence of the Capitol that he reported it as “almost too elaborate for a mere cinema” in the newspaper the next day.³

(Left) The crowd at the Capitol Theatre on opening night on 22 May 1930. The Europeans were formally dressed and seated on the balcony, while the locals mostly occupied the stalls. The photo also shows the projection room below the balcony. Malayan Saturday Post, 31 May 1930, p. 38.
(Right) Crowds thronged to watch the musical comedy, Rio Rita, at Capitol Theatre’s opening night on 22 May 1930. The 1929 film starred American artistes Bebe Daniels and John Boles, and was RKO Radio Pictures’ top-grossing box office hit, featuring the latest in technicolour and sound. The film was based on the 1927 stage musical produced by Florenz Ziegfeld. Image source: Wikipedia Commons.

Ticket bookings at the Capitol could be made by telephone. Subsequently, reservations for permanent seats each week for future screenings could also be booked in advance if requests were made in writing to the manager. Tickets were priced at $2 for circle seats and $1 for stalls; children were charged half price.

The European patrons, decked out in hats and jackets, would book the more expensive circle seats upstairs, while locals, who tended to dress less formally, would occupy the cheaper stalls.⁴ The theatre was touted by some as a place that allowed for the mingling of people, regardless of class and race, but in actual fact the haves and have-nots were separated physically by the price of a ticket.

Memories of the Capitol
Behind the grandeur and opulence, however, was back-breaking work. Wee Teck Guan, a former employee of Capitol Theatre, supplied cleaning services during the opening period. Supervising between 10 and 50 people on the job at any one time, Wee was responsible for making sure that the labour force was on site 24 hours a day.⁵

Wee continued working for the Capitol until the Japanese Occupation, when his job evolved into advertising. He employed rather unique approaches to publicise the screenings; for example, for the film The Jungle Princess, shown at the theatre in April 1937, Wee used a live model wearing a sarong in his publicity stunt.

Myra Cresson, a Singaporean of French-Portuguese descent who was a regular patron of the cinema in those early years, recalled that hats and tuxedos were the norm for the European community at Saturday evening shows, even with no air-conditioning in the theatre. After the show, the Europeans would invariably proceed to the original Satay Club at Hoi How Road, a narrow street just off Beach Road where the Alhambra cinema was located.⁶ According to Willis’s Singapore Guide, “After the cinema or when hotels are closed, it [was] not an uncommon sight to see European ladies and gentlemen in evening dress sitting around these ‘Satai’ stalls on the open road”.⁷

The theatre was such an attraction that people from the Malay Peninsula travelled south to see this marvel in engineering. Dr Maurice Baker, one of Singapore’s first-generation diplomats, was a student in Standard Seven in Ipoh when he was taken on his first visit to Singapore by his geography teacher. One of the highlights of his trip was to see the magnificent dome of the Capitol Theatre.¹³

Unfortunately, Capitol Theatres Ltd suffered a double whammy when Namazie died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 67 in July 1931, and the Great Depression and subsequent rubber slump of the 1930s took a toll on its business. The company underwent voluntary liquidation, and the management companies of the Capitol, Alhambra, Marlborough and Royal theatres merged to form Amalgamated Theatres by late 1939 with previous directors of the Capitol, including Joe Fisher, still part of the Board of Directors in the new company.¹⁴ Thankfully, Singapore was not completely devastated by the economic downturn¹⁵ and, defying all logic, saw a boom in the entertainment industry during this period.¹⁶

Live Performances at the Capitol
In the era of silent movies, music was key in creating atmosphere and portraying the emotions of the characters. The screening of a movie would be accompanied by a band playing live music. Even after talkies came on the scene, music was still integral to the storytelling.

Musician Paul Abisheganaden was entralled by the musical interludes played between the screening of movies. He quipped, “You went to the cinema not only to see the films but also to enjoy the music that took place at interval. And you would cut short your refreshments quickly to get back to your seat in order to be able to listen to… the musicians… .”¹⁷ Before the days of jazz and pop, bands would play light orchestral pieces or salon music such as Albert W. Ketelbey’s In a Monastery Garden and In a Persian Market. The wages were so lucrative that many musicians from Goa and Manila came to Singapore to work.

Scenes from Universal’s The King of Jazz production which was staged at Capitol Theatre.
Malayan Saturday Post, 18 October 1930, p. 16.

Teo Moh Tet, whose father Teo Eng Hock was a well-known rubber planter, lived in a five-storey building beside Capitol’s huge carpark. She had the privilege of catching the A.B. Marcus Show when it was first staged at the Capitol Theatre in August 1934. The vaudeville production, which featured 45 skimpily clad girls on stage, had gained worldwide popularity when it first premiered in 1918. Although entertaining, it must not have been an appropriate show for a young girl.

Growing Up with the Capitol
Parents in the 1930s did not usually indulge their young children by taking them out to the cinema, especially if they were girls. A visit to the theatre was therefore an extraordinary affair to be remembered. Teo Moh Tet, who was about 10 or 11 in the 1930s, remembered being accompanied by her mother to the first colour film at the Capitol, likely Rio Rita, which was the opening night film when the theatre was launched on 22 May 1930.¹⁸ Interestingly, such early films were often productions of live stage performances.

As a girl growing up in Johor in the early 1930s, Hedwig Anuar, who became director of the National Library in 1965, recalled outings to cinemas as boisterous affairs: “There would be boys sitting in the row behind us kicking our seats… And all of us would be eating kachang puteh.”14 The atmosphere may have been more sedate at the glamorous Capitol but the film genres were the same. It was a time when musicals and dance were popular. Children learnt to sing the songs of the adorable child star Shirley Temple and were fascinated with the nimble dance moves of Hollywood greats like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

To attract the younger generation to the Capitol, Amalgamated Theatres established a branch of the Mickey Mouse Club in December 1932. The inaugural meeting attracted 200 members. The club, for children under 14¹⁹, soon developed its own suite of programmes that included sports events, performances and charity work. The club elected its own Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse chiefs and by March 1933, had its own newspaper column, the Mickey Mouse Club Corner, in The Malaya Tribune.

Members of the Mickey Mouse Cub would meet on Saturday mornings before heading to the
Capitol Theatre for the matinee screening of Mickey Mouse cartoons. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 21 Oct 1933, p. 7.

A monthly membership fee of 25 cents allowed two free shows a month at the Capitol, Alhambra or Pavilion cinemas²⁰. Club members would meet on Saturday mornings before heading to the Capitol for the matinee screening of Mickey Mouse cartoons. Chan Keong Poh, who was about 14 years old then, recalled that Saturday morning meetings were held in the homes of the club organisers living at Namazie Mansions.²¹ Khatijun Nissa Siraj, who later became a women’s rights activist, noted that club members“ all had Mickey Mouse badge[s]… Sometimes there were children’s functions after the movies… [which included] a mix of Europeans, Chinese, Indians who [belonged] to the club”.²²

The area around the Capitol Theatre was home to more than a handful of English schools with teenagers hungry for new entertainment. Raffles Institution, Raffles Girls’ School, St Joseph’s Institution and Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus were just a few within a stone’s throw away.

The Capitol also appealed to the younger set as it featured more current, action-packed films. The 3.15pm matinee at the Capitol was especially popular with students as these afternoon screenings were cheaper than evening shows. Long queues for the matinees were an uncommon sight. Lines would also form for the kachang puteh man hawking a variety of flavoured nuts along with vendors selling various snacks and candies, both before screenings and during interval time.²³

In some schools, teachers occasionally rewarded students with cash for achieving good grades, and this was often used to purchase theatre tickets. Dr Tham Cheok Fai, later known as the father of neurosurgery in Singapore, recalled his math teacher challenging students with difficult arithmetic problems. Often, he would be the first to solve a question, and would use the 50-cent reward to catch a film at the Capitol. Tham said that 50 cents could purchase “two cinema shows in those days…[as] the seat in front… cost only 25 cents…”. This was normally a month’s worth of pocket money that would otherwise have been used for meals and transport.²⁴

Blind activist and advocate for the disabled Ronald Chandran-Dudley recalled indulging in movie marathon weekends when he still had his sight as a teenager. He skipped Latin classes for the early morning show at the Alhambra, continued with the 11am show at Capitol, followed by the 1.30pm screening at Cathay and ended the marathon with the 4pm show before reaching home at 6pm.²⁵

Residents of the Capitol
The apartments of Namazie Mansions fronting North Bridge Road commanded a panoramic view of St Andrew’s Cathedral and the Esplanade area. The residents included teachers of nearby schools as well as distinguished and well-heeled members of society.

Hilary Vivian Hogan, who was recognised for his contributions to Singapore’s cooperative movement, lived at the apartments when his family moved to Singapore around 1932, after his father had retired from working at Shell Petroleum in Samboe, Indonesia. As the Capitol was so ideally located, Hogan remembered walking everywhere: to his school, St Joseph’s Institution, to church, and in the evenings to the Esplanade to enjoy the breeze.²⁶

Kartar Singh too had first-hand experience of growing up at the Capitol although he lived at the other end of the economic spectrum. His father had supplied girders for the construction of the theatre. When Kartar’s mother died suddenly, his father was unable to juggle work with the needs of his young family. Fortunately, his father found employment at the Capitol as the resident jaga, or night watchman, and moved the family into the theatre grounds.

The ticketing counter in the lobby of Capitol Theatre, 1982. Lee Kip Lin Collection. All rights reserved, Lee Kip Lin and National Library Board, Singapore.

Kartar’s father was given a small room and a storage larder, but it was not a home by any means. The room could not accommodate the entire family of several siblings so once patrons cleared out of the theatre after the last show, they would pull out their charpoy (Indian roped beds) into the lobby to sleep. By 6 the next morning, these had to be packed away.

Kartar’s father set himself a strict timetable. He would wake up at 5am, get the cooking fire going, run to Hock Lam Street to buy groceries, then cook breakfast and pack lunch for the children as they got ready for school. He would then send them to school just before his work started at 9am. Kartar was then a student at nearby Raffles Institution. Due to his circumstances, he led an austere life at the Capitol, cooking by the roadside and studying under the street lamp.²⁷

Occupied Capitol
During the Japanese Occupation, the building’s residents included Japanese military officers as well as Japanese proprietors of businesses that operated on the ground floor.

Kartar’s family continued to live at the Capitol during the Japanese invasion in February 1942. Films were still screened in the months before the fall of Singapore to raise the morale of the people, but eventually the British requisitioned the theatre and turned it into a food depot. The last film prior to Singapore’s fall was screened at 11pm on 19 December 1941.²⁸ Kartar remembered that some seats were removed as sacks of flour were hauled in while the in-house restaurant, Blue Room, was converted into a canteen for the Air Raid Precaution Defence Forces.²⁹

Maurice Baker recalled that when the Japanese invaded Singapore and took over the theatre, he and some friends had sneaked in knowing that it was stocked with food. “… [w]e just picked up a whole case of sardines. I carried it and we walked past the sentry. Normally, looters were shot and executed. We didn’t know we were looting. We just carried it past, grinned and bowed to the sentry and took it home… We lived on those sardines for quite a while”.³⁰

During the Japanese Occupation, Capitol Theatre was renamed Kyoei Gekijo. Only films that had been vetted by the Japanese could be screened, along with theatrical performances. Patrick Hardie, a Eurasian interviewee, remembered that such performances included Japanese classical music performed by a Japanese orchestra as well as Japanese folk dances.³¹

In December 1944, towards the end of the Occupation, a loud explosion rocked the theatre. Kartar, who had by then married and moved to Henderson Road, heard the explosion as it resonated across town. Cycling to the Capitol as fast as he could, he witnessed the devastation: the theatre frontage had collapsed at the spot where his father would have been sleeping. He found his younger brother, his head in a pool of blood. His father and another brother had been taken to Raffles Girls’ school along with some others who were also injured.

Kartar ran to the nearby Indian Tamil League Headquarters at Waterloo Street where his cousin was the secretary and one of the privileged few given a car by the Japanese. Using the borrowed vehicle, Kartar drove his family to the Kandang Kerbau Hospital, which then served as a civil hospital. His father was later detained by the Japanese, who suspected him of being involved in the sabotage and interrogated him for two hours. His father was eventually released as apparently some old films stored in an underground room had caught fire and ignited the gas tanks nearby, causing the explosion.³²

When World War II ended in 1945, Shaw Organisation purchased Capitol Theatre and Namazie Mansions for $3.8 million, and renamed the latter Shaws Building, ushering in a new era for theatre and cinema in Singapore. After several decades as an iconic cinema in postcolonial Singapore, the theatre reopened in 2015, fully refurbished to reflect its former glory. It remains the only pre-war cinema in Singapore still in operation today.³³

In 2007, Capitol Theatre, Capitol Building, Capitol Centre and Stamford House were gazetted for conservation. Following redevelopment and refurbishment, Capitol Theatre officially reopened on 22 May 2015, exactly 85 years to the day when it first opened. Image source: VisitSingapore.com.

 Notes

Remittance letters between Singapore and China during the height of the Cold War from the 1950s–70s recount both the joy and angst of relationships across the miles. Dong Hui Ying delves deeper.

The establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the onset of the Cold War,¹ and revolution, decolonisation and war in Southeast Asia between the 1940s and 1970s ushered a period of uncertainty in Chinese and Southeast Asian interactions. The Cold War did not bring migration and communication between China and Southeast Asia to a grinding halt as expected, and the movement of people, goods and, not least, remittances and letters, continued at a steady pace.

The last was due, in no small part, to attempts by the PRC government to protect a major source of foreign exchange. In 1955, it issued decrees declaring the protection of remittances to China from abroad, guaranteeing remittances as the “legitimate income”² of the families of overseas Chinese (华侨) living in China.

To encourage the flow of remittances from abroad, such families were given preferential treatment from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. This took the form of extra allotments of grain as well as permission to use remittances for the upkeep of ancestral graves and to continue with geomancy and other feudal superstitious practices. These incentives in turn encouraged the Chinese diasporic community in Southeast Asia to send money home.

A Chinese worker in Singapore hoisting bales of rubber, late 1960s. The majority of such men who left China to find employment in Singapore between the 1820s and 1950s were engaged in manual labour. Letters were the only means of communication with their families back in China. George W. Porter Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The Value of Remittance Letters
Letters accompanying these remittances, namely qiaopi (侨批), continued to actively circulate between Southeast Asia and China during the Cold War. According to Liu Haiming, letter writing served several functions in traditional Chinese families: “as an important communication channel, a vehicle of moral education… and… as a composition writing exercise for children.”³

Remittance letters are important primary sources in the study of Chinese migrant experiences during this important period in Asian and global history as they provide a glimpse into the experiences, world views, values and expectations of migrants. Important matters were discussed and settled in the letters, from ancestor worship, marriage and child-bearing to health education and migration.

In this context, the remittance letters in the National Library’s Koh Seow Chuan Collection take on special importance. These letters were written mainly by male emigrants to Singapore from the Chaozhou (Teochew) area in China between the 1950s and the 1970s (with letters from the 1960s largely absent). Most were written by a few men, with a small number penned by women who were, presumably, wives or relatives of the letter writers.

A Cantonese letter writer-calligrapher with his customers in this photo taken on 24 October 1979. As most Chinese migrants in Singapore were illiterate, they engaged professional letter writers to pen remittance notes to their families back home in China. Often, these writers were also asked to read letters aloud to the recipients. All rights reserved, Kouo Shang-Wei Collection, National Library Board, Singapore.

A major challenge facing any historian using these letters is their fragmented nature, both chronologically, and in terms of the individuals and families involved. To overcome this, remittance letters compiled in the Chaoshan Qiaopi Jicheng (《潮汕侨批集成》) were examined to supplement those in the Koh Seow Chuan Collection.

In addition, articles on overseas Chinese in the newspaper People’s Daily ( 《人民日报》) were studied to examine how official policies of the PRC and the rise of nation-states during the Cold War affected migrants and their families between the 1950s and 1970s.

The core themes that emerge, as explored in this essay, are family and kinship ties, socio-religious practices, customs, health, education, migrational processes, material aspects of migration and socioeconomic concerns.

Religious Practices
Besides food, clothing and shelter, religious practices constituted a large part of household expenditure, according to Chen Da’s study, Emigrant Communities in South China.⁴ The Chaozhou people placed great importance on the worship of ancestors and deities. Deities like Shen and Tien were worshipped in temples or shrines for the safety, health and prosperity of the migrants in Southeast Asia, as well as those of the supplicants, on the first and 15th day of each lunar month.

Remittances were regularly sent back with instructions to put aside the money for religious observances such as sacrifices and prayer (祭祀之需). Some migrants even returned to China to worship their ancestors personally. The more affluent migrants – as a display of having achieved worldly success abroad – would send money to help construct ancestral halls that housed the patrilineal group’s ancestral tablets.

In his letter in 1949, Xu Mingqin pledged to “add grandparents’ and granduncles’ and grandaunts’ tablets in the ancestral hall”.⁵ Such contributions allowed migrants to be active participants in family affairs back in China and also strengthened family ties across the miles.

Chinese men gathered around a storyteller along Singapore River, c. 1960s. With barely enough to make ends meet after sending money home to China, entertainment for most migrants took on very simple forms. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Marital Unions
Marriage was an important union in which kinship ties were forged and maintained. In an emigrant family of middle or lower economic status, a portion of the remittances received was put aside for the sender’s marriage expenses. The migrant would return home to marry when sufficient money had been saved and a suitable girl found.

Sometimes, additional contributions were called for. In Yang Ruixiong’s case, he explained that he was hard-pressed to contribute towards his younger brother’s marriage expenses:

“I have received the letter about my brother Ruihan’s marriage. I am supposed to help with all the marriage expenses. However, I am earning very little and cannot help. Please notify me three months before the day of marriage. If I can, I will try to send more, at least 100 RMB to help.”⁶

Many migrants whose sons were also in Southeast Asia asked their wives or mothers back home to look for suitable brides for their sons. Wu Juanzhuan, for example, sent several letters asking his wife to find a worthy match for their son, Xilie.⁷ Another migrant, Xu Mingqin, asked his mother to find an ideal girl for his son Huizhuan.⁸ Daughters’ marriages were similarly arranged long-distance. Xu Mingqin and his wife (who had moved to Singapore to be with her husband) sought a good husband for their daughter Huizhuang, with Xu’s mother’s help.⁹ 

In arranging marriages, parents generally wanted to know the background of the prospective in-laws. Ideally, they wanted their sons to marry a submissive girl from their own area who held the same traditional values. In Zeng Hequan’s letter to his wife, he asked about the background of his prospective daughter-in-law and the occupation of her parents.¹⁰ 

The same concern applied to prospective sons-in-law, as seen from Yaliu’s letter to her mother-in-law in China on her daughter Meixiang’s marriage. Yaliu was perturbed that no one could ascertain which village her future son-in-law came from or what his family circumstances were like.¹¹

Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia, although young and exposed to foreign influences, generally accepted arranged marriages in an effort to remain filial to their parents. By accepting arranged marriages, migrant sons would have a wife in their hometowns to fulfil traditional responsibilities, such as serving their parents and maintaining the family shrine when they went abroad again for work after the wedding.

Parent-Son Relationships
For migrant sons and their families, remittance letters served as a vital channel of communication. In particular, parent-son relationships were traditionally “central to family life and superior to other family relations, including conjugal ties”.¹² Migrant sons were expected to “send money to their rural homes, leave their wives and children with their old folks, and regard their sojourn in the city as temporary, even when they spend their entire lives there”. Success was typically defined by the “onset of remittances”.¹³ 

In times of financial difficulty, when no remittance could be enclosed, a letter of reassurance about the migrant’s health and safety (平安信) was still expected. Most letters usually consisted of one to two lines in addition to the usual greetings and mention of remittances sent back. However, on special occasions, they could stretch into hundreds of words. The emotional dimension of these correspondences is often neglected in the study of remittance letters.

The expression of concern and longing was evident in Liu Shizhao’s note to his mother, who had been injured during a flood in his hometown:

 “I am extremely pained to hear about your injury. I wish from afar that you recover quickly after seeing a doctor and taking medication. I am well overseas. Please do not worry about me.”¹⁴

Husband-Wife Relationships
Remittance letters between migrant couples hold “powerful cultural and emotional value”.¹⁵ Under normal circumstances, even when their husbands sent back remittances or returned home regularly, the women had to bear greater family responsibilities during their husbands’ absence.

Figure 1: Letter from Yang Ruixiong to his wife Xu Peiyu, 26 March 1965. All rights reserved, Koh Seow Chuan Collection, National Library Board, Singapore.

The situation worsened during the Cold War when migration regulations made return trips difficult and rare, and remittance letters indicated a sharp decrease in movement between China and Singapore.¹⁶ Thus, such letters were immensely reassuring and key to maintaining husband-wife relationships across the seas. In a letter to his wife in 1965 (Fig. 1), Yang Ruixiong wrote:

“You sent two letters in a row to quarrel with me, it really amuses me. I was just being hot-tempered and as a result, said a few words that crossed the line. Do you have to be this angry? I will apologise to you now. Sorry, sorry, for my bad manners. Is this satisfactory? We are already an old married couple, does it have to be like this?”¹⁷

Migrant-Child Relationships
Migrants also expressed concern towards their children at home. In a letter to his mother in 1956, Liu Yongyu referred to the news that Lianxiang, his daughter back home in China, was feeling neglected by her mother, who had moved to Singapore with Lianxiang’s younger sisters. He explained that the younger girls were living very ordinary lives in Singapore and there was no reason for Lianxiang to feel disadvantaged.¹⁸

Zheng Youchu was another concerned parent. In 1952, he wrote expressing worry about his daughter Xianqing’s complaints of frequent abdominal pains after childbirth and suggested that she consult a physician immediately.¹⁹  In 1954, he was concerned that Xianqing was becoming too thin and advised her to avoid sour foods.²⁰

Sibling Relationships
Care and concern were also extended to younger siblings at home. For example, Liu Shizhao’s letter in August 1955 expressed sympathy for his younger sister Bixia and offered to help her:

“After learning about your plight in the letter, I sympathise with your situation. If Mother comes to Singapore in the future, and you have decided not to marry, and will work to support yourself, I will let you look after all my housing and other properties in China. You can also work on the fields in Liu Hu Tou Shan. I will send you allowance each month.”²¹

Not all sibling relationships were amicable, however. A letter from Yang Ruixiong to his wife in 1965 points to the souring of the relationship between him and his younger brother because the former had not sent the latter a monthly allowance since the family property was divided up. As a result, the younger brother threatened to commit suicide.²² 

Reiteration of Values
The remittance letters in the Koh Seow Chuan Collection reflect how value systems relating to education, gender roles and modern lifestyles were reiterated, negotiated and challenged in migrant families during the Cold War.

The education of their sons back home was a frequent concern for migrants in Southeast Asia. Yang Ruixiong asked how his son was doing in school and requested that the latter write a few characters to show him.²³ Lin Zhaolie similarly advised that his son should continue with his studies.²⁴

As for female family members, attitudes were mixed. Xu Mingqin advised his daughter not to go to school, and complained bitterly when she did not heed his advice.²⁵ In contrast, Zheng Buchang was insistent on his sister having an education, as seen in his heartfelt letter in 1950:

“You should not be wasting your time while you are young. You won’t have time for your studies later. Don’t let our parents down. If you have time, write me some letters. You must work hard so you are not left out of society. Please bear this in mind. I am not educated enough, so I have always been oppressed by society, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”²⁶

Emphasis on education and filial piety is similarly evident in Lin Zhaolie’s letter, asking his son to be filial to his grandmother, on top of concentrating on his studies.²⁷ In a letter dated 1954, Xu Mingqin was pleased that his son Huisong showed filial piety by devoting himself to taking care of the family business.²⁸

Migrants continued with the practice of forming kinship-based clans overseas. Yang Ruixiong, who came to Singapore from Shantou, was a founder and volunteer staff at Xian Le Tong Xiang Hui. The association of some 200 members assisted people from the same clan in matters such as marriages and funerals.

Writing home in 1957, Yang emphasised the importance of family harmony: “My younger brother and wife, please work together for the good of the family, and try not to quarrel so much.” Reflecting an attitude typical of male migrants, who put great emphasis on family reputation, Yang also stressed the need for the preservation of “face”, as he now had a new position and status among the association members.²⁹

On a subsequent occasion, Yang wrote to his wife and reminded her to be independent:

“I am in Singapore and have only depended on myself. I have dignity as a man and have not asked for anything from relatives. We are husband and wife, you can ask me for anything. However, if you ask other people, you will lose face. I am teaching you how to conduct yourself, not criticising you, please understand.”³⁰

Negotiation of Values
The Immigration Ordinance No. 5 of 1952, implemented in Singapore on 1 August 1953, allowed overseas family members of local residents to travel to Singapore.³¹ This move challenged the entrenched Confucian tenet of a “male handling affairs outside of the home, females handling those inside it”. A wife was expected to live in her husband’s home and fulfil her duties as a mother and daughter-in-law while the husband provided economic support, seeking opportunities abroad, if necessary. Hence, “wives could not be expected to accompany their husbands overseas if the latter had aged parents left behind”.³²

Thus, even though the new residents were no longer constrained by migration restrictions, they were met with considerable resistance from families back home when asking for their wives to join them in Singapore. The frustration in seeking parental approval was expressed in Liu Shizhao’s remittance letter (Fig. 2):

“Mother, you did not allow my wife to come to Singapore. Ever since I married 10-plus years ago, I have had no children. My wife unfortunately died. I married another woman, but a few months later I had to return to Singapore. My wife is supposed to serve you, and should not come to Singapore. But I am already 30-plus, yet I have no children, I feel really ashamed. Last month, my wife sent me a photograph, and I have applied for an entry number and intend for her to come to Singapore to live with me. I hope, Mother, that you will allow it. One, two years later, we will return home together. It is impossible to return to China right now.”³³

Liu Shizhao’s experience mirrors the plight of many migrants who toiled in Southeast Asia, torn between being a filial but lonely son and a loving but guilt-ridden husband – a dilemma brought into painfully sharp focus by the new migration policy.

Challenging Traditional Values
Living overseas and being exposed to new cultural practices caused some migrants to challenge certain practices back home. Previously confined to the customs and mores of their kinsmen and their home community, the migrants now interacted with people from other regions in China and even foreigners of other races in Singapore, each with their own cultural practices, traditions, beliefs and values.

In a letter to his wife in 1965, Yang Ruixiong rebuked her for wanting to give up their son for adoption (likely to a childless relative):

“Singapore has not had such practices for a long time. Please do not think of such things again. The Chinese Communist Party has brainwashed the people in China these 10-plus years.”³⁴

This cultural practice, called guofang (过房), entailed “the adoption of sons in homeland conditions, embodying the classical notion of a boy being passed from one agnatic line to another within the same lineage”.³⁵

Material Circulation
Remittance letters also recorded the movement of goods between China and Southeast Asia. There was some transfer of luxury goods such as woollen sweaters, fountain pens, watches, jewellery and jade, but most of the items were daily necessities such as textiles, oils and medicine.

For example, migrants sent medicines and supplements back home, such as medicated oils like Tiger Balm ointment (万金油) and Axe Brand Universal Oil (驱风油). On one occasion in 1965, Yang Ruixiong sent his wife a bag of medication containing a bottle of Weisen-U pills (胃仙一罐).³⁶ Weisen-U, a popular gastrointestinal remedy, was not available in China at the time.

When Liu Shizhao’s wife in Singapore was about to give birth in 1955, he asked his mother to buy three to four boxes of Daniangjin (大娘巾), a pharmacy brand with 300 years of heritage in Chaozhou and famous for its gynaecological pills. In the same letter, he asked his mother to purchase two many-banded kraits, and gave directions for soaking the dried snakes in wine and medicine to prepare a remedy that would dispel wind, among other beneficial health effects.³⁷

Figure 2: Letter from Liu Shizhao to his mother, date and year unknown. All rights reserved, Koh Seow Chuan Collection, National Library Board, Singapore.

A man’s virility was also a matter of great concern, as siring heirs and continuing the family line were held in high regard. Xu Mingqin’s letter in 1954 asked his mother if his friend Zhaochao had produced an heir (世子) and how many grandsons he had.³⁸ On separate occasions, two male migrants requested for the dried penis of a black dog (乌狗性), believed to be efficacious in boosting male sexual potency.³⁹

The circulation of goods reflecting the cultural beliefs of migrants was also evident in Lin Xiquan’s request to Xu Mingqin to bring him an Eight Immortals altar cloth (八仙床裙), an indication of Daoist belief. Lu Mutang also sent back a funeral shroud (福寿衣) for his mother.⁴⁰

The goods that crossed borders also reflected the political, economic and social transformations of the migrants and their family members back in China. For example, a state procurement programme (统购统销) implemented by the Chinese government in 1953 resulted in the shortage of everyday supplies such as cotton, shoes, pots and oil. ⁴¹ Overseas Chinese who returned to China reportedly complained about not having enough cotton for clothes.⁴² As a result, migrants frequently sent home old clothes and textiles, one example being Lu Mutang, who sent back three pieces of cloth in 1953 and some coarse cloth (粗纹布) in 1954.⁴³ Some of the goods circulated were a reflection of China’s Great Leap Forward, the economic and social campaign that the government launched between 1958 and 1962. For example, the national “iron and steel” movement of 1958 saw items such as cooking pots, pans and farming tools being melted in backyard steel furnaces to increase steel production. According to Frank Dikötter, in the summer of 1961, reportedly “140,000 tonnes of farming tools had been thrown into the fires in the model province of Henan” alone.⁴⁴ 

Writing in January 1959 in response to his mother’s request for a sewing machine, Xiaosheng expressed exasperation:

“If I buy you a sewing machine, and it is later offered up to be melted down for steel, wouldn’t that be doing injustice to my hard-earned money? This so-called socialism – the Chinese people in Nanyang are all unhappy with it.”⁴⁵

 One letter dated 4 July 1961 (Fig. 3) records a migrant, Liu Saibi (one of the few letters written by women migrants in the collection), sending back 1,000 grams of fertiliser to Hong Kong.⁴⁶ This fertiliser was to be transferred to the local commune and exchanged for food, which would be collected by Liu’s mother.

Figure 3: Letter from Liu Saibi to her mother, 4 July 1961. All rights reserved, Koh Seow Chuan Collection, National Library Board, Singapore.

The remittance letters in the Koh Seow Chuan Collection demonstrate how family relations were kept alive across long distances. The money sent home was put to use for the family’s benefit, while the accompanying letters reinforced the primacy of familial bonds and responsibilities. Through correspondence over matters such as marriage, child-rearing and religious practices, and through expressions of longing and concern in the letters, relationships between the migrants in Southeast Asia and family members back home were strengthened. Despite the physical divide, these letters helped to keep a sense of culture and tradition alive for migrant sons and daughters in faraway lands.

Notes

Between the mid-1930s and 1960, only four swimming pool complexes in Singapore were open for public use. Jocelyn Lau speaks to people who remember these pools.

The first public swimming complexes in Singapore – the four earliest in operation before 1960 – consistently drew capacity crowds from the time they were opened. In the mid-1930s, the number of bathers (as they were called then) at Mount Emily Swimming Complex reached a peak of 8,000 a month.

It was common to see standing-room-only space in the first swimming pools and, outside the complexes, people queuing patiently under the sun for hours in long, snaking lines. In the 1990s, however, the use of these pools declined sharply as residents moved to new neighbourhoods outside the city centre.

A drawing of the main pool at APS Swim School, managed by the former Olympian Ang Peng Siong. This was the former Farrer Park Swimming Complex until it closed in 2003. Farrer Park was the training ground for several of Singapore’s early swimming champions. Illustration by Favian Ee.

Singaporeans who are old enough to remember these pools continue to feel nostalgic about them and many were sad when they eventually closed. Of the four pools from this “pioneering” period, only Farrer Park Swimming Complex still stands today.

Mount Emily Swimming Complex

Singapore’s very first public swimming pool, Mount Emily Swimming Complex, was also the first public pool to use fresh water instead of seawater. At its peak in the mid-1930s, the pool saw some 8,000 visitors a month. After World War II, the pool underwent major repair works before it was reopened to the public. Mount Emily Swimming Complex was finally closed in 1981 and demolished the following year.

In the late 1880s, two service reservoirs, each with a holding capacity of one million gallons, were constructed on Mount Emily to supply the city with fresh water. One of these reservoirs was converted into a public swimming pool in 1931 when a 3-million-gallon storage reservoir at Fort Canning was opened in 1929. The other tank was used to store water for flushing drains and general cleansing of the town.

Children waiting for their swimming lesson to begin at Mount Emily Swimming Complex – Singapore’s first public pool – in the mid-1970s. The pool was converted from a service reservoir in 1931 and survived for just over five decades until it was closed down for good in 1981. Courtesy of Ng Yong Chiang.

Converting Mount Emily’s former service reservoir into a swimming pool meant reducing its depth from the original 15 feet to a maximum of 8 feet, and grading its floor. Earth was filled in to the required depth and concrete was then poured over it to form the floor. A vertical wall, built around the sloping sides of the tank, was perforated so that the weight of the water could also be supported by the original walls. The swimming pool consisted of a deep section for good swimmers and a shallow portion for beginners.

In the 1930s, the pool water was purified using chlorination, and water samples from the pool were tested weekly. About three years after World War II, before re-opening the pool for public use, the Singapore Municipal Commission installed a filtration system to keep the water clear and continued using chlorination to keep it clean for swimmers.

“I have fond memories of the Mount Emily pool. Between 1966 and 1969, I was a national swimmer and represented both the country and the Ministry of Home Affairs, where I first worked. For the former, our team trained six evenings a week at a private pool. I also trained at Mount Emily with the police swim team during the day, three times a week.

“At the 1967 Southeast Asian Peninsular Games (SEAP) in Bangkok, my team took home two silver medals, one in the 4×200-metre freestyle relay, and the other in the 4×100-metre freestyle relay. Those were the years when Singapore’s first golden girl, Patricia Chan, was winning gold medals in every swimming event she entered in the SEAP Games, so it was great to be a part of the history-making.”

− Chan Kee Cheng, 73, former national swimmer

“When Singapore gained independence, one of the most pressing matters was to build a substantial military force for self defence. The National Service (NS) Amendment Act passed on 14 March 1967 made it compulsory for male citizens to register for NS. Together with the late pool superintendant Lee Hon Ming and a few other instructors, I helped to train about 600 recruits from the Singapore Police Force in lifesaving skills.

“The course consisted of 12 sessions and was held three mornings each week, before the pool was opened for public use at 9am. It culminated in a qualifying test for the Bronze Medallion award from the Royal Life Saving Society UK. In addition to lifesaving training, Mount Emily was also the place where many potential national swimmers were trained for international competitions under the famous national swimming coach Kee Soon Bee.”

− Ong Poh Soon, 73, retired pool manager

Yan Kit Swimming Complex

Named after Look Yan Kit, a wealthy Canton-born dentist, Yan Kit Swimming Complex was originally a water tank built on an old railway site off Cantonment Road. Popular in the 1950s and 60s, the complex was closed in 2001 and the pools levelled over.

Floodlights were first introduced at Yan Kit Swimming Complex in 1954 to see if night-time swimming would prove popular – and it did. Entrance fees when the pool first opened cost 15 cents and users were restricted to a two-hour limit due to its popularity. Illustration by Favian Ee.

Today, the site is being redeveloped as a community sports facility, which will include a multi-purpose playing court, a children’s playground and fitness zones.

“The Yan Kit Swimming Complex, tucked away in a leafy fold in the foothills of Tanjong Pagar, was the nicest and most unusual swimming pool I have ever swum in. It started life in the pre-war era as a water filtration tank for the municipal water supply, but was reconstituted, postwar, as a public swimming pool.

“Architecturally, it was a superb piece of tropical Art Deco, all curved walls and portholes, flat roofs and ship’s railings, situated halfway between an ocean liner and a machine-gun emplacement. In England it would have been called The Lido. At one end there was a pavilion with a charming ‘marine mural’, featuring jellyfish and octopuses, while at the other end there were Deco-style diving boards, free-standing sculptures in reinforced concrete, looking for all the world like the rib-cage of a whale.

“When it opened in the early 1950s, the Yan Kit pool was so popular that crowd controls had to be imposed, with a two-hour limit for each swimmer, and even then it was standing-room only. I used to go there for a lunchtime swim in the 1990s, when it was an all-but-forgotten oasis of calm and tranquillity, just a stone’s throw from the city. The pool attendants had the cushiest job ever, which is perhaps why they were also the friendliest of people, who used to amuse themselves by raising goldfish and water lilies in the footbaths.”

− Dr Julian Davison, architectural historian

A panoramic view of the main pool at Yan Kit Swimming Complex, which opened in 1952 after an old water tank was renovated and converted into a swimming pool. Singapore’s second public pool was named after Look Yan Kit, a wealthy Canton-born dentist. The three springboards at the far end had heights of 1, 3 and 5 metres. Courtesy of Julian Davison.

Farrer Park Swimming Complex

The Farrer Park Swimming Complex was part of the Farrer Park Athletic Centre, which is significant for its association with high-profile regional sporting events in the 1960s and 70s, including the Southeast Asian Peninsular (SEAP) Games and Pesta Sukan. Closed in 2003, the complex is now managed privately by the APS Swim School, founded in 1995 by former Olympian Ang Peng Siong.

It was at this pool that the legendary coach Ang Teck Bee groomed his son Ang Peng Siong into one of the country’s best swimmers. The latter bagged 20 gold medals in eight Southeast Asian Games and was the record holder of the fastest 50-metre freestyle time in Asia between 1982 and 1996.

“As a schoolgirl, I loved going to the swimming pool. The moment I got home from school, I’d drop my bag and then rush out again to Farrer Park to join my friends. I enjoyed stretching out my arms in front of me and doing simple flutter kicks. It was very relaxing. At one point, I went so often that my mum complained to my dad about it, and then he forbade me to go. I disobeyed, so I got into very big trouble when I finally went home again that evening! I dearly miss those carefree days.”

− Nellie Lee, 71, retired technician

“In the late 1960s, there were only a few public pools, so it was not surprising to find each one filled to, or beyond, capacity. In those days, one could hardly actually swim, as the pools were just too crowded.

A long queue snaking outside Farrer Park Swimming Complex in the 1960s. The pool would become so crowded that on weekends, there was hardly space to swim a decent lap. Push-cart hawkers peddling food and drinks made a roaring business from users waiting to get in. Courtesy of SportSG.

“When I was about 10, I visited Farrer Park on weekends with my father and some neighbours. We usually had to queue for one or two hours, and even then we might not be allowed entry. Sometimes, we’d see people scaling the walls to try to get in, even though there were glass bits embedded in the tops of the walls. Some of them were caught, and the lifeguards would walk the culprits around the pool before sending them out. In those days, it was also common to lose one’s belongings, and a friend once lost even his clothes. Fortunately, my father was able to give him a ride home in his car!”

− Donald Goh, 59, pharmaceutical executive

Students from Dorset School taking the leap at Farrer Park Swimming Complex in 1971. The pool complex opened in 1957 as part of Farrer Park Athletic Centre, which hosted regional sporting events such as the Southeast Asian Peninsular Games and Pesta Sukan in the 1960s and 70s. Dorset School Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

River Valley Swimming Complex

Located at the former King George V Park, the River Valley Swimming Complex was designed by M.E. Crocker, the same British architect for Farrer Park. The swimming pool was extremely popular until the 1970s, when new estates were built away from the city centre and visitorship dwindled. It eventually closed in 2003. The site, renamed The Foothills Fort Canning Park, is currently home to art spaces and cafes.

“The foot of the southern slope of the ‘forbidden hill’ – Fort Canning Hill – seemed an unlikely location for a public swimming pool, even back in the 1970s when I first used it for physical education (PE) lessons. Getting to the River Valley pool from my secondary school, St Joseph’s Institution on Bras Basah Road, was always an adventure: the long walk required the better part of a double period (about an hour-long) PE lesson. However, we looked forward to it not just as an escape from classroom boredom, but also for the reward that came at the end of it: a dip in the pool. During the walks, we often chanced upon clandestine acts taking place in quiet corners and we found fun in making catcalls at the couples.

“There was a diving platform at one end of the deep pool, and a smaller pool at the far end. The changing rooms were located on a terraced upslope. The exit from the pool was through an old turnstile typical of the older pools. Other than our class of boys, there would hardly be a soul on the premises, especially in mid-afternoon… It was with more than a tinge of sadness that I read about the demolishment of not only the pool complex, but also the adjacent landmarks of my teenage years – the National Theatre in 1986 and Van Kleef Aquarium in 1998.”

− Jerome Lim, 52, naval architect

“I worked at River Valley in the years when Singapore was still a part of Malaysia. The father of the late Lee Kuan Yew used to come to the pool in the evenings, alone, to swim. He didn’t tell anyone he was the prime minister’s father. Some people said he would park his car in front of the Beach Road police station and walk to the pool. Sometimes, after my late colleague Lee Sim Cheng and I closed the pool for the day, we would accompany the senior Mr Lee to have supper at the famous Hong Lim open-air hawker centre nearby, next to the old Tongji hospital. Those were the good old days… When Singapore became independent, I was transferred to Mount Emily Swimming Complex to help train recruits from the Singapore Police Force in lifesaving skills.”

− Ong Poh Soon, 73, retired pool manager

“My mother told me that her dad used to take her to the River Valley pool when she was small. My mother wanted to learn how to swim, but her father told her to watch the other children. My mother said she was really afraid that the crocodiles from the [Van Kleef] aquarium next door would escape and enter the pool. After my mother’s brother was born, my grandfather took him to swim too. One time, Mingming Jiujiu [uncle] walked, walked and walked down the pool steps and did not stop even when his head went underwater, and my grandfather had to pull him out.”

− Giam Kia Woon, 7, student

The swimming pool at River Valley Swimming Complex in 1963. In the first few weeks of the pool’s opening in 1959, it was reported that “tens of thousands of children” visited. The pool was extremely popular until the 1970s, when new estates were built away from the city centre and visitorship dwindled. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

This is an extract from Great Lengths: Singapore’s Swimming Pools (2017) published by Kucinta Books. It retails for S$28 at major bookshops and is also available for reference and loan at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library and selected public libraries (Call nos.: RSING 797.20095957 GRE and SING 797.20095957 GRE).

From cooking, cleaning and becoming a good mother to outsourcing housework as careers for women took off. Sheere Ng charts how home economics lessons have evolved over the years.

Someone once asked me, “What did you learn to cook at home economics classes?”

In reply I proudly rattled off: fried rice with hotdog cubes, minced chicken on egg tofu, and spaghetti with sauce made with tomato ketchup. Imagine my embarrassment when a fellow (and older) food writer said that she had learned to make meat pies, mee siam and all sorts of kueh-kueh.

How did a 13-year-old get to make all these complex adult dishes at school while I was entrusted to cook with only processed and ready-to-eat ingredients? One crucial factor set us apart: time, or rather different periods of time.

I studied home economics in 1999, while she took the course back in the 1970s when it was known as domestic science, a name that was eventually replaced because it suggested a narrow focus on nutrition and sanitation.

Between the 1930s and 1997, home economics was taught in Singapore schools to train girls to be good homemakers. Depending on the era and the nation’s immediate needs, a “good homemaker” could mean different things – as defined by the prevailing syllabus set by the education authorities.

In the 1970s, for instance, being a good homemaker meant having the skills to just cook and clean. In the 1980s, it expanded to include being a good mother and raising a child. Then, in the 1990s, as more women joined the workforce, good homemakers became prudent consumers of outsourced and commercialised housework.

A sewing class in progress at one of the convent schools, c.1950s. Diana Koh Collection,
courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

In “studying” home economics a second time around as research for this essay – reviewing textbooks, minister speeches, newspaper reports and oral histories – what became apparent was not just changes in cookery styles and ingredients over the years, but also official definitions of the “ideal” Singaporean woman.

Pre-independence: The Purpose of Home Economics
Home economics began in the United States in the late 19th century as domestic science. It was part of a larger movement to modernise the American diet through scientific cookery. The early champions of domestic science could be categorised into two camps: those who wanted to give women access to careers that had traditionally been dominated by men, and those who wanted to upgrade women’s status within its traditional realm by recasting domestic work as rational and efficient, and based on science and technology.¹ Singapore clearly belonged in the latter category.

Domestic science, as it was referred to here before 1970, was first taught in English and mission girls’ schools in colonial Singapore. Students learnt practical domestic tasks such as laundry and needlework as well as European and Asian cookery. There was no standardised textbook, as Marie Ethel Bong, a former Katong Convent student remembered. Instead, the girls learnt the general principles of cookery from a foreign cookbook, and then copied the recipes from a blackboard before watching the nuns demonstrate them.²

Although many of the girls came from well-to-do families with servants, schools still insisted that their female students pick up domestic skills. “Even if you had servants at home, they felt that you should know how to do it yourself before you could instruct your amah in those days”, recalled Bong, who later became the principal of Katong Convent.³

There was no indication that the subject was taught to help the girls prepare for employment. Some, like the principal of CEZMS School, managed by the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (renamed St Margaret’s Secondary School in 1949), even considered domestic science a non-academic subject. She said to the press in 1949, “Domestic science is perhaps more important than academic work where girls are concerned.”⁴

The opportunity to pursue a career in domestic science came from overseas in the 1950s. The United Kingdom and Australia offered overseas teaching scholarships to girls in Singapore, with the recipients returning just when government schools were allocating special rooms to teach domestic science.⁵ Ironically, these women professionals would play a role in furthering the government’s home economics agenda that sought to confine women to their traditional roles.

1970s: Training Girls to Cook, Clean – and Saw
The government began to see the value of home economics when women started to work outside the home. Singapore had been attracting foreign investments for labour-intensive industries since the 1960s. By 1970, the government had created more blue-collar jobs than men alone could fill, so it encouraged women to take up careers in traditionally male-dominated fields.⁶

Women working in the factory of Roxy Electric Company at Tanglin Halt, 1966. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The call for women to contribute to the nation’s industrialisation was a success – between 1957 and 1980, the number of women in the manufacturing sector increased nearly 10 times⁷ – but it created a dilemma: working mothers were not passing on homemaking skills to their daughters who, upon reaching adulthood, were more likely to work than stay at home. Girls in traditional households had been taught how to cook and clean by their mothers, but the rise of working women meant that this transfer of homemaking skills was interrupted. The government saw this as a threat to the stability of the family unit – the basic building block of society.

The solution was to let home economics pick up where mothers had left off. Since 1968, the subject had been compulsory for secondary school girls, reinforcing the domestic role of women in society. But when blue-collar jobs became abundant with few takers, the Ministry of Education exhorted girls to pursue technical studies such as woodwork and metalwork so that they could pursue work that men did. The contradiction in these messages was stark: girls were told their place was in the home, but they were also required in the workforce.⁸

Despite the economic reality, the government still held archaic views of women’s roles. This is evident in the speeches of several ministers who espoused traditional gender roles during what was probably a very confusing time for Singaporean girls.

Speaking at a home economics exhibition in 1970, Minister for Education Ong Pang Boon made it very clear that homemaking was the responsibility of women:

“Home economics today cover a large and vital field. Our girls are taught to cook appetising, economical and well-balanced meals, to make clothes suitable for every occasion, to manage the home, and to look after the welfare of the family generally. These are skills which every girl should acquire. In the old days, they would have been taught by mother at home, but with the increasing tempo of urbanisation and industrialisation in Singapore, this basic training is often neglected at home.”⁹

Home economics has been compulsory for secondary school girls since 1968. But when blue-collar jobs became abundant with few takers, the education ministry exhorted girls to pursue technical studies such as woodwork and metalwork so that they could pursue the same jobs as men. This 1986 photo shows a class of girls at a woodwork lesson at Dunearn Secondary School. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Rahim Ishak did not single girls out explicitly, but left no doubt that the government believed that home economics was good for Singapore because “happy homes make a happy nation”. Against the backdrop of Singapore’s rising cost of living, he said that knowing how to cook, clothe and live well cheaply was essential. Speaking at the opening of a home economics facility at Anglican High School in 1973, he said, “… the introduction of home economics in school is vital if our future generations are going to run their homes properly.”¹⁰

Despite the emphasis on home economics, the government reversed its policy in 1977. To help students cope with the transition from primary to secondary school, the number of class periods in Secondary One was reduced. With less time to teach both home economics and technical studies, but still believing their relevance to girls, the government allowed female students to choose either subject, rather than study both. Throughout these changes, male students were trained only in technical studies.¹¹

However, home economics grew to be unpopular among girls because it became associated with the less academically inclined. In the 1970s and 80s, primary school pupils who consistently failed their exams from Primary One to Three were transferred to the “monolingual stream” for slow learners where they would later study home economics or technical studies before moving into vocational training.¹² Meanwhile, elite schools like Chinese High School and Nanyang High School removed the subject from their curriculum to make way for art lessons.¹³ These led some to believe that home economics was not for the intelligent, and that people who became homemakers were “dullards”.¹⁴

Member of Parliament for Jalan Kayu Hwang Soo Jin (front) viewing a home economics cookery class during the official opening of Hwi Yoh Secondary School in 1969. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

In 1983, Minister for Education Tay Eng Soon revealed that only half of the girls in lower secondary classes studied home economics, and only 12 percent took it as an ‘O’ Level subject.¹⁵ Alarmed by the sharp drop, the ministry would again make home economics a compulsory subject for all girls in 1987.¹⁶

1980s: Homemakers are Mothers Too
Meanwhile, the hugely successful post-independence government policy of slowing down population growth by advocating two-children families gave way to the much maligned Graduate Mothers’ Scheme in 1984. The scheme essentially dangled tax benefits to encourage mothers with university degrees to have more children.¹⁷

This move stemmed from two pressing national issues of the day. First, population growth rates had slowed down over the years, and realisation set in that declining birth rates would have a severe impact on labour supply and, ultimately, economic growth. Second, there was a high ratio of unmarried graduate women in the population. Census figures in 1980 showed that two-thirds of graduate women were unmarried because men preferred less-educated wives. Graduate women were also having fewer children compared with their less educated counterparts due to changing aspirations and lifestyles.¹⁸

Then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew held the eugenicist view that smarter women were more likely to have intelligent children. Fearing that the lower birth rates among educated women would shrink the nation’s talent pool, he introduced the Graduate Mother’s Scheme to entice better-educated women to procreate, but not before he lectured Singaporeans at the 1983 National Day Rally. In typically forthright fashion he said:

“If you don’t include your women graduates in your breeding pool and leave them on the shelf, you would end up a more stupid society… So what happens? There will be less bright people to support dumb people in the next generation. That’s a problem.”¹⁹

To the dismay of women’s rights advocates, traditional views of the man as the head of the household and women’s role as wives and mothers were reinforced by the government. Speaking at the 50th anniversary of St Nicholas Girls School in 1983, Minister for Education Tay Eng Soon said:

“I want now to speak on a subject which is overlooked because of our emphasis on academic excellence. This is particularly pertinent to a girls’ school. I refer to the fact that most of your students will one day marry and become mothers regardless of their academic achievements or career. This is their natural and proper role in life.”²⁰

The following year, the ministry announced that home economics would become a compulsory core subject by 1987 for all girls in lower secondary classes. They would not be able to opt out or elect to study a technical course. A revised syllabus would also be introduced to help girls see “the importance of nurturing and strengthening a family” and to “enable them to have a sensible outlook on social and national problems”, according to one newspaper report.²¹

Home economics textbooks had all the while focused on cleaning, cooking and sewing. But this changed with the introduction of the 1987 Home Economics Today textbook for Secondary Two students, which pared down these topics to make way for nine chapters on child-rearing – significantly more than an earlier textbook that taught “mothercraft” in just nine pages.²²

The syllabus corresponded with the government’s agenda for women to be mothers. It was clear that apart from being a source of much needed talent, women were also encouraged to produce more children to augment the talent pool.

To prepare the students for motherhood, the 1987 textbook taught everything from breastfeeding to how to deal with childhood ailments, and was more comprehensive in content than a typical handbook for expectant mothers. This was a huge difference from previous home economics textbooks that advocated family planning between the 1970s and mid-1980s when there was a national effort to keep a lid on a population boom that was threatening to overwhelm public infrastructure.²³ Naturally, the new home economics policy did not sit well with women’s rights advocates who charged that it was sexist and unfavourable towards girls who had career plans.

Why Only Women Homemakers?
Voices of opposition rippled in the press. Many were upset that the new home economics policy was saddling girls with homemaking responsibilities. Instead of excusing boys from learning how to do household chores or raising a child, schools should be re-educating the young “to look upon marriage and homemaking and childcare as a shared responsibility”, wrote Lena Lim, founding president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE).²⁴

Re-education could mean offering home economics to anyone interested regardless of gender, proposed a forum writer in The Straits Times, so that girls who wanted to pursue other interests could opt out, as should unwilling boys if they would only become grudging helpers at home.²⁵ Whichever form re-education might take, the dissenters agreed that young people must be persuaded to accept a change in gender roles. If Singapore was serious about alleviating the unmarried graduate women problem, it had to “take a fresh view of marriage and the ideal wife” wrote Singapore Monitor editor Margaret Thomas in September 1984.²⁶

In 1984, the government announced that home economics would become a compulsory subject by 1987 for all girls in lower secondary. Although the government supported the idea of boys learning home economics, there were insufficient teachers; boys were therefore encouraged to learn home economics at extra-curricular clubs in schools. The Straits Times, 27 November 1984, p. 1.

The following month, some 428 people, including engineers, lawyers, and teachers signed a petition to urge the education ministry to rethink the policy of making home economics compulsory for girls. The petition argued that it would deny girls the chance to study technical subjects in secondary school, and eventually hamper their chances of enrolling for technical courses in polytechnics.²⁷

Although the government would not be persuaded, and all girls would go on to study home economics in lower secondary from 1987 onwards, there appeared to be some effort to present a fairer distribution of housework in at least two of the textbooks under the new syllabus.

In the 1986 Home Economics Today for Secondary One students, one chapter titled “Happy Family Life” showed a picture of a father preparing food in the kitchen with his family, and accompanying text that read, “If members of a family help one another to get the work done, the home will certainly be a happier place to live.”²⁸

This was a stark difference from New Home Economics, a 1983 textbook that portrayed only women cleaning or cooking, completely leaving out their husbands from the responsibility of homemaking.

An illustration of a woman washing up in the kitchen in a 1983 textbook was indicative of societal norms at the time – the books seldom featured men doing housework. All rights reserved, Hamidah Khalid & Siti Majhar. (Eds.). (1983). New Home Economics (Book 1) (p. 29) Singapore: Longman Singapore. (Call no.: RSING 640.7 NEW)

However, this attempt to present a fairer distribution of housework should not be seen as a sign that the government was serious in tackling gender inequality. After all, the home economics textbooks had an insignificant male audience and were unlikely to persuade many future husbands to chip in at home.

Although the education ministry said that boys would learn home economics when there were adequate teaching resources, this would not happen until 1997 – more than 10 years after it was first announced.²⁹

What was far more effective in giving women respite from the chores of homemaking, and perhaps even salvaging some marriages, was the advent of modern home appliances. The sale of rice cookers, microwave ovens and washing machines took off and became increasingly affordable for the new dual-income households. Home economic textbooks in the late 1980s also began to explain the use of electrical appliances. Some of them were as basic as an oven toaster, suggesting their novelty at the time.³⁰

Working women became enthused by these “electric servants”, and home economics teachers began attending workshops that demonstrated the use of home appliances. Teachers also started exploring the use of factory-processed frozen, canned and bottled foods during home economic classes, and waxed lyrical about their visits to Sunshine Bakery and Kikkoman soya sauce factory in the Home Economics Teachers’ Association (HETA) quarterly.³¹ Their readiness to embrace labour-saving products foreshadowed yet another syllabus revamp in the coming decade.

Post-1990s: From Home Producers to Consumers
Home economics textbooks in the late 1990s conveyed a different notion of homemaking. Not only were cooking and sewing simplified, but the childcare chapters that had been added in 1987 to prepare girls for motherhood were also removed. These changes were introduced after home economics became a compulsory subject for both boys and girls in 1997, and the syllabus was tweaked to complement the new policy.³² What brought about this sea change 10 years later?

Unlike earlier home economics textbooks that seldom showed men playing a part in household chores, a textbook from the 1987 syllabus showed a father bathing his baby. All rights reserved, Viswalingam, P. (1987). Home Economics Today 2E (p. 24) Singapore: Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore. (Call no.: YR 640.76 HOM)

Since the 1980s, housework was becoming increasingly commercialised and commoditised, available for purchase as products or services. More families were eating out instead of cooking, shopping for clothes rather than sewing them, and buying washing machines to do their laundry. By the time home economics was offered to both boys and girls in 1997, the definitions of homemaking had changed. Wives (and husbands) were not expected to be skilful homemakers like their mothers were, since they could just “buy their way” out of household chores.

The 1997 edition of Home Economics Today acknowledged these modern trends as it discussed the options of eating out and convenience foods, and teaching students how to feed themselves without having to actually cook their own meals. It also explained clothing care labels and advertising techniques, instead of the finer points of fabric weaves and brooms.³³ Compared with its predecessors, the 1997 textbook showed a more balanced portrayal of male and female in relation to domestic work, likely in deference to Singapore’s pledge at the 1995 United Nations World Conference on Women to not gender-type roles in school instructional materials.³⁴

Home economics textbooks published in the 1980s tried to correct traditional gender roles by including images of families spending time together cooking and eating. All rights reserved, Viswalingam, P. (1986). Home Economics Today 1E (p. 14) Singapore: Curriculum Development Institute of Singapore. (Call no.: YR 640.76 HOM)

Another new development was the proliferation of foreign domestic workers. The government first introduced foreign maids as a childcare solution in the 1970s so that mothers would go to work, but the move gathered steam only from the 1990s. The 1987 Home Economics Today textbook included advice for working parents on using the services of childcare centres, caregivers – and maids. The last option proved to be so popular that the number of foreign domestic workers in Singapore ballooned from just 5,000 in 1978 to 100,000 in 1997.³⁵

This transfer of caregiver roles from mothers to others, and the transformation from household production to consumption, rendered many homemaking instructions from the old syllabus excessive and even irrelevant for 21st-century families. Taking the cue from new consumer lifestyles, home economics was renamed Food and Consumer Education in 2014 (while still remaining a compulsory subject for boys and girls in lower secondary), with its syllabus focusing mainly on good consumer decisions and money management.

I am a product of the 1997 syllabus, designed with the expectation that I could one day opt out of gender-typed work as my mother did, and outsource homemaking to processed foods, appliances or to other women with lesser means. Indeed, I never pursued cooking outside the classroom as our Filipino helper at home knew better than to add tomato ketchup to spaghetti.

It was only as an adult that I re-acquainted myself with the kitchen when food took on an important dimension in my work and at home. I had only been as “ideal” as the government’s recipe for a Singaporean woman until I created my own.

In the 1990s, home economics textbooks took into consideration busy lifestyles by offering tips on how to use modern convenience foods in home-cooked dishes and suggested dining out occasionally. All rights reserved, Chong, E.S.H., et al. (1997). Home Economics Today Secondary 2 (p. 19) Singapore: Curriculum Planning & Development Division, Ministry of Education. (Call no.: RSING 640.76 HOM)

Notes

Postage stamps are more than little squares of paper to be stuck on envelopes. Justin Zhuang discovers how stamps have helped forge Singapore’s identity over the past five decades.

There was precious little to celebrate when the Singapore Stamp Club commemorated 100 years of postage stamps in 1967. The accompanying exhibition booklet was very blunt in describing the dismal state of Singapore’s philatelic scene:

“Against the increasing tendency of practically every other country in the world to issue more and more commemorative stamps each year, the conservative policy of Singapore must be almost without an equal.”¹

Between self-government in 1959 and merger with Malaysia in 1963, and independence in 1965, Singapore issued only eight commemorative stamp series to mark these historic occasions. Unlike definitive stamps that are meant for everyday use, commemorative stamps are issued to record national milestones and showcase Singapore’s culture, customs and identity to the world. This was a lost opportunity according to the booklet: “What other country can claim to have issued a total of only 21 commemorative stamps in the past 8 years!”²

The paucity of such stamps was not the only issue plaguing the Singapore stamp scene at the time. Almost a year after the exhibition at the National Library at Stamford Road, then Minister for Communications Yong Nyuk Lin noted that local stamps were generally “dull” and suffered from “disappointingly low” sales.

To fix the situation, the government set up the Stamp Advisory Committee (SAC) in 1968. “This situation certainly calls for immediate remedial action and in line with present Government policy of increasing productivity and to raise additional revenue, wherever possible,” said Minister Yong at the inaugural meeting of the SAC, adding, “… there is no reason why we cannot use more imagination and drive in the creation of attractive designs for our postage stamps…”³

Two stamp series issued in 1969 under a “new liberal policy”, following the formation of the Stamp Advisory Committee in 1968: “25th Plenary Session of ECAFE” by graphic artist Eng Siak Loy (left) and “10,000 Homes for the People” by Tay Siew Chiah (right). Courtesy of Singapore Philatelic Museum.

This “new liberal policy”⁴ marked a turning point in the history of Singapore stamps. Over the next 50 years, stamps evolved from being mere accessories of a young state to a revenue-generating platform that spoke of the achievements of the nation to its people and the world.

Raising Standards and Revenue
As one of SAC’s primary tasks was to attract more people to buy local stamps, it became less concerned with artistic considerations than the previous committee, which had been set up after Singapore became self-governing in 1959.⁵ Reflecting the state’s greater interest in stamps and a market-oriented outlook, the nine-man SAC was staffed with five civil servants from the ministries for culture and communications, three philatelists and one arts lecturer.⁶ The committee advised the minister for communications on philatelic policy, including stamp themes, designs and ways to increase sales locally and abroad. The committee also proposed ways to grow interest in philately, particularly among young Singaporeans.

First-day cover of “150th Anniversary Founding of Singapore” addressed to then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew dated 9 August 1969. The stamps were designed by Eng Siak Loy and Han Kuan Cheng. Courtesy of Singapore Philatelic Museum.

One of SAC’s earliest initiatives was to triple Singapore’s commemorative stamp issues. From an average of just one a year, the country issued three stamp series in 1969: to mark the 25th Plenary Session of Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East (ECAFE) held in Singapore; the completion of 100,000 homes by the Housing and Development Board; and the 150th anniversary of the founding of Singapore. These stamps scored several firsts for local postal history.

The ECAFE issue of three stamps designed by local graphic artist Eng Siak Loy were the first square-shaped ones, each depicting the organisation’s emblem in red, blue and purple backgrounds respectively to denote different face values.

The 150th anniversary of the founding of Singapore series in 1969 was the first time that stamps were issued in 12-by-12 centimetre miniature sheets, and featured different designs for each of the six values. To commemorate the milestones in Singapore’s modern history, Eng and Han Kuan Cheng, who were colleagues at Radio Television Singapura, used a semi-abstract graphic style to depict the country’s industrialisation (15 cents), entry into the United Nations (30 cents), merger with Malaysia (75 cents), self-government in 1959 ($1), the Japanese Occupation ($5) and the landing of Sir Stamford Raffles ($10).

Despite the stamps’ high face value – a total of $17.20 compared with just under a dollar for previous issues − these first-day covers were reportedly sold out within the first two hours.⁷ By the 1980s, a first-day cover⁸ of this series was worth around $700. Today, the price for a mint condition cover and accompanying miniature sheet is $900, according to the Singapore Postage Stamp Catalogue.⁹

The successful sales of the 1969 commemorative stamps led the SAC to increase the number of new issues the following year to five, a figure that has steadily increased over the decades along with sales. Only four years after the policy shift, revenue from Singapore stamp sales jumped by tenfold to a million dollars.¹⁰

Realising the lucrative income to be reaped from sales of commemorative stamps, the government issued an average of six stamp series a year in the mid-1970s, then increased it to eight by the mid-90s. Today, some 10 to 12 stamp issues are released a year.¹¹ 

How Stamps Tell a Story
As Singapore liberalised the issue of commemorative stamps, the production process too became less arbitrary under the SAC. In the past, public competitions were organised to determine stamp designs, but the outcomes were not always desirable. For instance, while some 115 submissions were received in the 1962 National Day competition for commemorative stamps – eventually won by Kuala Lumpur resident Loo Shen Yuen – a dearth of entries almost held up the earlier competition in 1959 to design stamps marking Singapore’s attainment of self-governance.¹² Eventually, the situation was resolved by Raffles Museum director (and Stamp Design Committee member) Dr Carl Alexander Gibson-Hill, who suggested using the “Singha”, the gold lion symbol of Singapore’s first settlement in the 13th century.¹³

Within the SAC, all decisions regarding stamp themes and designs were made by a group of individuals selected by the government. The committee was guided by an annual circular sent to various ministries to solicit for ideas. A selection of themes would then be put forward to the minister for communications to approve, after which two to three graphic artists would be invited to submit proposals for the competition.

This rigorous process reflected the increasing importance of stamps as a means of representing the nation on the global stage. As the first SAC chairman, Phua Bah Lee, noted in 1978:

“In a world where communications play an important role in forging links between nations…, the postage stamp as a medium of communication has assumed increasing importance today. From a humble origin as a means of enabling the postal services to collect postage, stamps have become a powerful means of communicating an idea or of projecting a country’s national image overseas.”¹⁴

And the image that Singapore wanted to project to the world during the early nation-building decades was its effort to industrialise the economy, modernise the city and mould its people.

Thus, stamps were issued to mark the anniversaries of government agencies such as the People’s Association (1970) and the Economic and Development Board (1986) as well as the 10^th anniversary of the national shipping company, Neptune Orient Lines (1978), and the completion of Changi Airport (1981). There were also stamp issues that coincided with national campaigns to raise quality in industrial production (1973), convert from the imperial to the metric system (1979) and increase productivity (1982).

“Satellite Earth Station” (1971) stamps by graphic designer William Lee to commemorate the launch of Singapore’s first satellite earth station. Lee superimposed a drawing of a satellite dish over a block of four conjoined 30-cent stamps, creating Singapore’s first se-tenant series. Courtesy of Singapore Philatelic Museum.

One series that reflected the progressive spirit of the times was the 1975 “Science and Industry” set of three stamps by art lecturer and graphic artist Sim Tong Khern. Sim departed from the traditional hand-illustrated stamps of the time by manipulating photographs of an oil refinery, a medical surgery and the two satellite earth stations in Sentosa to create a technicolour depiction of Singapore’s industrialisation efforts.

Besides such nationalistic stamps, there were also designs that spoke of Singapore’s place in the world. The 1971 stamp series commemorating the launch of Singapore’s first satellite earth station made a grand statement of how the country could now communicate with two-thirds of the world. Graphic designer William Lee superimposed a drawing of a satellite dish over a block of four conjoined 30-cent stamps, creating Singapore’s first se-tenant series. Much less dramatic in design were stamps commemorating international and regional events such as International Women’s Year (1975), the 75th anniversary of the world scout movement (1982) and the 20th anniversary of ASEAN (1987).

“Tourism Low Value Definitives” (1990) by graphic designer Ng Keng Seng. The stamps reflect an increasingly outward-looking Singpore. Courtesy of Singapore Philatelic Museum.

In the 1990s, stamp issues kept pace with an increasingly outward-looking Singapore. This took the form of more tourist-centric issues, first seen in the 1990 “Tourism” definitive stamps designed by graphic designers Ng Keng Seng and Lim Ching San. Their stamps depicting Singapore landmarks and its four ethnic groups were followed by other series on national monuments, costumes, art, architectural heritage and museums as well as stamps featuring local flora and fauna such as birds, butterflies, marine life, corals, and orchids, including the national flower Vanda Miss Joaquim.

This new and softer image of Singapore replaced the practice of trumpeting the achievements of the nation. Stamp issues became less overt. For instance, the 2010 “Anniversary” series bundled together the milestones of the Housing and Development Board, People’s Association, Singapore Customs and Singapore Scout Association.

One exception, however, is the military, which has consistently had a series or two in every decade, starting with the 1970 “National Servicemen” series designed by art lecturer Choy Weng Yang. His stamps depicting various silhouettes of soldiers defending Singapore in strikingly aggressive poses has evolved over the years to showcase the country’s latest military weapons and technology – sending a message perhaps that Singapore, although small, is not to be messed with.

The receding of the state in stamp imagery also mirrored the softening of top-down rule. Newly installed Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong mapped out a vision of the government serving as facilitator and giving the private sector more room to shape the country. This is best summed up in the “Singapore, A Global City” three-part series released between 2002 and 2004, which commemorated Singapore’s hosting of the World Stamp Championship and the 150th anniversary since stamps were first used here. Created by local design studio Design Objectives, the series showcased industrial products and landmarks, and were released as miniature sheets complete with images of 15 global companies such as Creative Technology, McDonald’s and Shell. 

A Canvas for Singapore Designers
Beyond showcasing Singapore to the world, stamps also provided a canvas for the creative output of Singaporean artists and designers. Although this was not explicitly stated as a goal, Singapore’s most prolific stamp designer Eng Siak Loy remembers how SAC committee member Choy created this opportunity.

“In the past, stamps were not designed by artists but advertising agencies. But the standards were not great, so Choy suggested stamps should be designed by local artists and recommended me,” he recalled.¹⁵ Eng submitted his very first stamp designs for the ECAFE theme, and has since designed over 50 stamps − roughly 14 per cent of Singapore’s philatelic output − all the while working as a graphic artist at Radio Television Singapura, Housing and Development Board and National Parks Board, before retiring in 2010.¹⁶

Today, Eng continues to be a prolific designer of stamps, adding to the output of his closest competitors, Chua Ban Har and Leo Teck Chong, both of whom started designing stamps in the 1980s. Stamp design has even become a family tradition with Eng’s son, Tze Ngan (also known as Weng Ziyan), designing several series, including the 2015 “Singapore: 50 Years of Independence (1965–2015)” set.¹⁷

Graphic and stamp designer William Lee at work at his River Valley flat-cum-studio in 1971. Source: The Straits Times © Singapore Press Holdings Limited. Permission required for reproduction.

Another graphic designer who made his name with stamps is William Lee. He rose to fame when his 1971 “Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting” stamps − only the second series he had ever worked on then – was included in the world’s leading philatelic publication, Gibbons Stamp Monthly.¹⁸ Lee used his stamps as a springboard to grow his creative agency Central Design. He went on to design 15 more stamp sets until 1986, and built a reputation as Singapore’s leading graphic designer. He has designed logos for government agencies and local corporations, including Post Office Savings Bank, Singapore Armed Forces Reservists’ Association (SAFRA), Shangri-La Hotel and the Citizen Consultative Committee − all of which still remain in use.¹⁹

Commemorative to Commercial
Despite the changing face of Singapore stamps over the last five decades, SAC’s criteria for themes and designs has largely remained the same since it was first drawn up in 1968. Today, a theme qualifies to be issued if it fits any one of six criteria identified by the committee.²⁰ This includes the commemoration of a national achievement, a local pioneer, and the 25th, 75th, 100th, 150th or 200th anniversary of a public organisation; depiction of unique lifestyles and values; recognition of regional and global events of importance to Singapore; and stamp themes that spark interest among children. Apart from this, SAC also considers if stamp themes and designs are sensitive to Singapore’s multicultural society and appeals to stamp collectors and the public.

“Singapore Festivals” (1971) by graphic designer William Lee. The stamps, which depicted children celebrating Chinese New Year, Hari Raya Puasa, Deepavali and Christmas, were criticised for their racist undertones and inaccurate portrayal of ethnic cultures. Courtesy of Singapore Philatelic Museum.

This set of criteria has held up well except on two occasions. The 1971 “Singapore Festivals” series of four stamps by William Lee, each depicting children celebrating Chinese New Year, Hari Raya Puasa, Deepavali and Christmas respectively, was roundly criticised for the racist undertones and inaccurate portrayal of ethnic cultures. A Chinese newspaper pointed out that the Chinese child’s traditional costume was already obsolete in Singapore, while a Malay cultural organisation took issue with the illustration of Malays flying a kite on Hari Raya Puasa, a deeply religious event. According to a New Nation editorial, Malays were depicted as “a happy-go-lucky community” compared with the other racial groups.²¹ In its defence, the SAC said the designs had expressly avoided religious imagery because of perceived sensitivities.

More recently, in 2010, a group of philatelists led by Lim Chong Teck criticised Singapore stamp issues as becoming “commercialised at the expense of marking significant national occasions”. Lim wrote in a letter to The Straits Times complaining that local stamps were becoming devalued because of the “frivolous, irrelevant or poorly designed” stamp issues in recent times, including the ones on toys, playgrounds and local food. “[F]ar too many stamps are issued, cementing Singapore’s growing and unwelcome reputation of abusing stamp issues for commercial gain in the philatelic arena”, he added.²²

Issued on 26 September 2002, graphic artist Eng Siak Loy’s “Heritage Trees” series was rated the second most beautiful stamps in the world in 2003 by Paris-based Timbropresse Group, the publisher of philatelic magazine Timbres. The trees featured were Flame of The Forest (22 cents), Rain Tree (60 cents), Kapok ($1) and Tembusu ($1). Courtesy of Singapore Philatelic Museum.

Then SAC chairman, Professor Lily Kong, refuted Lim’s remarks, citing a list of awards Singapore stamps had won over the years. Eng’s 2002 “Heritage Trees” series was rated the second most beautiful stamps in the world by Timbropresse Group, the Paris-based publisher of philatelic magazine Timbres, while Design Objective’s series for the 2004 Olympic games was named the most original stamp by the International Olympic Committee. While Lim disagreed with recent stamp themes, Professor Kong said they were issued “to provide variety and to sustain the public interest”.²³

This tension between commemoration and commercial gain has been inherent in the issuing of stamps since the SAC was founded in 1968. As Minister Yong said in 1972, SAC had to be careful with what it issued lest it affected the value and reputation of Singapore stamps. “We shall not indulge in gimmicks nor issue philatelic frivolities”, he said.²⁴ Lim’s criticism that stamps had veered away from nationalistic imagery had some truth.

The Future of Stamps
While early Singapore stamps captured a young nation’s transition into a global city, the themes have since shifted towards more popular subjects both from within Singapore and inspired from abroad. Since 1996, an annual Chinese zodiac calendar series commemorating the Lunar New Year has been issued − first designed by freelance illustrator Nicodemus Loh, and more recently, Leo Chong Teck. In 2005, a stamp was issued to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Danish fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen. Even when Singapore is the theme, such stamps have depicted typically Singaporean subjects, including vanishing trades, old cinemas and, of course, local food.

Issued on 12 November 2007, this set of four stamps commemorates the new knowledge framework proposed by the National Library Board’s vision and strategy: to ensure that Singapore’s “published heritage is preserved” and “knowledge remains readily accessible to all Singaporeans for their lifelong learning”. Courtesy of Singapore Philatelic Museum.

Ironically, this turn towards the everyday and the popular comes at a time when the rise of electronic mail has rendered stamps becoming less relevant in our daily lives. This is especially pertinent since postal services became corporatised in 1992. Today, stamps are issued by the government agency turned corporation, SingPost. The latter has been granted a license by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (which in turn continues to be advised on philately matters by the SAC).

Facing a decline in postal volume, SingPost’s head of postal services recently acknowledged that stamps have become more an object for the serious collector than for everyday use.²⁵ This declining mass appeal has diminished the value of stamps as a platform for showcasing the achievements of the nation and as a revenue stream.

Ironically, postage stamps have today come full circle to when they were first created in 15th-century London: as simply a receipt for delivery.

Notes

Urban development has destroyed much of the original landscape, as Goh Lee Kim tells us. But Singapore has taken great strides in conserving its natural heritage.

Singapore was blanketed in lush green vegetation for centuries before Stamford Raffles arrived on the island in 1819. Primary tropical forest grew abundantly, interspersed with pockets of mangrove and freshwater swamps.¹ The forest contained “an immense number” of species of trees, many of them scaling great heights.

The tropical vegetation enveloping the island likely supported a rich plethora of fauna, including tigers, although larger mammals commonly found in neighbouring lands, such as the elephant, rhinoceros and tapir, were not native to Singapore. A few hills dotted the island, with the highest, Bukit Timah, at the centre.²

“View in the jungle, Singapore”, c.1845. A lithograph print showing a recently cleared stretch of jungle with a wide path cut through it. By the late 19th century, much of the primary forest in Singapore had been cleared for plantations and a growing migrant population. This print was originally published in Charles Ramsey Drinkwater Bethune’s View in the Eastern Archipelago: Borneo, Sarawak, Labuan, &c. &c. &c. Courtesy of National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board.

Relatively untouched for centuries, the island’s landscape began to transform dramatically only after Singapore’s founding by Raffles. The Singapore River became the economic lifeline of the settlement following the establishment of the port and commercial centre along its banks. Development took place rapidly, and the population grew as it attracted immigrants from the Malay Archipelago, China, India, the Middle East, and even further afield from Europe and the Americas. 

Destruction and Deforestation
Along with the boom in trade, cultivation of cash crops for export also took off, spurred by the British who saw it as a means of raising capital. Gambier and pepper, which were usually planted together, proved to be the most economically viable crops in early 19th-century Singapore. Although gambier and pepper plantations had existed before the British arrived, their cultivation flourished only after 1836 due to an increasing demand for gambier by the dyeing and tanning industries. By the late 1840s, there were some 400 gambier and pepper plantations in Singapore.

Gambier (Nauclea gambir, Uncaria gambir) from the William Farquhar Collection of Natural History Drawings at the National Museum of Singapore. This is one of the paintings that William Farquhar commissioned Chinese artists to do between 1803 and 1818 when he was Resident and Commandant of Melaka. Courtesy of National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board.

Unfortunately, gambier cultivation had a detrimental effect on the primary forest. To obtain land for the plantations, the farmers, who were mostly Chinese, cleared large swathes of forest. To matters worse, gambier plantations could only survive for 20 years at most as gambier rapidly exhausted the soil and rendered the land infertile for further cultivation. This resulted in further deforestation when the farmers abandoned the plantations and cleared new land to grow the crop.

The farmers also cut down large numbers of trees and used the wood as fuel to boil and process the harvested gambier. It was estimated that for every plot of land taken up by gambier plants, an equal area was logged for its processing.

At the same time, forests were cleared to make way for development and trees felled to provide residents with timber, fuel and charcoal. By the late 19th century, much of the primary forest was lost to indiscriminate deforestation. Once removed, primary vegetation is lost forever as it cannot regenerate on cleared land. Over time, much of the cleared land became overgrown with lalang, a weed that was very difficult to rid of. Already by 1859, it was reported that some 45,000 acres of land in Singapore had been abandoned.³

There was no attempt to control the rate of deforestation until the late 1870s, when the Colonial Secretary, Cecil Clementi Smith, tasked the Colonial Engineer and Surveyor-General, John F.A. McNair, to conduct a survey on the state of the timber forests in the Straits Settlements. McNair’s 1879 report described the dismal scene in Singapore: diminishing timber trees, indiscriminate deforestation, and an absence of legislation for forest protection.⁴ Despite McNair’s report, the colonial government did not take any action to protect the forest from further encroachment.

This situation remained until 1883 when a forest report commissioned by Governor Frederick A. Weld and put together by Nathaniel Cantley, Superintendent of the Botanic Gardens, again reported the “extensive deforestation” in Singapore and pointed out that “no sufficient attempts have been made to conserve the Government forest lands”.⁵ This time the government paid heed: based on Cantley’s recommendations, eight forest reserves, totalling about 8,000 acres, were carved up.

By 1886, most of Cantley’s recommendations had been implemented. A total of 12 reserves, comprising 11,554 acres, were demarcated: Blukang, Murai, Kranji, Selitar, Ang Mo Kio, Changi, Bukit Panjang, Military, Chan Chu Kang, Mandai, Sambawang, Bukit Timah, Pandan and Jurong.⁶ A Forest Department, managed by the Botanic Gardens, was established to take charge of the reserves and a Forest Police Force was hired. In a bid to reforest the reserves with economically valuable trees, nurseries were set up to grow saplings.

By the 1890s, however, the government decided to scale back its support for the forest reserves. The budget for the maintenance of forest reserves was trimmed as timber growth in the reserves was slow and failed to generate any substantial revenue. In January 1895, the control of the reserves was transferred from the Botanic Gardens to the Land Office, which neglected the reserves even further as they were deemed unprofitable.

Even with their protected status, the reserves suffered from further deforestation in the following decades. In 1901, for instance, part of the Bukit Timah reserve was cleared for water catchment, granite quarries and railway lines. The Forest Ordinance enacted in 1909 which made it an offence to “trespass, pasture cattle and cut, collect or remove any forest produce” from a reserve was not effective in preventing further exploitation.⁷

In 1914, land was cleared from Sembawang and Mandai reserves for military purposes, and in 1927, land from the Seletar, Changi, Pandan and Bukit Timah reserves were used for the cultivation of vegetables. Part of the Changi reserve was also sacrificed for the construction of a naval base.

The majority of the reserves did not survive this onslaught. The status of Bukit Timah as a forest reserve was revoked and reconstituted in 1930 so that it comprised only about 70 hectares of forested land for the purposes of “scenic beauty and botanical interests”. By 1936, Bukit Timah had become Singapore’s only forest reserve when the government decided to revoke all the other forest reserves, citing the afforestation efforts as “unjustifiable”.⁸

The outlook of forest reserves in Singapore improved in 1938 when control of the Bukit Timah reserve was given back to the Botanic Gardens to ensure its conservation. In the following year, mangrove forests at Kranji and Pandan were gazetted as forest reserves. All three were placed under the charge of the Director of the Botanic Gardens, who was designated as Conservator of Forests.

Unfortunately, Bukit Timah reserve suffered severe damage during the Japanese invasion of Singapore in February 1942. After landing in Singapore, the Japanese targeted the Bukit Timah area. The ensuing battle between invading Japanese forces and Allied troops left its toll on the reserve: trenches and caves were excavated, trees were felled, and mortar shells were strewn all over.

When the Japanese Occupation ended in 1945, Bukit Timah reserve became a concern once again as granite quarries in the area began encroaching on the reserve. In April 1950, the government appointed a Select Committee on Granite Quarries and Nature Reserves to study the impact that the quarries had on the reserve. Following the recommendations of the committee, the Nature Reserves Ordinance was passed by the Singapore Legislative Council in January 1951, gazetting Bukit Timah, Kranji, Pandan, Labrador and the Central Catchment area as nature reserves as well as prohibiting activities such as quarrying and the destruction of flora and fauna.⁹ Today, all national parks and nature reserves in Singapore are protected under the Parks and Trees Act.

The Protection of Fauna
Generations of human activity on the island have also wreaked disastrous consequences on the fauna. Continued deforestation ravaged the natural habitats of native fauna and threatened their survival. Hunting, both for sport and consumption, as well as the rampant animal trade in Singapore exacerbated the situation. As a result, species such as the tiger and clouded leopard vanished from Singapore, while others, such as the sambar deer and barking deer, dwindled in number.

Three European men on a hunting trip in the jungle posing with an object that could possibly be tiger skin, 1890s. Lee Kip Lin Collection. All rights reserved, Lee Kip Lin and National Library Board, Singapore.

Wildlife protection gained a foothold in Singapore with the enactment of the first legislation for the protection of wild fauna in 1884 – the Wild Birds Protection Ordinance – which prohibited the unlawful killing and capture of selected species of wild birds as well as the possession and sale of their skins and plumage.¹⁰ This ordinance was enacted to curb the excessive hunting and capture of wild birds for sport and the bird trade.

In 1904, the Wild Birds Protection Ordinance was repealed and replaced by the Wild Animals and Birds Protection Ordinance. Apart from the continued protection of birds, the new legislation prohibited the killing and capture of wild animals.¹¹ The legislation continued to be amended and updated with revised editions, and is known at present as the Wild Animals and Birds Act. 

Hunters posing with their catch during an elephant hunt in Singapore in the 1900s. Sport hunting and the wildlife trade were factors that caused the rapid depletion of fauna in Singapore. Lim Kheng Chye Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Tiger Hunts The proliferation of gambier and pepper plantations in the 1830s was linked to a rise in tiger sightings and attacks. Having lost their natural source of prey and the protection of thick forest cover, tigers ventured into the plantations and attacked workers. The earliest mention of a tiger attack in local news appeared in the 8 September 1831 edition of the Singapore Chronicle, which reported that “tigers are beginning to infest the vicinity of the town, to such a degree as to require serious attention on the part of the local authorities”.12 The remains of a Chinese woodcutter, who had been missing for days, were discovered near the town centre by his friends. The tiger’s paw prints were still clearly visible around the area. Another person had been killed since the report, but in a different location. Members of the Straits hunting party with the tiger they shot at Choa Chu Kang Village in October 1930. From left: Tan Tian Quee, Ong Kim Hong (the shooter) and Low Peng Hoe. Tan Tuan Khoon Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore. Tiger attacks became more rampant in the mid-19th century, when gambier plantations, followed by rubber, rapidly expanded in Singapore. In response, the government offered rewards for the capture of tigers, which encouraged many to attempt to hunt and trap the predator. Tiger sightings had dropped drastically by the time the last wild tiger was shot in Singapore in 1930 in Choa Chu Kang Village; besides the success of hunts, the tiger population had shrunk because much of the land had become deforested and was overgrown with lalang.13

Water and Public Health
The Singapore River was critical to the growth and development of the island as a centre of trade and commerce for more than 150 years. From the onset of Singapore’s founding, the river bustled with activity as vessels transported cargo and goods to and from the docks. Godowns, shipyards, factories and living quarters occupied the banks of the river and its environs. The combination of heavy water traffic and rapid urban development along its banks soon led to the pollution of the river.

An ink and sepia drawing titled “The River from Monkey Bridge” (1842–43) by Scotsman Charles Andrew Dyce who lived in Singapore in the 1840s. This is a scene of the Singapore River at Boat Quay from Monkey Bridge (where Elgin Bridge stands today). It shows the godowns along the river, coolies loading and unloading goods from the clipper ships. National University of Singapore Museum Collection, courtesy of NUS Museum.

As early as 1822, a committee established by Raffles reported that a large amount of silt had built up around the mouth of the Singapore River due to the construction of jetties. This had caused navigation in the already shallow channel to become more difficult. When John Crawfurd was appointed as Resident in 1823, he highlighted the river’s significance to Singapore but pointed out that some form of dredging was “indispensable”.¹⁴

Several attempts were made by the government to dredge the river, but none succeeded in thoroughly clearing the sedimentation that continued to accumulate as development continued. The situation was not unique to the Singapore River; there were also reports of blockages at other waterways on the island, such as the Brass Bassa (Bras Basah) Canal.

By the 1840s, there was rising concern that the increasingly obstructed mouth of the Singapore River might cause disruptions to trade. The issue was highlighted by the Grand Jury to the Court in May 1848, recommending the removal of the obstruction because it threatened to become “seriously detrimental to the trade of the Port”.¹⁵ In April 1849, the Grand Jury revisited the issue once again, and pointed out that no action had been taken by the government. Although a dredge was eventually built in the mid-1850s, it could not function properly and was decommissioned in 1861.

Silt was not the only pollutant in the Singapore River. Garbage, industrial waste and sewage ended up in the river along with oil from the vessels plying the waters. The river swiftly deteriorated into a cesspool and constantly emitted a foul stench.

Interestingly, the waterways were so contaminated that they became a natural deterrant against malaria, a common disease in Singapore back then. The surgeon Dr Robert Little noticed that people living along Rochor Canal did not contract malaria despite the unhygienic living conditions. After examining the canal’s waters in 1847, he concluded that the sulphuretted hydrogen gas, from which the foul smell of the polluted waters originated, was responsible for killing malarial germs in the area.¹⁶

Notwithstanding Dr Little’s theory, the polluted waters of Singapore River and other waterways became a source of infectious diseases and a threat to public health. In his 1886 report, Dr Gilmore Ellis, the Acting Health Officer, linked the prevalence of diarrhoea and cholera to “excremental filth poisoning”¹⁷ arising from the lack of a catchment system in the settlement and the ensuing accumulation and putrefaction of sewage in the river. He stressed the importance of having a sewerage system to properly dispose of waste matter. In 1892, the Municipal Health Officer, Dr C.E. Dumbleton, recommended that strong measures be taken to curb the pollution of the river.

Over the next decades, various committees, such as the Singapore River Commission in 1898 and the Singapore River Working Party in 1954, were formed to look into the pollution of the Singapore River, and each made recommendations on how the river could be cleaned up. However, most of the recommendations were never implemented due to the high costs of the work required. Dredging continued and was done regularly, but it was not effective since it could not prevent silting nor act as a deterrent to the dumping of waste into the water. Pollution continued to plague the river right up to the mid-20th century. 

Post-independence Initiatives
Between the 1960s and 80s, Singapore became rapidly industrialised, with numerous factories and manufacturing plants opening across the island. This gave rise to another environmental challenge: air pollution. The situation was especially dire in Jurong where the large concentration of factories there emitted pollutants such as dust, soot, carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide into the air.

To tackle the problem, the government formed the Anti-Pollution Unit in 1970. Tracking centres were set up across the island to monitor the amount of pollutants in the air, and efforts were made to relocate pollutive industries, such as sawmills and plywood factories, away from residential areas. New industries also needed permission from the Anti-Pollution Unit before they could open factories in Singapore. In 1971, the Clean Air Act came into force to control and regulate emissions from trade and industrial premises.

The government also implemented various initiatives and programmes to improve the environment and the standard of living. One of the first was the Garden City plan in 1967, which aimed to transform Singapore into a clean and green city. In subsequent years, thousands of trees and shrubs were planted throughout the island, including in built-up areas and along roads. In 1972, the Ministry of Environment was formed for the express task of creating a clean environment for the people. Singapore was one of the first few countries at the time with a ministry dedicated to environmental matters.

A relatively pristine Singapore River in 1983 with shophouses in the distance and the odd sampan traversing its length. Unbridled boat traffic and squatter colonies along its banks had led to heavy pollution of the river until 1977 when then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew ordered a major clean-up of all rivers in Singapore. All rights reserved, Kouo Shang-Wei Collection, National Library Board, Singapore.

In 1977, then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew ordered a clean-up of all rivers in Singapore. It was a massive programme, beginning with the removal of sources of pollution from the Singapore River and Kallang Basin. Squatters were resettled, industries, businesses and street hawkers were relocated, and pig and duck farms were phased out. Within 10 years, the Singapore River was transformed from a toxic river devoid of marine life to a clean body of water that was capable of supporting fish and prawns.

In subsequent decades, the government continued with its efforts to ensure the protection and sustainability of Singapore’s environment and biodiversity. On the environmental front, the Singapore Green Plan – a blueprint to turn Singapore into a green city by 2000 – was presented at the Earth Summit in Brazil in 1992. It was updated in 2002 with the Singapore Green Plan 2012 and eventually replaced by the Sustainable Singapore Blueprint 2015, which mapped out future plans and strategies to create a more sustainable environment.

To conserve biodiversity, Singapore became a signatory of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) treaty in 1986, pledging to regulate the trade in endangered wildlife and wildlife products. In 1992, Singapore signed the Convention on Biological Diversity along with 152 other countries to reaffirm its stand on the protection of animal and plant life.

Pulau Ubin, with the clouds reflected in its abandoned quarry, is a scene that is rare in urban Singapore today. Photo by Richard W.J. Koh.

Biodiversity conservation was strengthened in 2009 with the National Park Board’s Conserving our Biodiversity strategy and action plan. In 2015, the Nature Conservation Masterplan was launched, charting the course of Singapore’s biodiversity conservation plans for the next five years.

These moves may seem like a little too late given that Singapore has already lost nearly 73 percent of its plant and animal species over the last 200 years. Being an island with precious few resources, Singapore has always struggled to balance the need for development with conservation. What is lost forever in terms of biodiversity cannot be replaced, but Singapore has at least taken concrete steps towards the creation of a sustainable nature and environment for our future generations. Hopefully more will be done in the years ahead.

References

Barnard, T. P. (Ed.). (2014). Nature contained: Environmental histories of Singapore. Singapore: NUS Press. (Call no.: RSING 304.2095957 NAT)

Barnard, T. P. (2016). Conservation and forests. In Nature’s colony: Empire, nation and environment in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Singapore: NUS Press. (Call no.: RSING 580.735957 BAR)

Buckley, C. B. (1984). An anecdotal history of old times in Singapore. Singapore: Oxford University Press. (Call no.: RSING 959.57 BUC-[HIS])

Dobbs, S. (2003). The Singapore River: A social history, 1819–2002. Singapore: Singapore University Press. (Call no.: RSING 959.57 DOB-[HIS])

Fewer timber thefts at Bukit Timah reserve. (1939, July 7). The Straits Times, p. 14. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Local. (1850, March 1). The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, p. 2. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Prof Koh: Earth Summit was a breakthrough. (1992, June 20). The Straits Times, p. 26. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

River pollution in Singapore. (1896, April 18). The Straits Times, p. 2. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Sharp, I., & Lum, S. (1996). Where tigers roamed. In A view from the summit: The story of Bukit Timah Nature Reserve. Singapore: Nanyang Technological University and the National University of Singapore. (Call no.: RSING 333.78095957 VIE)

Singapore forests: Gradual invasion of the reserves. (1928, July 19). The Straits Times, p. 3. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Singapore. Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources and Ministry of National Development. (2014). Our home, our environment, our future: Sustainable Singapore blueprint 2015. Retrieved from Ministry of the Environment and Water Resources website.

Singapore. National Parks Board. (2009). Conserving our biodiversity: Singapore’s national biodiversity strategy and action plan. Retrieved from National Parks Board website.

S’pore to become beautiful, clean city within three years. (1967, May 12). The Straits Times, p. 4. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Smog law plea to Lee. (1970, August 1). The Singapore Herald, p. 1. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

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Tan, A. (2015, June 28). New blueprint to conserve S’pore’s marine heritage. The Straits Times, p. 3. Retrieved from ProQuest via NLB’s eResources website.

Tan, Y. S., Lee, T. J., & Tan, K. (2009). Clean, green and blue: Singapore’ journey towards environmental and water sustainability. Singapore: ISEAS Publishing. (Call no.: RSING 363.70095957 TAN)

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Notes

Ronnie Tan pieces together the fascinating story of Lee Meng, the Malayan Communist Party female agent who headed its courier network for a brief period in 1952.

On 16 June 1948, three European planters were brutally murdered by communist guerillas in the Sungei Siput area in Perak state, in what was then known as Malaya.¹ Two days later, Britain declared a state of Emergency in Malaya, with Singapore following suit on 24 June 1948. The battle for control of Malaya and Singapore between the British and the Malayan Communist Party (MCP; also known as the Communist Party of Malaya) had begun, and it would not end until 31 July 1960.

During the Malayan Emergency (1948–60), the MCP carried out labour strikes, assassinations and other acts of violence aimed at bringing about social and industrial disruption in Malaya and Singapore.

In Singapore, the MCP tried to overthrow the British authorities “by means of subversion and terror”.² Specific sections of society were targeted, including “students, factory workers, government servants, intellectuals, politicians, newspapermen, transport workers and dockhands”.³ The wealthy were not spared either − the murder of pineapple and rubber merchant Lim Teck Kin being a case in point.

The brutal murder of three European planters by communist guerrillas in the Sungei Siput area, Perak, on 16 June 1948 led to the British authorities declaring a state of Emergency in Malaya two days later, with Singapore following suit on 24 June. The Emergency lasted for 12 years and ended only in 1960. ©The Straits Times, 17 June 1948, p. 1.

To carry out its nefarious activities, the MCP’s Central Committee needed to communicate effectively with its rank-and-file members scattered throughout Malaya and Singapore. But as the MCP cadres had no access to wireless communications technology back then, they had to rely on “open and fragile jungle couriers.”⁴

As it turned out, communications – or the lack of, rather − was the MCP’s Achilles heel. To cite an example, communications between local branches of the Min Yuen (Mass People’s Movement) in Pahang, comprising MCP sympathisers, was so bad that one branch was not aware of the other’s activities even when the physical distance was small. Chin Peng, Secretary-General of the MCP then, himself admitted that the Sungei Siput killings “were the work of local cadres acting without an order from the Central Committee – even without its knowledge”.⁵

Chin Peng needed someone who was street smart and capable of managing its communications courier system in north and central Malaya, and decided that the best person for the job as MCP’s “head courier” was a young lady named Lee Ten Tai (alias Lee Meng). Lee was leader of the Kepayang Gang⁶ which operated in Ipoh, the state capital of Perak.

Lee Meng: Malayan Mata Hari
Lee Meng already had a reputation as a cunning fighter and organiser. She was also “one of the most ruthless and capable members of the Min Yuen” in Ipoh.⁷ Surrendered and captured communist guerrillas claimed that Lee had ordered a number of cold-blooded executions that were carried out by Communist Special Service squads.⁸ While Chin Peng described her as “dedicated, active and brave” he also commented that she “lacked caution” and was reckless in her operational style.⁹

Lee Meng was born in Guangzhou, China, in 1926 and moved to Ipoh at the age of five. She was believed to have worked as a Chinese school teacher in Teluk Anson (now known as Teluk Intan), Perak, during the British Military Administration period – the interim military government established in Singapore and Malaya after the Japanese surrender on 12 September 1945.¹⁰ Her father was unemployed and lived with her uncle and aunt, while her mother would be banished to China in 1950 after she was arrested for communist activities. Given Lee Meng’s disenfranchised background and her mum’s own involvement with the communists, it is not surprising that she readily joined the MCP in 1942 when she was recruited by her school teacher.

The courier network Lee Meng was ordered to set up required all messages to and from Chin Peng, or between local units and regimental commanders, to pass through it. During the early years of the Emergency, Lee Meng’s exact whereabouts were unknown as she had reportedly gone underground, living among Min Yuen units scattered around the jungle fringes of Malaya or in the vicinity of Ipoh.

By then, the Malayan Special Branch – instructed to flush out MCP members and sympathisers – had found out about Lee Meng’s activities and decided to penetrate the courier link she was heading and establish her whereabouts. The task of arresting Lee Meng and unravelling the network fell on the shoulders of Detective-Inspector Irene Lee Saw Leng.¹¹

Irene Lee (first row, second from left), the Malayan Special Branch officer who played a key role in Lee Meng’s arrest. Photo was taken around 1955 with six other women police officers, who formed the first batch of women inspectors in the Malayan Police Force. Image source: Selamat bin Sainayune. (2007). Polis Wanita: Sejarah Bergambar 1955–2007 (p. 82). Petaling Jaya: Kelana Publications Sdn Bhd. (Call no.: R 363.208209595 SEL)

Detective-Inspector Irene Lee: Special Branch Officer
On the other side of the ideological divide was Detective-Inspector Irene Lee, who was herself a victim of the communists: in April 1951, her policeman husband, Detective-Corporal Jimmy Loke, was murdered by communist gunmen in Penang.¹² After her husband’s death, Lee joined the police force as an inspector and was posted to Special Branch Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

Lee was highly regarded by her peers in Singapore’s Special Branch as a competent and experienced officer. She was not only a highly skilled markswoman but also “a brilliant lock-picker, an expert with a mini-camera, an accomplished thief (in the course of her duty)” and endowed with a “delicious sense of humour”, according to the British journalist and author Noel Barber.¹³

The Hunt for Lee Meng
The breakthrough in the hunt for Lee Meng came in early February 1952 following a raid on a communist guerrilla camp in Selangor. Captured documents from the deserted camp revealed the identity of a Chinese woman serving as a courier out of Singapore into Johor and who was believed to be the Singapore link in Lee Meng’s intricate courier network.

That woman was known as Ah Shu or Ah Soo, a Chinese school teacher and the wife of Wong Fook Kwang, alias Tit Fung, the leader of the Communist-controlled Workers Protection Corps in Singapore. Wong also had a hand in the murder of pineapple and rubber merchant Lim Teck Kin and others, including a policeman, a factory supervisor and a manager at Hock Lee Bus Company.

Once the identity of Ah Shu was established, the Special Branch sent Irene Lee to Singapore in February 1952 to track Ah Shu down and follow a complex trail that would ultimately lead to Lee Meng’s arrest and eventual banishment to China.

For three weeks, Ah Shu’s movements were closely monitored, particularly when she went shopping at Robinson’s department store, which was then located at Raffles Place. On a number of occasions, Lee observed Ah Shu unobtrusively from a safe distance as the latter “skillfully switch[ed] identical shopping bags”,¹⁴ believed to contain communist literature and messages, with another unidentified lady courier. The Special Branch knew then that both women had to be arrested.

Robinsons department store in Raffles Place in the early 1950s where two communist couriers were caught switching shopping bags containing communist literature and messages. It started a chain of events that would lead to Lee Meng’s arrest on 24 July 1952. RAF Seletar Association Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

At 5 pm one evening, Lee shadowed Ah Shu and watched her as she met the other lady to switch bags. No words were exchanged in the process. In the meantime, Lee’s male colleagues waited in an unmarked Special Branch car, with its engine running. As Ah Shu walked out of the store, Lee tailed her, initially on foot and then by trishaw, with the Special Branch car following behind at a discreet distance.

Meanwhile, the other woman was quietly arrested by Special Branch officers inside Robinsons. Along Stamford Road, just by YMCA’s tennis courts, Ah Shu alighted and started walking towards YMCA building, with Lee following behind. At the right moment, Lee gave the signal for the unmarked Special Branch car to draw abreast. Simultaneously, Lee stuck a gun into Ah Shu’s back and ordered her to get into the car, which then sped off to a secret Special Branch “safe house” on the outskirts of the city.

On arrival, Ah Shu was searched by a woman constable, and a message hidden in a sealed tin of Johnson’s baby powder was found in her shopping bag. The tin’s bottom had been skillfully removed to contain the message. After the message had been extracted and photographed, it was then carefully put back into another identical tin, “which meant that a detective had to persuade an irate shopkeeper to open up [late at night] and sell him another [unblemished] tin so the message could be replaced”.¹⁵

All that remained was for Lee to persuade Ah Shu to cooperate with the Special Branch and return to the jungle with the message that was now hidden in the new tin of baby powder. Lee managed to shake Ah Shu’s resolve by showing her a photograph taken in the safe house – in which she was seated with two smiling uniformed Malay policemen – with the warning that the photograph would not only be published widely in the Chinese press in Singapore, but 50,000 copies of the photograph would be dropped by plane around the area where she operated. Left with little room to manoeuvre, Ah Shu agreed to cooperate and carry the message to Johor and pass it on to the next link in the courier chain.

The information Ah Shu supplied led Special Branch officers to an address in Yong Peng, Johor, where another unnamed woman courier along the chain lived. To gain her trust, Lee posed as a fellow communist courier. Her ruse worked and the woman believed her.

Lee then persuaded the woman to go out for lunch. The former made up a story about how she had murdered a policeman in an ambush not far from Yong Peng three days earlier. The meal would be a celebration of Lee’s daring feat. After lunch, Lee flagged a taxi (conveniently driven by a Special Branch officer) and both got in. Four hours later, the woman courier arrived at the Holding Centre in Kuala Lumpur with Lee by her side.

After dinner, the woman was ushered into a small room for interrogation during which Lee managed to convince her that the only way out of this difficult situation was to cooperate with the police and become a Special Branch double agent. She agreed and in time became one of its most valuable double agents. The double agent realised that she had “wasted the best years” of her life working for the communists, and even asked her superiors to be allowed to work with Lee.¹⁶

The Trail to Kuala Lumpur
The trail next led to a male rubber tapper in Jenderak rubber estate, near Jerantut, Pahang. Every morning, Lee turned up at the rubber estate, posing as a rubber tapper. After “work” was done around 11.30 am, Lee’s real job began, shadowing the after-work activities of a male rubber tapper named Chen Lee, a member of the Min Yuen.

Lee shadowed Chen Lee for several weeks, and eventually, her efforts paid off; she obtained evidence that Chen Lee was a communist courier and had been smuggling food to food dumps meant for communist terrorists hiding out on the fringes of the jungle. After ascertaining Chen Lee’s involvement in clandestine activities, she arranged to have him arrested. One day, when Chen Lee was walking along a lonely road while out on one of his regular visits to drop off supplies for his comrades in the jungle, he was nabbed by Special Branch officers and bundled into the back of a taxi, with Irene Lee beside him.

Inside the taxi, Lee read out the riot act to her captive, spelling out the various activities Chen Lee had carried out for the Min Yuen, including filling his bicycle pump with rice, buying drugs and hiding them in the jungle and buying three bullets – a crime punishable by death in Malaya. Chen Lee initially denied the charges but after Lee produced enough concrete evidence of his crimes, he decided to cooperate and divulge the next link in the courier chain – a bookshop in Batu Road, Kuala Lumpur.

As Batu Road was a busy street, the raid had to be carefully planned without raising the suspicion of the bookshop owner and communist cadres lurking in the neighbourhood. Otherwise, contacts in the courier chain would be alerted and go into hiding. For this reason, the Special Branch hatched an elaborate plan that involved the acquisition of a pineapple estate and cannery in Johor that exported canned pineapples. A lorry carrying a cargo of canned pineapples to be shipped out to Britain the next day via Penang would pass through Kuala Lumpur at a particular time.

As part of the communists’ clandestine communications network, rolled slips containing secret coded messages were concealed in everyday nondescript items such as a wall clock or a Chinese tea box. Courtesy of ISD Heritage Centre.

In order not to arouse the suspicion of Min Yuen members in the area, the lorry’s movement was timed so that it “fitted in perfectly” with the shipment schedule.¹⁷ The lorry would suffer a rear wheel puncture just as it passed by the bookshop. To replace the wheel, the lorry would have to be jacked up. However, due to the weight of the goods, the crates packed with tins of pineapple would be temporarily unloaded while the wheel was changed. Now those loitering in the area, even if they were communist sympathisers or spies, had to help the lorry driver and his workers unload the crates, otherwise something would seem amiss. Since the crates could not be placed on the road without impeding traffic flow, they were conveniently stacked against the door of the bookshop.

Unaware to passers-by, Irene Lee was hiding in one of those crates. While the men went about changing the wheel, Lee opened the trapdoor of the crate, “picked the front door lock [of the bookshop], entered the shop, searched it, made photocopies and was back in her packing case” – all before the lorry was reloaded with the crates.¹⁸ From the evidence Lee found in the bookshop, the Special Branch ascertained that the nerve centre of the courier network was located in Ipoh and not Kuala Lumpur as it originally thought, and that it was run by a woman.

A communist guerrilla surrenders to security forces at a rubber plantation during the Malayan Emergency (1948–60). Image source: Barber, N. (1971). The War of the Running Dogs: How Malaya Defeated the Communist Guerrillas, 1948–60 (p. 216). London: Collins. (Call no.: R CLOS 959.5 BAR-[JSB])

The Cat Finally Gets Her Mouse (in Ipoh)
Two blocks away from the FMS Bar in Ipoh, the communist courier trail which began in Singapore on February 1952 finally ended at a small, nondescript house in Lahat Road. The house “turned out to be the undercover communication post coordinating the secret courier network reporting to the CPM’s Central Committee”.¹⁹

Special Branch officers kept the house under 24-hour surveillance. At 8 pm on 24 July 1952, a raid was carried out. Irene Lee’s knock on the door was answered by her nemesis, Lee Meng. Stunned by this stranger at the door, Lee Meng and her friend Cheow Yin, who was also in the house at the time, were caught unawares and unarmed, and quickly apprehended.

The noose around Lee Meng tightened further when she slipped up in her attempt to produce her identity card. Issued in Ipoh in 1949, the card did not bear her name but that of another person by the name of Wong Nyuk Yin.²⁰ Lee Meng claimed that she had been in Ipoh for just over two years and was living in Singapore prior to that. However, Irene Lee caught on to her lie: it was impossible for Lee Meng to be in Singapore in 1949 and yet receive “her” identity card in Ipoh at the same time.

Chin Peng (right), Secretary-General of the Malayan Communist Party, seen here with Rashid Maidin, one of the few Malay communist leaders and a trusted aide of Chin Peng (undated photo). Image source: Chin, P. (2003). My Side of History (p. 513). Singapore: Media Masters Pte Ltd. (Call no. R SING 959.5104092 CHI)

Upon further questioning, Lee Meng buckled. In addition, the old Chinese desk with a false drawer that Chin Peng had ordered her to buy earlier was found in the house.²¹ Inside the drawer were communist documents waiting to be disseminated – ample proof of her role as being part of Chin Peng’s courier network. Lee Meng was subsequently remanded in Taiping Jail to await trial.

The Aftermath
Lee Meng
When Lee Meng appeared before the Magistrate’s Court in Ipoh on 6 August 1952, she was charged with three offences – being armed with a pistol and a hand grenade between August 1948 and September 1951 in Ipoh, and for consorting “with persons who were carrying firearms and acting in a manner prejudicial to the maintenance of good order”.²² No references were made to her activities as a courier to avoid compromising Special Branch operations that were going on at the time and neither was she charged as a communist. The Special Branch hoped that when Chin Peng received news of her arrest, he would assume that her courier activities had not been exposed.

In court, she denied that she was Lee Meng but Lee Ten Tai. She also denied ever living in the jungle and claimed that she did not know what a hand grenade was. However, several communist guerrillas testified in court that they had seen Lee Meng armed with grenades and was a senior MCP member.

Lee Meng was initially found not guilty during her first trial on 27 August 1952. A retrial was ordered on 10 September the following month. This time, Lee Meng, now dubbed the “grenade girl” by the press,²³ was pronounced guilty and sentenced to death.

Lee Meng, head courier of the Malayan Communist Party, being escorted to the Ipoh court complex for her retrial 10 days after she was found innocent during her first trial on 27 August 1952 (right). Image source: Chin, P. (2003). My Side of History (pp. 340, 343). Singapore: Media Masters Pte Ltd. (Call no.: R SING 959.5104092 CHI)

According to one account, while Lee Meng was remanded in Taiping Jail, she tried to seduce the male jailer on night duty in an effort to become pregnant. She knew that British law did not permit a pregnant woman to be executed. Unfortunately for Lee Meng, the authorities discovered the plot and replaced him with a female jailer.

During her retrial on 10 September 1952, Lee Meng appealed to the Malayan High Court against her death sentence but her case was dismissed on 14 November. She was returned to Taiping Jail to await her fate while her lawyers lodged an appeal to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London on 14 February 1953. The appeal was unsuccessful and a petition for clemency was then sent to the Sultan of Perak on 23 February 1953. The petition was approved and just two weeks later on 9 March, Lee Meng’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Taiping Jail. While in prison, she passed her time knitting shawls and even learned to speak “superb Malay”.²⁴

But there was another twist to the Lee Meng story. Lee Meng’s trial had generated worldwide interest, with the government receiving petitions for her to be spared the death penalty. Moreover, the Cold War between the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries and the United States and its NATO allies was in full swing. Both sides conducted espionage activities on each other to gain the upper hand in the battle for dominance.

It was against this backdrop, on 2 March 1953, that the Hungarian government offered to swap Lee Meng for a British businessman, Edgar Sanders, who was serving a 13-year jail sentence in Budapest for espionage. Almost overnight Lee Meng’s case became a cause celèbre.²⁵ However, the offer of a prisoner swap was turned down by the British.

Lee Meng (left), former head courier of the Malayan Communist Party, at age 80, seen here with two friends. Image source: Zheng, Z. (2007). 陈田夫人: 李明口述历史 (p. 3). Petaling Jaya: 策略资讯研究中心. (Call no.: 324.2595075092 ZZX)

Lee Meng was incarcerated at Taiping Jail until her release and banishment to China on 23 November 1963 – the same fate that had befallen her mother in 1950. However, it was only in January 1964 that the Malaysian government announced her deportation. Before Lee Meng left, she asked the lawyers who defended her, the Seenivasagam brothers (Sri Padhmaraja and Darma Raja, popularly known as S.P. and D.R. Seenivasagam), to buy her two bicycles, a transistor radio, blankets, a mattress, several watches and some gold bangles so that she could bring these to China.

In China, she was reunited with her mother, whom she cared for until the latter passed on. She also met Chen Tien, Chin Peng’s “trusted aide and comrade”,²⁶ and married him in 1965. He passed away on 3 September 1990 from lung cancer.²⁷ In August 2007, Lee Meng visited Malaysia. During her visit, she called on one of her trial lawyers, Lim Phaik Gan, to thank her for “securing her release”.²⁸ It was reported that Lee Meng passed away in Guangzhou, China, on 2 June 2012 at the age of 86.

Irene Lee
Following the successful capture and prosecution of Lee Meng, Irene Lee went on to serve in other capacities in the police force in Malaya. These included stints in the Penang Contingent, the Georgetown Police District Headquarters (1957) and the Federal Police Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur (1958), while serving as Chief of Women Police and, shortly thereafter, as a Woman Police Supervisor, with the rank of Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP).

On 12 October 1959, Lee was transferred to the Perak Contingent and served as an Inspector of ‘Á’ Branch. She was awarded the Colonial Police Medal for meritorious service in 1956.

Lee left the police force on 1 January 1960 “as a result of a disagreement with the Malayan authorities”²⁹ and subsequently took up a secretarial job at an import firm in Singapore. She passed away on 12 May 1994 at the age of 72.

References
Coroner returns murder finding. (1951, June 6). The Straits Times. p. 6. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Douglas, W.O. (1953). North from Malaya: Adventure on five fronts (p. 55). New York: Doubleday & Company. (Call no.: RD KSC 959 DOU)

Grenade case girl: I’m not that woman story of her 2 I-cards. (1952, August 29). Singapore Standard, p. 1. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Irene Lee – from housewife to head of women police. (1958, August 14). The Straits Times, p. 10. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Lee Meng. (1953, February 24). The Straits Times, p. 1. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Lee Meng: Prison drama. (1953, March 10). The Straits Times, p.1. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Leong, H. M. (1953, March 10). ‘Grenade girl’ Lee Meng is reprieved. Singapore Standard, p. 1. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Malayan takes over as chief of women police. (1958, August 21). Singapore Standard. p. 2. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Malaysia History. (2012, June 30). The Malayan Emergency 1948–1960. Retrieved from Malayan History website.

Miller, S. (2012, April 16). Malaya: The myths of hearts and minds. Small Wars Journal. Retrieved from Small Wars Journal website.

National Archives of Malaysia. (2018, January 23). Formation of Malaysia 16 September 1963. Retrieved from National Archives of Malaysia website.
Pretty girl gave murder orders: Court told. (1952, August 28). The Straits Times, p. 1. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Selamat bin Sainayune. (2007). Polis wanita: Sejarah bergambar 1955–2007 (p. 279). Petaling Jaya: Kelana Publications Sdn Bhd. (Call no.: Malay R 363.208209595 SEL)

Such a surprise for Irene. (1956, January 4). The Straits Times, p. 7. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Tay, M. (2008, May 31). Robinsons. The Straits Times, p. 67. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

The grenade girl who also faced death. (1968, July 15). The Straits Times, p. 8. Retrieved from NewspaperSG.

Van Tonder, G. (2017). Malayan Emergency: Triumph of the running dogs (p. 4). Barnsley: Pen and Sword Military. (Call no.: RSING 959.5104 VAN)

Notes

Classical and Modern Chinese education in Mainland China and Taiwan has been debated for over a century. Chua Chee Lay analyses its development and provides valuable lessons from history.

近半个世纪来，海峡两岸对教科书文言与白话的取舍，有着截然相反的立场和举措。特别是在2017年，文白之争更趋白热化，很值得远在数千公里外的新加坡华语文教育工作者密切关注与参考，甚至于是深切反思与检讨。

跨过21世纪的门槛后，在官方的推波助澜下，中国大陆诵读经典的热潮此起彼伏，许多家长带着孩子身穿汉服诵读《弟子规》和《论语》。从2010年起，中国教育部、国家语委与中央精神文明建设指导委员会办公室，还联合实施大规模的“中华诵：经典诵读行动”。¹

这股抚今悼昔的热潮，折射出中国社会普遍对当前以白话文为主的教科书的不满，教育工作者还发出“救救孩子：小学语文教材批判”的强烈呼声。² 道德危机的警钟，一次又一次敲醒人们对承载传统文化的文言文的追思。究其本质，波澜壮阔的“经典诵读热”诉求的并非走回文言文的老路，而是对文言文所承载的美德，诸如勤慎端朴、乐天知命、家和万事兴，牺牲小我完成大我，以及“富贵不能淫、贫贱不能移、威武不能屈”等等传统美德的缅怀与颂扬。

在“多读经典文言文可增强民族自豪感”的大前提下，2017年9月新学期开课时，中国小学一年级和初中一年级的语文教材，统一使用最新出炉的“教育部编义务教育语文教科书”（简称“部编本”）,³ 而之前的各教材都将陆续退出校园。在兼顾时代色彩之余，新编教材选文凸显的是经典性和文质美，所以文言文比例大增，较之前人民教育出版社出版的教材，小学6个年级，古诗文总数增加了55篇（一年级已有古诗），增幅高达80%；总计124篇，占全部课文的30%。初中3个年级，古诗文总篇数也提升至124篇，占全部课文的51.7%。

循着历史的轨迹，就不难发现这样的发展趋势其来有自。六七十年代的中国经历文化大革命的浩劫，一直到八十年代都一直在价值观危机边缘徘徊，步入九十年代后，海外的“儒学热”和“国学热”乘虚而入，填补了精神上无所依托的空白，形成一股波澜壮阔的传统文化回流现象。九十年代中期的全日制普通高中语文教学大纲，已提出语文是最重要的交际工具，也是最重要的文化载体的观点。2000年，“弘扬祖国优秀文化”、“培育学生热爱祖国语言文字和中华优秀文化的思想感情”已经成为教育大纲上的首要宗旨，排在听说读写语言技能的前头。⁴ 在这样一个绝佳的思潮优势下，文言文就自然水到渠成，很快就成为教学的核心，不仅课时大增，还要求充分发掘其审美鉴赏的价值。可见今日新教材重视文言文，是拜“传统文化热”所赐。

正当中国大陆如火如荼地加大文言文教学的力度时，海峡对岸的台湾官方却大唱反调，反其道而行。2017年9月，台湾教育部课程审议会通过提案，将于2019年实施的12年教育课纲草案，把高中文言文比例从45%–65%降为45%–55%；课纲内必选的古文篇章，从原本的20篇降到10至15篇，此外也决议删除中华文化基本教材的选材范围，⁵ 另外，必修课程之《论语》、《孟子》、《大学》和《中庸》的中华文化基本教材，应考量教学节数、学生学习兴趣与理解能力，可考虑改为能融入品德教育、生命教育、生涯发展、人权教育等议题的合适现代文本，进一步删去经典文言的份量。其所持的理由是，文言文是因循保守、腐化思想的八股文。现代学生不应被困在古人思想的牢笼里，应减少接触抱残守缺的古籍，增加台湾当地的文学内容，强化台湾的主体性，让学生有更多空间探讨族群、阶级和性别的议题。

提案出台后，所如预料立即引发台湾社会大争议，抗议文言比例降低的呼声不小，中研院院士邀集文坛大家与跨界专业人士发动连署，超过五万人反对大幅调降文言文比例，强调课纲修订应回归教育专业。事实上，台湾教育部编辑的教科书降低文言文篇数与比例早有先例。选文篇数部编本从原有的70篇，2010年课纲下降到40篇；2012年再降到30篇，现在2019年课纲仅剩20篇。在研修小组订定的课纲中，文言文比例也从2010年课纲的55%到65%，降至2012年课纲的45%到65%，2019年课纲为45%到55%，对照早期教科书的文言文比例超过70%，降幅颇大。

从《续修四库全书》，也可看到文言文与白话文演变的端倪。版权所有，《续修四库全书》编委会编 (2002)。
《续修四库全书》。上海: 上海古籍出版社。(索书号：R Chinese 039.951 XXS)

程晏铃在《天下》杂志专文明确地指出，文言文的争议乃源自于大众对台湾以考试为主导的教学所引起的集体焦虑。高中生几乎人手一本的抢救国文大作战，参考书、考古题像是各种焦虑纷陈，各种文章挖空等着被填满，台湾语文教育因为服膺考试，偏重词性与注释，对文本只有表浅理解，缺乏统整、批判、后设与跨领域思考。可见文白之争的背后不是语体问题，而是教学的问题，无关乎文体或选文。⁶

从社会语言学的角度审视，文言与白话的矛盾冲突错综复杂，不纯然只是教学和考试的问题，因为文言与白话乃不同世代的代言人，在语言思维结构和生活习惯上有所不同。简要回顾文白之争的历史，对我们剖析与梳理当今纷争的缘由，应有一定的帮助。

虽说“文言文”古已有之，但此概念却迟至晚清方以“白话文”的对立面出现。⁷ 文言是由早期口语演化出来的，两者有着不可割舍的血脉关系。“文言”、“白话”、“白话文”与“现代华语”是四个不同的概念，若混为一谈，必然会剪不断理还乱。“文言”是以文字记录下来的书面语。“白话”是日常口头的应用语。“白话文”是以现代口语为基础形成的书面语，而现代华语的历史比白话短得多。现代华语则是以北京语音为标准，以典范的现代白话文著作为语法规范的语言体系。让我们从语言文化传承与教学意义两个角度，梳理分析华文教学面临的两难局面与文白之间应如何取舍，如何磨合。

随着时间的推移，以日常生活为活水源泉的白话在潮流中不断更新，而以文言文书写的书面语却因与时代脱节而停滞不前，大大限制了语言的发展和教育的普及。清末废止科举制，为中华文化从文言转向白话提供了契机。民国初年掀起的新文化运动中，胡适和陈独秀等人倡导白话文改革和文学革命，更是促成了白话逐渐取代文言的历史机缘。1920年北京政府颁令全国学校和报刊采用白话文，启动了语文教科书语体转换的历史进程。

历史已清楚证明文白语体的演变，对于语文学科的独立和教育的普及有重大意义，但我们也见证了近代汉语文化转型过于仓促和功利化所产生的不利影响。诚如周志强指出的：“五四以来从文言文到白话文的转换，实现了语言的社会学意义上的转换，但对古典汉语形象审美传统的继承却被搁置并延迟”。⁸ 声势浩大的“经典诵读热”，提醒我们应把多些言简意赅、生动有趣、蕴含传统美德的经典美文言收入教科书里。我们应引导莘莘学子多背诵抑扬顿挫的经典，让他们心领神会中华美学的精妙；也可背诵带有时代精神至情至性的现代美文，培养口语流畅优雅的能力，这对提高他们的书写能力也大有帮助，唯有如此莘莘学子才有可能不由自主地爱上华文华语。

知古鑑今，华文教学语体应取道中庸。重文言轻白话，开历史的倒车不可为，而一味废除文言，摒弃经典亦不可取，这两者之间毕竟存在着不可分割的血缘关系。顺应着时代的步履，以白话文为主以文言为辅，古为今用，文白共生，才是华文教学语体走到今天最美好的组合。

注释

From a hole in the ground to running water at the turn of the tap. Lim Tin Seng tells us how far Singapore has come in its search for water.

Water has and will always be a precious resource in Singapore. In 2015, the Washington-based World Resources Institute identified the city-state as one of 33 out of 167 countries most likely to face extremely high water stress by 2040.⁹ To help overcome the absence of natural water bodies, the government has come up with innovative ways to expand and diversify Singapore’s water resources. 

Over the decades, PUB, Singapore’s national water agency, has created a sustainable supply from four sources: water from local catchment, imported water, high-grade reclaimed water (known as NEWater) and desalinated water.¹⁰ Together, these four sources, termed the “Four National Taps”, have come a long way in helping Singapore meet its water needs. 

Children splashing themselves with water at a standpipe in a village in Geylang Serai, 1960s. The government installed standpipes to provide water to residents who had no taps in their homes. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Early Water Supplies

Securing a sustainable water supply is key to Singapore’s development, a fact recognised by the British since the time of Stamford Raffles. One of the reasons why the British chose Singapore as a trading post was its access to fresh water. In fact, digging a well for drinking water was among the first tasks ordered by Raffles when he landed in Singapore on 28 January 1819.¹¹

Eight months later, the British completed building a reservoir near the foot of Bukit Larangan (now Fort Canning Hill). Despite being rudimentary, the reservoir had an aqueduct that carried water to a plaster-lined tank sited at the edge of the Singapore River.¹² The tank had a spout so that skiffs (small boats) dispatched by the larger ships anchored in the harbour could pull up beneath the spout to collect water.¹³

The reservoir remained as the island’s main water supply until the 1830s when demand exceeded its capacity. It was subsequently replaced by a system of wells that were dug around the hill.

As demand for water continued to grow in tandem with Singapore’s development as a trading port, the British realised that using wells to supply water to visiting vessels was unsustainable as the low water rate – at a piddling four gallons per minute – was too slow. This meant that ships had to wait for several hours before they could fully replenish their water supply. Those whose patience wore thin resorted to obtaining contaminated water from the Kallang River.¹⁴ 

The First Reservoirs 

In 1823, the British Resident John Crawfurd proposed spending 1,000 Spanish dollars to build a new reservoir, but this did not materialise. In 1852, the Government Surveyor and Engineer John Turnbull Thomson suggested drawing water from the “Singapore Creek” – an early reference to the Singapore River. The lack of government support and public interest, however, scotched this plan. Five years later, in 1857, the idea of having a proper reservoir resurfaced again when Tan Kim Seng, a wealthy Straits Chinese merchant, donated 13,000 Straits dollars to the local government to improve the town’s water supply.¹⁵

Tan’s offer could not have come at a better time: the population had grown eightfold from 10,683 in 1824 to 81,734 in 1860, and in their desperation, people turned to contaminated wells and streams for their water needs.¹⁶ With Tan’s donation, the government began making plans in January 1858 for a new reservoir and waterworks. But when cost estimates ballooned to 100,000 Straits dollars, the Bengal Presidency in Calcutta, which administered the British colonies in the Far East, refused to sanction the project. The reservoir and waterworks were put on hold until 1862 when the Bengal government agreed to fund half the project.¹⁷ The remaining half was raised through a loan in 1864.

The service reservoir on Mount Emily as photographed by G.R. Lambert & Co., c.1880s. It was built
in 1878 to receive water from the Impounding Reservoir in Thomson Road and distribute it to households.
Courtesy of National Museum of Singapore, National Heritage Board.

The new Impounding Reservoir (renamed Thomson Road Reservoir in 1907 and thereafter as MacRitchie Reservoir in 1922) began operations in 1877, exactly 20 years after Tan Kim Seng’s philanthropic gesture. Located off Thomson Road, the reservoir comprised a catchment area of about 1,890 acres and a conduit made of masonry that could transport water to within 200 feet of the Singapore River.¹⁸

Managed by the Municipal Council, the reservoir used gravity rather than pumps to distribute the water. As a result, the municipality had to construct a number of service reservoirs on high ground such as hilltops. Water from the Impounding Reservoir would flow to a pumping station at the foot of the hill before being sent up to the service reservoir and distributed to households. The first of such service reservoirs was built on Mount Emily in 1878, followed by Pearl’s Hill in 1898 and Fort Canning in 1928.¹⁹

By the end of the 1900s, Singapore’s daily water consumption had surged to 4.5 million gallons. This was due to the booming population as well as the growth of New Harbour (now Keppel Harbour). Municipal Engineer James MacRitchie decided that the best course of action was to enlarge the Impounding Reservoir. Carried out between 1891 and 1894 and at a cost of 32,000 Straits dollars, the expansion works increased the capacity of the reservoir.²⁰

However, the enlarged reservoir could barely meet with the increased demand during prolonged periods of dry weather. To relieve the pressure, the municipality had to curtail water supply to as few as two hours per day. It also resorted to supplementing the water supply with well water despite its inferior quality.²¹

In 1905, the Impounding Reservoir’s embankment was raised to further increase its capacity. To obtain the additional water, a tunnel was dug to connect the reservoir to Kallang River. While the construction of the tunnel was still underway, Municipal Engineer Robert Peirce proposed constructing an embankment across the valley of Kallang River to create a second reservoir in 1902.²²

Thomson Road Reservoir c.1910. Known as the Impounding Reservoir when it began operations in 1877, it was renamed Thomson Road Reservoir in 1907 and MacRitchie Reservoir in 1922. Lim Kheng Chye Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Kallang Reservoir – renamed Peirce Reservoir in 1922 and Lower Peirce Reservoir in 1975 – was officially opened in 1911 at a cost of around one million Straits dollars. Capable of producing at least 3.5 million gallons of water each day, the new reservoir together with the enlarged Thomson Road Reservoir (known as Impounding Reservoir, until 1907), supplied the town of Singapore with 9 million gallons of water daily.²³

While the two reservoirs provided enough water in the first decade of the 1900s, there were concerns whether this was sustainable, especially since the population had swelled from 300,000 in 1910 to almost 420,000 in 1920. During the same period, the average daily consumption of water had risen to over 10 million gallons, beyond the capacity of the two reservoirs.²⁴

Peirce warned that the water situation would end in “disaster” unless “large and bold measures [were] taken to improve the water supply without delay”. The Municipal Council’s initial solution was to construct a third reservoir at Seletar (renamed Upper Seletar Reservoir in 1992), which was envisaged to have a capacity of 700 million gallons.²⁵ But the project was subsequently scaled down to a smaller reservoir that supplied only 2 million gallons of water a day in favour of something far more ambitious – the Johor water scheme.²⁶ 

Water from Across the Border

The Municipal Council had explored the idea of importing water from Johor from as early as 1904 after Peirce predicted that Singapore would continue to face chronic water shortages even if it were to develop all its potential water resources on the island. Over the next decades, Scudai River, Linggiu River (a tributary of Johor River) and Pelapah River in the state of Johor were identified as potential water sources for Singapore (see text box below).²⁷

Finally, in 1923, the Municipal Council concluded that the best solution was to obtain water from Gunong Pulai in Johor due to its height. Located some 32 miles from Singapore and standing at 770 feet, Gunong Pulai allowed water to be delivered to the island by gravity, which was the most economical means.²⁸

Development of the Gunong Pulai scheme, which cost 22 million Straits dollars, involved the construction of a series of dams to create a 1.2 billion-gallon impounding reservoir at the mountain’s ridge in 1927 and a second 3.2 billion-gallon reservoir located some 5 miles away in Pontian Kechil in 1931. As the latter reservoir was situated on lower ground, the water had to be pumped to Gunong Pulai’s waterworks for treatment and then piped across the Causeway.²⁹

With water supply boosted by the Johor reservoirs, it was initially thought that Singapore had met its water requirements for at least 20 years. However, the introduction of a waterborne sewage system and an increase in British troops in Singapore led to an unexpected surge in water consumption to 25 million gallons a day by 1940. In response, the Municipal Council embarked on a plan in 1939 to turn Seletar into a permanent reservoir with a daily yield of at least 4 million gallons. The project, which cost 5.6 million Straits dollars, also involved the construction of a second Pontian Kechil-Gunong Pulai water pipe to increase capacity. With these improvements, Singapore’s daily water supply increased to over 31 million gallons.³⁰

The continued rise in population – from 570,000 in 1940 to nearly a million in 1947 – again cast a spotlight on Singapore’s water woes.³¹ Since the daily water supply stayed relatively unchanged during the Japanese Occupation and the immediate post-war period, the increase in consumption meant that Singapore was once again facing the crisis situation it experienced during the early 1900s.³² To address this issue, the Municipal Council curtailed water supply and launched a Save Water campaign in 1950 to reduce consumption.³³

In urgent need of more water, the Municipal Council – renamed the City Council in 1951 – looked for a new water source in Johor and decided on Tebrau River.³⁴

Completed in 1953, the Tebrau waterworks alleviated the water situation in Singapore by adding at least 20 million gallons of water to the colony’s daily supply. This brought the daily total supply to at least 56 million gallons, surpassing the daily consumption of 52 million gallons. Initially, the City Council wanted to expand the Tebrau waterworks, but the winding down of the Communist-related Emergency from the late 1950s allowed the Johor River scheme to be revived in 1958 and finalised in 1961.³⁵

In an age when people had to collect water from standpipes, public education was vital in water conservation. Courtesy of PUB, Singapore’s national water agency.

When the new waterworks at Johor River began operations in 1968, at least 30 million gallons of water were delivered daily to Singapore. While the authorities were planning the Johor River scheme, they also built another waterworks at Scudai River in 1965.

Known as Sultan Ismail Waterworks, it provided Singapore with another 30 million gallons of water each day. The additional water supply from the Johor River and Scudai schemes was timely for Singapore as the island’s daily water consumption had more than doubled by this time, from 52 million gallons in 1955 to 110 million in 1970. This was largely due to a population boom in the 1960s as well as the growth of the shipping, services and industrial sectors.³⁶

Securing Domestic Water Resources

Although the water supply from Johor helped to relieve the water crisis in the 1950s and 60s, the government had already recognised its heavy dependence on Johor for water. This was evident during the Malayan Campaign when the water supply from Johor was abruptly cut in January 1942 after the British, in a bid to slow down the advancing Japanese forces, blew up the Causeway and with it the main water pipe system from Gunong Pulai.³⁷

In 1963 when both the Johor River and Scudai schemes were still under construction, coupled with the prolonged dry weather, Singapore’s water supply fell to critically low levels, thereby forcing the PUB – formed in 1963 to take over the utilities departments from the City Council – to impose a 10-month-long water rationing exercise between April 1963 and February 1964.³⁸

In 1950, the Municipal Council had commissioned a study to investigate the availability of new water sources in Singapore. Led by the engineering firm Sir Bruce White, Wolfe Barry and Partners, the consultants recommended three methods of drawing water from the rivers: either damming or transferring the water to a larger central reservoir, tapping on groundwater in the eastern part of the island, and constructing wells and harvesting rainwater. However, in light of the revival of the Johor River scheme, the City Council did not implement the recommendations except to create a groundwater system in Bedok in 1959. Costing M$2 million, the project was a disappointment as it yielded less than one million gallons of water a day instead of the expected 5 to 10 million gallons.³⁹

(Left) Then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew visiting the Sultan Ismail Waterworks construction site at Scudai River in May 1964. Completed in 1965, the waterwoks provided Singapore with another 30 million gallons of water each day. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.
(Right) A 2001 poster by the Public Utilities Board exhorting people to save water. PUB Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

After Singapore gained independence in 1965, one of the first post-independence water projects carried out by the PUB was the enlargement of Seletar Reservoir in April 1967. Upon its completion in February 1969, the S$27-million project increased the reservoir’s capacity by more than 30-fold.⁴⁰

In 1972, PUB embarked on the construction of a new S$55-million reservoir located upstream of Lower Peirce Reservoir. Upper Peirce Reservoir was completed in 1975 and officially opened in February 1977 with a water storage capacity seven times that of Lower Peirce Reservoir.⁴¹ 

Unprotected Catchments

MacRitchie, Upper Peirce and Lower Peirce reservoirs are located in the Central Catchment Nature Reserve. As it is not possible to build new reservoirs within this gazetted nature reserve, the PUB has had to look elsewhere for water. In 1972, the agency released the first Water Master Plan, which charted the long-term development of water resources in Singapore.⁴²

One innovative method adopted by PUB was the creation of a string of unprotected catchments across the island. Unlike protected reservoirs, such catchments are located in urban areas, yielding water that is of lower quality and with higher organic matter. To improve water quality, a number of measures were taken, such as using stronger disinfectants, improving filtration methods, enforcing stricter anti-pollution controls, implementing a more efficient waste management system, and launching the Keep Singapore Clean campaign.⁴³

Built across Marina Channel, Marina Barrage created Singapore’s 15th reservoir, the first located in the city. The barrage serves three purposes: it stores water, alleviates flooding and supports recreational activities. Courtesy of PUB, Singapore’s national water agency.

The Kranji and Pandan reservoirs were the first two estuarine reservoirs built in unprotected catchment areas in 1975. The S$75-million Kranji-Pandan water scheme was formed by damming the Kranji and Pandan rivers. The two reservoirs served mainly the north-western part of Singapore, including Jurong Industrial Estate and housing estates in the area.⁴⁴

In 1981, dykes were built across the mouths of the Murai, Poyan, Sarimbun and Tengah rivers to transform them into reservoirs under the Western Catchment Scheme. These reservoirs supply water to the western part of the island, including Queenstown, Bukit Merah, Telok Blangah, Pasir Panjang and Alexandra.⁴⁵

In 1983, PUB initiated the Sungei Seletar-Bedok Water project to meet the increasing demand for fresh water in the eastern part of Singapore. Unlike the earlier two estuarine reservoir schemes, the main water source for this urbanised catchment was storm water run-off. Storm water collected from nine ponds in Bedok, Tampines and Yan Kit was channelled to Bedok Reservoir, which was created from a former sand quarry.

A second reservoir, Sungei Seletar Reservoir (renamed Lower Seletar Reservoir in 1992), was formed by damming Seletar River. The river water was also used to fill Bedok Reservoir (see text box overleaf).⁴⁶

Waste water is treated at the Ulu Pandan NEWater Plant, which opened in 2007. Reclaimed water is today one of Singapore’s Four National Taps. Photo by Richard W.J. Koh.

Marina Reservoir, located in the heart of the city, is another urban reservoir. It officially opened in 2008 and was created by building a dam – Marina Barrage – across Marina Channel. Envisioned by Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1987, the barrage is unique in the sense that it stores water, alleviates flooding and supports recreational activities. The flood control function is enabled by a mechanism that serves as a tidal barrier to prevent rising waters from advancing inland and flooding low-lying areas. The barrage also keeps the reservoir’s water level constant, making it suitable for water activities such as sailing, windsurfing and canoeing.⁴⁷ 

NEWater and Desalinated Water

Another recommendation of the 1972 Water Master Plan was the use of reclaimed water, in other words, water that has been purified to a high degree. This was, however, not an entirely new concept. Industrial water was first introduced in 1966 with the construction of Jurong Industrial Water Works by the Economic Development Board to supply non-potable water for industries. The objective was to help conserve potable water by reclaiming the effluent from Ulu Pandan Water Reclamation Plant.⁴⁸

In 1974, Singapore’s Sewerage Department opened an experimental plant in Jurong that attempted to produce potable reclaimed water by using advanced membrane technologies, including reverse osmosis, to purify waste water. However, the plant was decommissioned a year later as the purification technologies available then were unreliable and expensive.⁴⁹

It would take another 25 years before technological advances made it possible for PUB to revisit the idea of producing potable reclaimed water. The Singapore Water Reclamation Study (NEWater Study) conducted in 1998 revealed that water reclamation was a growing trend globally and that membrane-based purification technologies had become more reliable and cost efficient. This led to the opening of the prototype NEWater demonstration plant at Bedok Water Reclamation Plant in 2000.⁵⁰

A comprehensive study of NEWater was carried out between 2000 and 2002. Although the study concluded that NEWater was safe for potable use, it recommended blending NEWater with raw reservoir water and then subjecting the resulting mix to the same water treatment process as raw reservoir water. This would re-introduce trace minerals removed during the production of NEWater and make the idea of consuming treated and purified waste water more palatable to the public.⁵¹

Following the successful conclusion of the NEWater study, PUB’s Bedok NEWater Plant came into operation in 2002, marking the launch of NEWater as the Third National Tap.⁵² Since then, NEWater plants have been built in Kranji (2003), Seletar (2004 but decommissioned in 2011), Ulu Pandan (2007) and Changi (2010 and 2017).⁵³ These plants are expected to meet up to 55 percent of Singapore’s future water needs by 2060.⁵⁴

The 1972 Water Master Plan also recommended tapping seawater as another source of water supply. However, minerals and salts have to be removed from seawater first in a process known as desalination. Unfortunately, as the desalination technology available at the time was energy intensive and costly, the PUB decided not to adopt this method. As more energy efficient water purification methods, particularly reverse osmosis, became available in the 1990s, PUB began to relook the idea of desalinating seawater.

In 2005, desalinated water officially became the Fourth National Tap with the opening of the first desalination plant in Tuas. Hyflux’s wholly owned subsidiary, SingSpring Pte Ltd, won a bid with to construct a desalination plant under PUB’s Design, Build, Own and Operate (DBOO) model. This plant, which has a daily capacity of up to 30 million gallons, supplies PUB with desalinated water over a 20-year period.

In 2013, Hyflux won a second bid to construct the second desalination plant under the DBOO model to supply PUB with desalinated water over a 25-year period.⁵⁵ By 2020, Singapore is expected to commission three more desalination plants in Tuas, Marina East and Jurong Island.⁵⁶ By 2060, Singapore’s total water demand could almost double, with the non-domestic sector accounting for about 70 percent. By then, NEWater and desalination would meet up to 85 percent of Singapore’s future water needs. 

Other Water Strategies

Conceptualised in the 1990s as a solution for Singapore’s used water needs, Phase 1 of the Deep Tunnel Sewerage System (DTSS) comprises a 48 km-long deep sewer tunnel running from Kranji to Changi, a centralised water reclamation plant at Changi, two deep sea outfall pipes and 60 km of link sewers.

The heart of DTSS Phase 1, the Changi Water Reclamation Plant, is capable of treating 900,000 cubic metres (202 million gallons) of used water per day. The used water is treated to meet international standards before it is channelled to a NEWater factory for further purification or discharged into sea. At a NEWater plant, the treated used water goes through a rigorous 3-step treatment process to produce high-grade reclaimed water.⁵⁷ Projected to complete by 2025, DTSS Phase 2 can collect used water from the western and southern parts of Singapore for treatment at the proposed Tuas Water Reclamation Plant.

Conceptualised in the 1990s as a solution for Singapore’s waste water needs, the Deep Tunnel Sewerage System uses a network of deep tunnels to convey waste water by gravity to NEWater reclamation plants in Kranji, Changi and Tuas. Courtesy of PUB, Singapore’s national water agency.

To overcome the limited capacity of existing reservoirs, PUB implemented the Reservoir Integration Scheme in 2007. This scheme uses a system of pipelines and pumps to connect reservoirs so that excess water can be transferred from one reservoir to another, thereby optimising their capacity.⁵⁸ In 2011, the total number of reservoirs in Singapore increased to 17 when two more were created when dykes were built across the mouth of Punggol and Serangoon rivers.

PUB is also making strides in water technologies by partnering overseas firms. One recent example is the trial of a new desalination method in 2015 with American company, Evoqua Water Technologies. Known as electro-deionisation, this method uses an electric field to extract dissolved salts from seawater, leaving behind fresh water. Compared with the current desalination method, electro- deionisation is significantly more efficient in terms of energy usage and cost.⁵⁹

From the first well dug by the British in 1819 to a constant supply of clean drinking water flowing from taps, Singapore’s water journey – at times bumpy and perilous – has come a long way since the time of Raffles. Through persistence, foresight and innovation, our water pioneers have been able to overcome massive obstacles and challenges to develop and diversify Singapore’s water sources.

At the current rate of 148 litres per person per day, Singapore uses more water than many other developed cities. It is crucial that Singapore continues to find innovative ways to secure and sustain a robust and affordable water supply for future generations. Water rationing and lining up in snaking queues to collect water from public standpipes is a scene from the 1960s that we should not revisit.

ACTIVE, BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN WATERS Other than being one of the first urban water catchments, Bedok Reservoir was also one of three demonstration projects under the Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters (ABC Waters) Programme. Launched in 2006 the programme aimed to turn waterways and reservoirs into recreational sites for public use by enhancing them with amenities.60 Kayakers at Bedok Reservoir, 2011. This was one of three demonstration projects under the Active, Beautiful, Clean Waters (ABC Waters) Programme launched in 2006. Reservoirs were beautified with pathways, trees and street lights, and some were even opened for recreational purposes. Photo by Richard W. J. Koh. Prior to this, the public held the view that reservoirs were out of bounds and strictly used for the collection of water. As Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong quipped, “Our old attitude was, the water is for the reservoir, don’t go near it, keep far away, keep it clean, no canoeing, don’t walk near it, if possible, don’t even look at it”.61 However, the ABC Waters Programme became a game changer. Selected reservoirs and waterways in Singapore received extensive makeovers. Street lamps were installed, trees were planted and proper pedestrian access was provided. In some cases, even fishing decks and pontoons for boats and kayaks were added.62

Notes

A band of extraordinary women rose above oppression and poverty in Malayan plantations to overthrow the British in colonial India. Meira Chand has the story.

The traditional Indian woman is invariably portrayed as modest and compliant, entirely focused on her role as daughter, wife and mother. Yet, by the same token, the image of the warrior woman is a recurring figure in Indian history, beginning in Hindu religious mythology with the goddess Durga and culminating in modern times with figures such as Phoolan Devi, the notorious bandit queen.

Female power has also been startlingly celebrated over the centuries in the works of Indian women poets and writers, and in tales of legendary women such as Chand Bibi and the Rani of Jhansi.

(Left) Soldiers of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment marching alongside Indian National Army troops, c.1943–45. Puan Sri Datin J Athi Nahappan Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.
(Right) Subhas Chandra Bose inspecting the Rani of Jhansi Regiment and Indian National Army troops in Singapore in 1943. S R Nathan Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The Indian women who joined the Indian National Army (INA) in 1942, as the events of World War II unfolded, chose to recognise their power and agency as women in a way that reflects that alternative image. The bravery of these women in the nationalist efforts to overthrow the British in colonial India has been largely overlooked by history. The issue of gender, and the illiteracy and low caste of the majority of the Indian women allowed for their easy dismissal, and has resulted in their courage being little known or celebrated.

In trying to make sense of the historical meaning and importance of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment while researching my novel, Sacred Waters, I found a general scarcity of material about the women who made up this regiment. In contrast, there is a large collection of material available for those researching the male segment of the INA.

Subhas Chandra Bose, with Captain (Dr) Lakshmi Sahgal, inspecting the guard of honour presented by the Rani of Jhansi Regiment during the opening of the Rani of Jhansi camp at Waterloo Street, Singapore, on 22 October 1943. Courtesy of Netaji Research Bureau.

The remarkable story of these brave women deserves to be better known. But it is impossible to write about the Rani of Jhansi Regiment without mentioning the force they were part of, the INA, and its inextricable ties to the charismatic Indian freedom fighter, Subhas Chandra Bose.

Subhas Chandra Bose

Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) was a freedom fighter who fought for the liberation of India from British rule. He commanded the Indian National Army in Singapore and created the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. Nirvan Thivy Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The name of Subhas Chandra Bose is little heard today, but in his own time Bose was a hero to many in India. He was a controversial and divisive figure, inspiring aversion in his opponents and adulation in his followers. Both Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) and Bose (1897–1945) were legendary sons of India, fighters for freedom from colonial rule, and active during the same time frame. Yet, the means by which each man sought to achieve India’s freedom could not have been more different.

Bose was 28 years younger than Gandhi, and was initially greatly influenced by the writings and ideals of the older man. However, a growing admiration for militant European fascism caused Bose’s views to take a radical turn. He grew critical of Gandhi with his symbolically rustic spinning wheel and call for non-violent civil disobedience, feeling that such passivity would never achieve independence for India. Bose believed freedom could only be gained by violent means, through an invasion of the country from outside. “Give me your blood, and I will give you freedom” was his famous battle cry.

In 1941, Bose escaped house arrest by the British in Calcutta, and fled overland to Germany to petition Adolf Hitler’s help in his mission. At first Hitler was supportive of Bose, allowing him to raise a small army, the Indian Legion, which was comprised of Indian prisoners-of war in Germany who had been captured from the British. Around this time Bose acquired the title, Netaji, or great leader, by which he is still remembered today. Although Hitler appeared supportive of Bose, once Germany lost the war to Russia, it was clear he was in no position to help Bose drive the British out of India. Any interest Hitler retained in Bose was reserved for propaganda victories rather than military ones, and Bose grew progressively disillusioned.

On the other side of the world, the British stronghold of Singapore fell to the Japanese military on 15 February 1942. As had been the case in Germany, large numbers of Indian soldiers who were part of the defeated British army were taken prisoner and encouraged by the Japanese to become part of a new military force known as the Indian National Army.

With Japanese support, this force was expected to rally opposition to British colonial rule in India, and spearhead a possible subsequent Japanese invasion of the country. The fledgling INA unit, however, fell apart in 1943 when its commander, Captain Mohan Singh, was arrested for insubordination to the Japanese. A new leader was sought and the Japanese settled on Subhas Chandra Bose. In Germany, World War II was not going well for Hitler, and he was only too happy to put Bose on a German submarine and pack him off to the Japanese in Singapore.

Bose arrived in Singapore on 2 July 1943 to an enthusiastic welcome from the Indian community. He immediately took command of both the Indian Independence League (IIL), a political organisation of expatriate Indians, and the INA. The latter was made up of approximately 40,000 Indian soldiers, and one of Bose’s first initiatives was to encourage civilian recruits to join this army.

Beginnings of the Jhansi Regiment
Bose was from Bengal, a state that more than any other in India encouraged the education and emancipation of women. It was this principle that led him to create a regiment of women in the INA. The new regiment was formed on 12 July 1943 and Bose named it after the legendary Rani of Jhansi, who famously rode into battle against the British in 1858, and died a martyr to the Indian cause.

Reported numbers vary, but it is thought that the Rani of Jhansi Regiment consisted of well over 1,000 Indian women, spread out over camps in Singapore, Malaya and Burma (Myanmar). It is estimated that only 20 percent of the recruits were well educated women, who became the commanding officers. The remaining 80 percent were the wives and daughters of Tamil labourers who worked on the rubber estates of Malaya, and who would have been either illiterate, or have had no more than a few years of basic education.

Before large and enthusiastic rallies on the Padang and at Farrer Park, Bose set out his vision for India, and his wish that the Indian women of Singapore, Malaya and Burma – like their contemporaries in the Indian motherland – participate in the freedom movement too.

 “This must be a truly revolutionary army… I am appealing also to women… women must be prepared to fight for their freedom and for independence… along with independence they will get their own emancipation.”¹

Bose’s inspiring words caused women listening to him on the Padang to surge forward through police barricades, eager to fight as he demanded, for India and their own emancipation.

At the time in India, the struggle for independence from British rule, more than any other impetus, encouraged women from all strata of Indian society to take greater control of their lives. They were urged to participate in a life outside the home in new but sanctioned ways, to cross the forbidden threshold into the world of men, and to work together with men for the freedom of the motherland.

Subhas Chandra Bose arriving in Singapore on 2 July 1943. Nirvan Thivy Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The wave of Indian nationalism sweeping through the Indian diaspora at this time cannot be underestimated. On the British-owned rubber plantations of Malaya, where Tamil workers lived a degraded life set apart from other communities, they would have been well aware of the growing anti-colonial sentiments of the time. Tamil newspapers and radio carried news from India, and pictures of Gandhi hung in many places.

At the very bottom of the plantation hierarchy, Tamil workers lived in poverty and exploitation, but this separateness allowed their Indian identity to remain intact. Even if cut off from India for two or three generations, they still spoke their native tongue and wore Indian dress in everyday life. At Hindu temples in the rubber estates, they celebrated religious festivals and practices. Hindu myth and folklore was handed down from one generation to the next, and their sense of Tamil identity remained strong.²

Stripped of their self-worth in Malaya, the motherland became a consoling image for these displaced Tamils, an India of the imagination, created out of an ancestral memory that was constantly kept alive.³ Seen through this lens – the insularity of the Tamil community and its powerful ties to India and Indian heritage – it is easier to understand why second and third generation Indians in Malaya, who had never lived in India, were stirred by the nationalistic feelings of the time, and willingly laid down their lives for the patriotic cause.

The women who volunteered to join the newly formed Rani of Jhansi Regiment were all exceptionally young, the majority in their mid- to late teens, a few are even documented as being no more than 12 or 14 years old. Most were of an impressionable age, filled with burgeoning emotions, desires and romantic dreams. In the turmoil of war, the women regiment may also have been seen by some as a safe haven where food, shelter and safety from marauding Japanese soldiers was provided.

Even so, it is astounding that Indian women, some so young as to be barely out of childhood, many illiterate and the majority mindful of their traditional roles in their society, should be prepared to leave families and husbands behind and lay down their lives for the cause of Indian freedom. Their commitment is even more exceptional when it is remembered that most had never set foot in their motherland. Yet, all were filled with passion for the cause, all empowered by the irresistible sense of adventure the Rani of Jhansi Regiment offered. Many were also a testament to Bose’s personality as being a powerful element in their decision to join the regiment.

Under Bose’s leadership, Indian women from Singapore, Burma and Malaya, of varied caste, religion and social backgrounds, were recruited into the Rani of Jhansi Regiment to fight for India’s freedom. In caste- and class-ridden India where Hindu will not eat with Muslim, where the superior Brahmin will not mix with the low-caste labourer, where a northerner cannot speak the language of a southerner, and where the untouchable is anathema to all, the fostering of a sense of oneness was a difficult task.

Subhas Chandra Bose announcing the formation of the Provisional Government of Free India, or Azad Hind, at a rally at Cathay Building, Singapore, in October 1943. He established Azad Hind to ally with the Axis powers and free India from British rule. Nirvan Thivy Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Bose ordered all recruits to eat and live together whatever their differences. As they came from different parts of India and spoke different languages, they were required to learn the common language of Hindustani as a means of communication. Bose also introduced the Roman script for writing Hindustani in order to overcome the conflict of using multiple regional Indian scripts.

Those Ranis whose testimony has been recorded all bear witness to how quickly feelings of differences fell by the wayside, and how the tight knit bonds of being a community of women motivated by a powerful cause overrode everything else. This sense of community forged alliances and collaborations across diverse boundaries, firing up everyone with the commitment of female comradeship and the commonality of shared experiences.

The Making of Women Warriors
The women in the Rani of Jhansi Regiment received the same basic military training as male INA recruits. For many, the early experiences of military life would have been a difficult rite of passage. When the women first joined the regiment, the unshackling of traditional ways could not have been easy, especially for uneducated girls from the plantations.

The discarding of conventional feminine reticence, ingrained through centuries of Indian custom, and the learning of military aggression was akin to building a new personality. The wearing of military uniforms – shorts, jodhpurs, fitted shirts and belts that cinched the waist – revealed the body in an unaccustomed way that may have been shameful for some of the girls.

A fighting force, ready for war, has no time for vanity, and the shedding of their long tresses, a source of pride for all Indian women, must have also been painful to many. Yet, most of the women quickly adapted to the empowerment their new life brought, and the demand for growth it made on their character. In their new role they were soldiers first before they were women.

Although for educated recruits, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment presented an opportunity to assert their identity as women and as Indians, for the illiterate it was above all a chance to gain self-respect for the first time, to escape the abuse and contempt they experienced on a daily basis on the plantations. For many, this change of status had an enormous psychological effect. In her memoir, A Revolutionary Life (1997),⁴ Lakshmi Sahgal (see text box), a doctor in Singapore who rose to command the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, points out that while on the plantations the women were treated like cattle and sexually exploited, in the Rani of Jhansi Regiment they found dignity as individuals and pride in fighting for the nation.

For better or for worse, the Rani of Jhansi Regiment was never sent to the frontlines. After their military training, many recruits opted to become nurses and work in hospitals near war zones in Burma, but a large number of women remained as active reservists, always waiting – and expecting – to be sent to the front.

(Left) Women volunteering to join the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, 1943. Image source: Lebra, J. C. (2008). Women Against the Raj: The Rani of Jhansi Regiment. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. (Call no.: RSING 954.035 LEB)
(Right) Soldiers of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment undergoing training, c.1943–45. Image source: Bose, S.K., & Sinha, B.N. (Eds). (1979). Netaji: A Pictorial Biography (p. 176). Calcutta: Ananda Publishers Pte Ltd. (Call no.: R 954.0350924 NET)

Soon after World War II ended, a diary was published in India asserting that some of the women in the Jhansi Regiment did see actual action in the field. Jai Hind: The Diary of a Rebel Daughter of India with the Rani of Jhansi Regiment created a great stir when it was anonymously published in 1945, but it was later found to be a fictionalised account written by a male journalist, A.D. Shenth.

Those ageing Ranis I interviewed for my novel, so many decades after the war, still spoke of Subhas Chandra Bose with intense emotion. Indeed, the influence of Bose’s personal charisma pervades almost everything that has been written about him. Perhaps it is permissible therefore to speculate that many of the Ranis, along with the motivation of patriotism in joining the regiment, may have found in Bose the romantic ideal that traditional Indian society – along with arranged marriage and female repression – denied them.

No tales of impropriety have ever come to light in Bose’s leadership of these young women; he was known to be a dedicated, caring and paternalistic leader. In the minds of the Ranis, they were his Ranis, and Bose spoke of them as my girls. Bose himself openly acknowledged the “grave responsibility” of persuading young women to leave their homes and take up arms.⁵

The End of World War II
The devastation wreaked by the dropping of the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by American warplanes in the first weeks of August 1945 set off a series of events that brought World War II to a rapid close. When the British returned to Malaya in September, Bose kept good his promise to the young women under his command by returning them safely to their families. Within days of the conclusion of the war, Bose himself was killed in a plane crash in Taiwan as he tried to escape to Russia or Manchuria. His death still remains shrouded in mystery and speculation, and has attained the status of myth. Many questions remain unanswered, queries that only time and the release of still-classified documents in India will put to rest.

Bose’s tragic death came as a shock to all who knew him, and history continues to evaluate his contribution to India’s independence in 1947. Yet, history has never dealt squarely with the women of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, and their courage has been inadequately celebrated. Their gender prevented them from being taken seriously, and indeed the Japanese military was resolutely dismissive of them.

At the end of the war when the INA was dissolved, most of the women were still very young, with their entire lives ahead of them. On their return to Malaya, they were quickly released, rejected by the returning British Military Administration as misguided females carried away by romantic notions. In contrast, the professional male soldiers of the INA were sent to stand trial at the Red Fort in Delhi, where it was expected they would be hung as traitors. The Red Fort Trials, however, collapsed under the pressure of Indian unrest, but that, as they say, is another story.

Many educated women from the officer class of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment later entered professional careers, and much of what we know about the regiment today is largely because of this group of women and the more public nature of their activities. Unfortunately, the majority of women in the rank-and-file regiment returned to the same disempowered situations they had left behind when they first signed up; they married and raised families, and became cloistered again in traditional social structures.

Still others were repatriated to India, a country unfamiliar to them, and died there in poverty and obscurity. Some ex-officers of the Jhansi Regiment worked to secure pensions from the Indian government for these women, but often to no avail.⁶ Illiteracy prevented many women from being aware of their elevated status as freedom fighters, or that pensions could be extracted from the Indian government because of their status. Their low social position, and lack of knowledge and education made it easy for the Indian government to refuse such pension payouts.⁷

Yet, without exception, those Ranis I interviewed or those whose recorded testimonies I have read or listened to, all remember their service in the regiment – whatever the dangers and privations they endured – as the best time of their lives.

It is sad that the endeavours of these brave women have been largely forgotten by history. In her introduction to Lakshmi Sahgal’s memoir, A Revolutionary Life, Geraldine Forbes suggests it is easy to reject their enterprise because they never saw action, were never real “female warriors” fighting alongside their men, nor “true women” fighting to death to save their children. Most male-authored accounts of the INA seldom give due reference to the role played by the women in the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. Forbes laments that so many decades after the war when many historians are committed to a more inclusive view of events, this lack of acknowledgement is regrettable.⁸

The Rani of Jhansi Regiment comprised a relatively small number of women, and they were operative for only the last two years of the war, between 1943 and1945, when Bose commanded the INA. It matters not that this female regiment played a minor role in both the INA and the events of World War II. It matters not that this force of women was small and did not see action at the frontlines. That such a force should have been established at all in that day and age in history is in itself of tremendous importance.

Bose’s motivations for starting the regiment can be endlessly argued, but what matters is that it utterly transformed the lives of the traditional women who joined it. These women entered a scenario where the patriarchal code was at its most inflexible, and where they represented an embodiment of female agency and resistance.

Although so many of the Jhansi Ranis returned to their traditional societies after the war, and others lived out their lives in poverty in India, their brief experience of empowerment would have been orally related to their daughters and other female members of their households, and would have helped sow the seed for change in later generations of women.

In India, recent renewed interest in the Rani of Jhansi Regiment has rekindled discussion of their role in the struggle for Indian independence. It is hoped that with this renewed interest, acknowledgement will at last be given to this small band of extraordinary Indian women.

LAKSHMI SAHGAL Dr Lakshmi Sahgal took up command of the Rani of Jhansi Regiment and became known as Captain Lakshmi, a name and identity that would remain with her for life. Image source: IASPaper.net. As the daughter of politically active parents, Lakshmi Sahgal (born Lakshmi Swaminathan; 1914–2012) was made aware, from a young age, of anti-British sentiments in India and the fight for political freedom. After completing high school, she chose to study medicine and obtained her medical degree in 1938. Fiercely independent, Sahgal left an unhappy marriage to follow a lover, who was also a doctor, to Singapore in 1940. During the Japanese Occupation, she became involved with the Indian Independence League. In 1943, Subhas Chandra Bose arrived in Singapore to take command of the INA, and Sahgal, as a prominent woman activist, was part of the official reception committee that met him at the airport. When Bose announced his wish to create the Rani of Jhansi Regiment, Sahgal was quickly drawn into the organising of this new force. At Bose’s request she took up its command, establishing a camp and recruiting young women to the force. Sahgal became known as Captain Lakshmi, a name and identity that would remain with her for life. In Singapore, in October 1943, Bose formed the Provisional Government of Free India, or as it was more simply known, Azad Hind, and Sahgal was included in his cabinet. Later, in Burma, she established more camps and organised relief work. When the war ended in 1945, Sahgal was taken prisoner by guerrilla fighters, and made to march through the jungle for days. In 1946, she was handed over to the British in Rangoon, and subsequently repatriated to India and released. In 1947, Sahgal married Prem Kumar Sahgal, a former officer who left the British Indian Army to join the Indian National Army (INA). Along with other fellow INA officers, her husband was put on trial for treason at the Red Fort in Delhi. However, the charge was not upheld, and he was dismissed from the British Indian Army. The couple then settled in Kanpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where Sahgal established her medical practice. In her later years, Sahgal joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and was a founding member of the All India Democratic Women’s Association. She passed away on 23 July 2012, at age 97.

Meira Chand’s new novel, Sacred Waters (2017), is published by Marshall Cavendish Editions and retails for S$21.50 at major bookshops. It is also available for reference and loan at the Lee Kong Chian Reference Library and selected public libraries (Call nos.: RSING 823.914 CHA and SING CHA).

References

Jai Hind: The diary of a rebel daughter of India, with the Rani of Jhansi Regiment. (1945). Bombay: Janmabhoomi Prakashan Mandir. (Call no.: RSEA 954.025 JAI)

Lebra, J.C. (2008). The Indian National Army and Japan (p. 61). Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. (Call no.: RSING 940.5354 LEB-[WAR])

Notes 

This unique style of architecture only reigned for five decades in China, yet several buildings in Singapore still bear the hallmarks of this hybrid form, says Julian Davison.

There have been several “Chinese  Renaissances” in the history of the Middle Kingdom – depending on which authority one consults. For the historian, the Han (206 BCE–CE 220), Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties, can each, in their own way, claim to be the Chinese equivalent to the Renaissance in the West  that took place between the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 17th centuries.

Chinese Renaissance Deconstructed
When it comes to architecture, however, the term “Chinese Renaissance” generally refers to the output of a group of young Chinese architects in the 1920s and ’30s who returned to China after a period of overseas study, seeking to reconcile what they had learnt of modern building technologies with a stylistic idiom that reflected traditional Chinese aesthetic sensibilities – a kind of architectural equivalent of “Socialism with Chinese  characteristics”.

Perhaps the best known of these architects was Lu Yanzhi (1894–1929), a graduate of Cornell University, who  designed the Sun Yat Sen Mausoleum  in Nanjing (completed 1929). Another was Dong Dayou (1899–1975), an alumnus of Columbia University, who wrote an article in the English-language T’ien Hsia Monthly in 1936 extolling the  achievements of this pioneer generation  of Chinese architects:

“A group of young students went to America and Europe to study the fundamentals of architecture. They came back to China filled with ambition to create something new and worthwhile. They initiated a great movement, a movement to bring back a dead architecture to life: in other words, to do away with poor imitations of Western architecture and to make Chinese architecture truly national.”¹

Given the historical background of  this period, the Chinese Renaissance, as an architectural movement, can be  seen as part of a wider call for renewal and revitalisation of Chinese society and culture taking place at the time. This came on the back of more than half a century of foreign interference in China’s affairs, following the disastrous Opium Wars of  the mid-19th century that ceded Hong  Kong to Britain and established treaty ports in China.

(Left) Interment of Sun Yat Sen, 1 June 1929. His mausoleum, which was designed by Chinese architect Lu Yanzhi, is situated at the foot of the second peak of Mount Zijin in Nanjing, China. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.
(Right) St Joseph’s Cathedral in Guiyang, China, erected by Catholic missionaries, mid-1870s. It represents one of the earliest examples of an East-West architectural pairing in China. Courtesy of Julian Davison.

The Christian Influence
But if the term Chinese Renaissance perfectly captures the spirit of those times and the ambitions of the young  architects who sought, quite literally, to build a new China, the origins of the movement can be traced back to the architecture of Christian missions stations a quarter of a century earlier.

Although the intent of the mainly American Christian architects who designed these buildings was by and large the same as the Chinese architects who followed them a generation later – namely, to find a middle ground  between Eastern and Western building typologies – their motivation was quite different. These Christian architects were not so much interested in a renewal and rejuvenation of Chinese society and culture, but rather were more intent on luring potential Chinese converts away from their traditional belief systems – Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and ancestral worship – and persuading them to embrace a Christian god.

Singapore has its share of buildings in the Chinese Renaissance style, mostly dating from the post-war era. These include (from the left): Nanyang University Library and Administration Building, Wong Kwan Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore; Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce, courtesy of Julian Davison; and C. K. Tang department store, Chiang Ker Chiu Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

One of the earliest examples of an East-West architectural pairing in China is a remarkable structure – a church  with a belfry in the form of a Chinese pagoda – erected by Catholic missionaries in Guiyang, southwest China, in the mid-1870s. Named St Joseph’s Cathedral, it is, perhaps, no more than a case of cultural appropriation – making do with the materials available at the time – than a purposeful attempt to create a new architectural style that took the design aesthetics of the West and infused them with an Eastern sensibility.

By the turn of the century, however, Christian missionaries in China were acknowledging the fact that churches  built in an overtly European style – Gothic was the architecture of choice back then – could seem alienating and even intimidating to their Chinese audience.  And not only churches, but also schools, hospitals, orphanages and other buildings associated with the typical mission station in China in the late 19th century.

Jeffrey Cody, a leading historian in the field of Christian missionary  architecture in China, writes: “As they [the missionaries] sought to educate, proselytize and convert Chinese, they tried to strike a culturally harmonious  chord with their buildings.”²

One of the first missions to adopt this approach was the Canadian Methodist  Mission in Chengdu, China, which  started adding Chinese-style roofs to its West China Union University campus buildings from around 1910 onwards. As a Foreign Missions Report from 1914 explained, five years of deliberations had “resulted in the adoption of an Orientalized Occidental type of architecture. The  buildings… express the harmony and spirit of unity that pervades the entire institution and the purpose to unite in one the East and West”.³

Before long, other missions followed suit. Between 1911 and 1917, there were at least four other large-scale building projects initiated by Christian missionaries in China that sought to introduce Chinese architectural features into their plans for Christian schools and colleges in China. These include Shandong Christian  University in Jinan, St John’s University in Shanghai, Ginling College for women in Nanjing, and University of Nanking campus, also in Nanjing.

University of Nanking campus in Nanjing, China, 1920. Designed by American architect William Kinne Fellows (1870–1948), the university is an outstanding example of the Chinese Renaissance style in “collegiate” mode. Image source: Wikimedia Commons.

A precedent had been established and thereafter it became the norm for schools and universities, and later,  other kinds of civic buildings – town  halls, museums, municipal offices – to proclaim their Chinese-ness by  incorporating traditional Chinese architectural features in their overall  design, though often this meant no more than placing a token Chinese-style roof on what was otherwise an entirely Western construction.

When it came to the turn of young Chinese architects working in China just after the end of World War I, many  of whom had at one time or another been employed by Henry Killam Murphy (1877–1954), the leading American  exponent of college campus architecture in a contemporary Chinese style, it was only natural that they should follow suit. But there was a marked difference in  their thinking.

What had originally been conceived as a way of persuading the Chinese to abandon their traditional beliefs for  the Christian faith was now turned on its head and seen as an expression of Chinese nationalism and self-regard  – the physical embodiment of Chinese aspirations in the modern world. A  famous instance of this and one that  has a Singapore connection is Xiamen University (previously known as Amoy University), founded in 1921, which was largely financed by a massive endowment  from Singaporean industrialist Tan Kah Kee.⁴

The Chinese Renaissance, as an architectural movement, was relatively short-lived in mainland China – around  50 years in all – beginning with the early experiments of the Christian missionaries at the turn of the 19th century to the defeat of the Nationalist Government in 1949 and the proclamation of the People’s Republic of China. After that, the style fell out of favour on the mainland. It continued, however, to be popular in Taiwan where there are a number of notable Chinese Renaissance buildings from the 1950s and beyond. Examples include Nanhai Academy campus (1950–60s); Grand Hotel (1953–73); National Place Museum (1965); and National Theatre and Concert  Hall (1987) – all of which are found  in Taipei and its vicinity.

Singapore’s Chinese Renaissance
Singapore too has its share of buildings  in the Chinese Renaissance style, mostly dating from the post-war era. These include Nanyang University Library and Administration Building (1953–56); the old C.K. Tang department store on Orchard Road (1957–58, demolished 1982); Tuan Mong High School on Clemenceau Avenue (Teochew Centre today) (1958–63); Kheng Chiu Building on Beach Road that houses the Hainanese clan association and Tin Hou Kong temple (1959–63); Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce on Hill Street (1960–64); and Chung Cheng High School (Main) Administration Building (1965–68).

The parallels with pre-war China and post-war Taiwan are self-evident. Although these buildings – an exception  being Chung Cheng High School – belong, somewhat paradoxically, to the years immediately before independence, they are all about nation-building and the quest for a new architectural identity in the post-colonial era – a style that was at once modern but also reflected  local (i.e. non-Western) sensibilities and history. Apart from Kheng Chiu Building on Beach Road, which was designed by the British architectural practice, Swan & Maclaren, the other buildings are the work of Singaporean architects – Ng Keng Siang, Ang Kheng Lang and Ee Hoong Chwee – all of whom, one assumes, shared similar goals and aspirations with their confrères in China  and Taiwan.

Before the World War II, however, the circumstances surrounding the erection of first-generation Chinese  Renaissance buildings in Singapore were rather different, though even here one finds parallels with China, since it  was Christian missionaries who introduced the Chinese Renaissance style of architecture to Singapore.

Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church
The earliest example of Chinese Renaissance architecture in Singapore is the Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church in Telok Ayer, commissioned by the American Methodist Mission and erected between 1923 and 1925. Its architects were Messrs Swan & Maclaren, the leading architectural practice of the day, with Denis Santry the man responsible for drawing up the plans. His brief was to design an “institutional church” in the heart of Chinatown that would serve the needs of Chinatown’s burgeoning Christian community – the term “institutional  church” in Methodist parlance meaning a place where worship, education and recreational activities all come together  under one roof.

Denis Santry’s building plan of the proposed church and recreation rooms for the Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church, 1923. Building Control Division Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Up until this time, most church buildings erected in Singapore were in the Gothic Revival style, which was the  architecture of choice for ecclesiastical  buildings in late 19th-century Britain.⁵ The Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church completely broke with that tradition, and from the very outset it was clear that this was not going to be an ordinary church with a nave, transept and pews, but rather a wholly modern structure designed specifically to meet the requirements of the client.

In terms of its construction, it was a modern four-storey, concrete-frame building with a flat roof; stylistically it  was part-Byzantine and part-Chinese in execution. Most radical of all, though, was the allocation of space. To begin with, the main congregational hall where church services were held was not on the ground floor as one might have expected, but on the floor above – a large auditorium with a seating capacity of 800, as well as vestries  for the minister and choir. This allowed the ground floor to be used for recreational activities: games, classes, nativity plays at Christmas – in short, various amusements intended to encourage people to come to church. The third floor provided living quarters for two pastors and their families, while the top floor consisted of a  roof terrace with a Chinese-style pavilion at one end that provided fine views of Telok Ayer and its environs.

Not long after work had begun on site, The Straits Times reported in February 1924 that this was “an entirely  new plan in Church architecture as far as this part of the world is concerned and its ingenious and effective lay-out  and novel and attractive design reflect  much skill on the part of the architects,  Messrs Swan and Maclaren”.⁶

Completed in early 1925, the Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church was consecrated by Bishop Titus Lowe on  25 April the same year. In his address, Bishop Lowe noted that the “building was a new departure in the line of making a church a great and useful social centre, the idea here being to “create a social atmosphere which would make it possible for both young and old alike to enjoy the fellowship of each other”.⁷ He drew attention to the fact that the building was  “distinctly Chinese”, adding that “for this  matter they [the Church] were indebted to the architects… in attempting to give them a building that was characteristic of Chinese art”.

Telok Ayer Chinese Methodist Church was consecrated by Bishop Titus Lowe on 25 April 1925. Designed by Denis Santry of Swan & Maclaren, it was a modern four-storey, concrete-frame building that was part-Byzantine and part-Chinese in design. Lee Brothers Studio Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

In reality, Santry’s design was no more like a traditional Chinese building than it was a conventional church, the  upturned eaves of the rooftop pavilion notwithstanding. If anything, it is more Byzantine Revival, the arcaded loggias and arrangement of the side windows within recessed alcoves contributing to this impression. All the same, it was the building’s Chinese elements that seem to have caught the untrained public eye. The Straits Times described the new church as being “distinctly Chinese in appearance, its most characteristic feature being a quaint gabled tower surmounting the roof, and finishing off the design of the frontage very effectively”.⁸

Chinese Methodist School (Anglo-Chinese School)
Telok Ayer Methodist Church was  closely followed by another Swan &  Maclaren commission from the American  Methodist Mission, this time for a new school building at the summit of Cairnhill. The existing Methodist  School – the forerunner of today’s  Anglo-Chinese School – was located at Coleman Street at the time, next  door to the American Methodist Chapel where the school had moved to soon after it was founded in 1886.⁹

The rear elevation of the Anglo-Chinese School at Cairnhill, showing the two-tier roof and extended eaves. Courtesy of Julian Davison.

By the beginning of the 1920s, the Coleman Street buildings were no longer able to accommodate the ever-increasing student population – the school was already obliged to schedule two sessions a day to cope with the existing enrolment of 1,500 pupils – and so the Mission started looking for a suitable location to expand the school. A plot of land on the summit of one of Cairnhill’s twin peaks was purchased in 1923 for $65,000, following which the title deed was transferred to the government in return for a lease with a duration of 999 years. With the site secured, the school  authorities invited Swan & Maclaren to design a building on it.

Described in the newspapers as “semi-Chinese”,¹⁰ the new Anglo-Chinese School building was completed in 1924 to a design by British architect Frank Brewer, another leading figure at Swan & Maclaren in the 1920s. Located off Oldham Lane – named after pioneer Methodist missionary William F. Oldham who was also the school’s founder – the first sight that greeted visitors to the school was its imposing three-storey entrance pavilion, which skilfully combined Chinese and Art Deco detail. At the back of the entrance pavilion were two floors of classrooms arranged around an internal courtyard, or atrium. One of the most striking features of  the building was the broad canopy roof over the ground floor windows, a feature that was also repeated on the floor above in the three-storey block that fronted the site. Supported by massive brackets, the eaves of the canopy roof were swept up at the corners in the typical Chinese manner, as did the eaves of the main roof. As well as making an impressive visual  statement, these tiered roofs worked together to cast long shadows over the external walls of the building during the middle of the day when the sun was at its  highest point, shielding the classrooms within from the warming effects of solar radiation.

Frank Brewer’s architectural plan of the proposed new building for Anglo-Chinese School at
Cairnhill, 1924. Swan & Maclaren Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The internal courtyard also acted as a cooling mechanism, allowing warm air inside the classrooms to escape via  the open atrium, and replaced by cooler air drawn in from the outside through the many door and window openings, thus creating a constant circulation of air through the building (it worked like  a gigantic chimney flue). This system of natural ventilation was further enhanced by the school’s breezy hilltop location, which simultaneously made the most of ambient air currents.

Eu Tong Sen’s Apartment Blocks
Frank Brewer revisited the Chinese Renaissance in 1925 when he designed two blocks of flats on Club Street for  Eu Tong Sen, a prominent businessman and leader of the Chinese community. This was at a time when apartment living was just beginning to take root  in Singapore.

But whereas previously, this new type of accommodation had been intended for a mainly European clientele, in this instance the prospective occupants were clearly meant to be Asian; in 1925, no European would have dreamed of putting up in Chinatown, thanks to its shady reputation as a hotbed for secret societies, brothels, gambling dens and opium shops. Possibly, it was this consideration that encouraged Brewer to opt for a Chinese Renaissance-style building, which at once signalled its modernity and yet retained a characteristically Chinese flavour.

Generally speaking, many supposedly Chinese-style buildings from this period, both in Singapore and elsewhere, are little more than a pastiche – even bordering on the kitsch – since the Western architects who designed them had little real understanding of traditional Chinese architecture and were probably not too bothered to find out. Brewer’s two apartment blocks for Eu Tong Sen, however, were different and went some way beyond the typical “Western-style building with a Chinaman’s hat on top” approach, revealing that Brewer had at least taken the time to acquaint himself with some of the basic precepts of Chinese architectural practices and building typologies.

In 1925, Frank Brewer designed two blocks of flats in the Chinese Renaissance style for Eu Tong Sen, a prominent businessman and leader of the Chinese community, at 31–45 Club Street. The buildings now form part of Emerald Garden condominium. Courtesy of Julian Davison.

The basement floor of the main building (which is on the left as one heads up Club Street from the Cross Street junction), for example, with its central, unadorned arch and fair-faced brickwork, brings to mind Chinese gateways from the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). Similarly, the slightly tapering profile of the tower is reminiscent of the classic silhouette of a Chinese drum tower.

Other “traditional” Chinese features include the canopy roofs over the windows, which rest on Chinese-style  brackets protruding from the wall; one sees a similar arrangement in the canopy roofs of shophouses. The tiles  were imported from China (unlike the v-shaped tiles normally used for shophouse roofs, which were manufactured  locally), and came adorned with decorative, green-glazed “stoppers”, or endpieces  (wadang), for the roof margins; the origins of the latter can be traced back to the second millennium BCE.

The upturned corners, which are every Westerner’s idea of what a Chinese roof should look like, are perhaps the  least successful aspect of the edifices – and smacking of Chinese tokenism – but the composition of the window  mullions and transoms is convincing, as they are derived from traditional Chinese latticework patterns, albeit  greatly simplified here.

Chinese Art Deco
There are several other Chinese-inflected  buildings dating from the  1920s, notably Eu Court (1925), Great  Southern Hotel (1927) and Theatre of Heavenly Shows, today’s Majestic Theatre (1928). All three were commissioned by Eu Tong Sen and designed by Swan & Maclaren, but they are more Art Deco  in character, albeit with Chinese flourishes  – a kind of Shanghai chic that was all the rage back then.

Majestic Theatre (left) and Great Southern Hotel (right) on Eu Tong Sen Street, 1950. Designed by Swan & Maclaren, these buildings were more Art Deco than Chinese Renaissance in design, although both bear Chinese-inspired details and decorative motifs. Tan Kok Kheng Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

There was, however, one other major building from this period that managed to be both Art Deco and Chinese  Renaissance at the same time. This was the headquarters of the newly created Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) on Chulia Street,¹¹ which was designed by the British partnership of Keys & Dowdeswell in 1929.

Best remembered for the Fullerton Building (today’s Fullerton Hotel), home to Singapore’s General Post Office, which had been completed the previous year, Keys & Dowdeswell were riding the crest of a wave, having temporarily displaced  Swan & Maclaren as the architects of choice for large-scale corporate  commissions in the latter half of the 1920s. Other major works by Keys &  Dowdeswell at this time include the Mercantile Bank of India building in Raffles Place and the Kwantung Provincial Bank on Cecil Street, as well as a six-storey office block on the corner of Finlayson Green and Robinson Road for the Dutch shipping line, Koninklijke Paketvaart-  Maatschappij, or KPM for short.

The China Building, as the OCBC building was known, was Keys & Dowdeswell’s only venture into the realm  of Chinese Renaissance architecture – a massive, five-storey Art Deco block capped with a Chinese pavilion wrought in reinforced concrete – but it made a huge impact.

The China Building on Chulia Street, which served as the old headquarters of Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, 1964. The building was designed by Keys & Dowdeswell in 1929. It was a five-storey Deco block capped with a Chinese pavilion. All rights reserved, family of Kouo Shang-Wei and
National Library Board, Singapore.

Much of the building’s Art Deco-style ornamentation was modelled after the firm’s Fullerton Building – similar  detailing was used for its Capitol Theatre and the adjoining four-storey apartment-cum-shop complex known as Namazie Mansions at the corner of Stamford and North Bridge roads in 1930, giving rise to the term “GPO architecture” – but the attic storey was full-blown Chinese Renaissance with its imitation roof brackets (dougong) supporting upturned eaves surmounted with stylised “dragon” ornaments  (chiwen) at the four corners.

The OCBC building was the last major Chinese Renaissance-style building to be erected by British architects in pre-war Singapore. At this early stage, it was almost exclusively British architects who embraced the Chinese  Renaissance style. Local architects were not much inclined to take up the cause until after World War II. Why was this so?

Many local architects who qualified to practise under the Architects Ordinance of 1926 were schooled in  Western engineering and may have instinctively been attracted to more contemporary or “Modernistic” styles of architecture – mainly Streamlined Moderne – which exploited the potential of the latest building technologies, most notably reinforced concrete, rather than the retrospective traditionalism of the Chinese Renaissance movement.

Holy Trinity Church at Hamilton Road was designed by Ho Kwong Yew in 1940 for the Anglican Foochow congregation. The building has Chinese-style roofs and fenestration. Courtesy of Julian Davison.

One exception, however, was Ho Kwong Yew’s Holy Trinity Church at  Hamilton Road. Ordinarily, Ho was very much the Modernist, but in 1940 he was commissioned to design a new church  for the Anglican Foochow congregation, which sported Chinese-style roofs and fenestration with a stringcourse inscribed with the Chinese cloud or  thunder pattern (leiwen). The Straits Times described it as “the first church in Malaya built in the Chinese style of architecture”,¹² but of course they had overlooked Denis Santry’s church for the Methodist Mission at Telok Ayer. Completed in July 1941, Holy Trinity Church was the last building in the Chinese Renaissance style erected before the Japanese Occupation.

After World War II, it was a different scene altogether with Singaporean  Chinese architects coming to the fore, embracing the Chinese Renaissance  style with gusto in response to the outpouring of nationalist fervour, although  Swan & Maclaren did make one more important contribution: the Kheng Chiu Building on Beach Road.

Somewhat ironically, though, by the time nationhood was achieved in 1965,  the world had moved on and Chinese Renaissance, as an architectural style, was beginning to sound like old news. The last major Chinese-style building  of any consequence to be constructed  in Singapore was the C. K. Tang and  Dynasty Hotel complex (1977–1982), but  that can hardly be thought of as Chinese  Renaissance in the sense of the term as  has been described here. What was seen  as a rebirth was, in fact, a dead end.

Gentlemen’s Clubs In 1926, the famous Ee Hoe Hean Club, otherwise known as the “Millionaires’ Club” – home to wealthy  Chinese businessmen, financiers, shipping magnates, tin towkays, rubber barons and their like –  commissioned Swan & Maclaren to design new premises for them at Bukit Pasoh. The architectural plan showing the front elevation of the Ee Hoe Hean Club to be erected on Bukit Pasoh Road, 1927. The original plans were for a Chinese Renaissance-style building but in the end, club members opted for a more contemporary look, which is the building we see today. Building Control Division Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.   The original plans were for a Chinese Renaissance-style building, and one cannot help but draw the conclusion that members of the building committee were influenced  by Eu Tong Sen’s apartments at the foot of Club Street – the original Ee  Hoe Hean Club (established 1895)  was at 28 Club Street at the time, a stone’s throw from the apartments. Although Swan & Maclaren’s original building plans were beautifully  executed, in the end club members decided to go for a more contemporary  look, which is the building we see today on Bukit Pasoh Road. The club is still around today; the membership remains exclusively male and by invitation only.

Notes

The story of the Imperial Japanese Army farming bubonic plague-bearing fleas as biological weapons is very much fact, not fiction. Cheong Suk-Wai delves deeper.

A few days before Christmas in 2017, North Korea threatened to load its intercontinental ballistic missiles with anthrax-carrying microbes and fire them into the United States. (Anthrax is a highly fatal infection caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis.)

Japanese war planes such as these were used to transport rats from Tokyo to Singapore during World War II to bolster the local rat population and enable secret experiments in biological warfare to be carried out. These planes were also used to drop “bombs” carrying plague-infected fleas on enemy lands in China. Courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Anthrax-tipped missiles might seem like the fantasy of a delirious despot – until one learns that anthrax and the bubonic plague were developed right here in Singapore by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) for use as biological weapons during World War II. Like North Korea, the IJA threatened to kill hordes of people by dropping disease-carrying bombs on them. But unlike North Korea (for now), the IJA actually carried out the nefarious deed during World War II.

The plague, which is spread by rats, is highly infectious and has a death rate of between 50 and 100 percent. It is sometimes called the Black Death because its victims’ lymph nodes swell into dark boils and the skin turns black from gangrene. The worst plague outbreak to date occurred in Europe between 1347 and 1350, when almost 65 per cent of the continent’s population was wiped out, making it one of history’s most devastating pandemics.

The IJA sought to re-enact the Black Death in Asia – its main target being the obliteration of enemies in mainland China – through its top-secret biological warfare research operative known as Unit 731. The unit was set up sometime between 1932 and 1935, with its headquarters in Shinjuku, the Tokyo ward with the world’s busiest train station today. From this Shinjuku unit later sprang a second Asian command centre in Harbin, in northeastern China. The Harbin unit answered to its parent unit in Shinjuku.

Besides Shinjuku and Harbin, Unit 731 was also found in Singapore. The Singapore branch, known as OKA 9420 (“oka” meaning “hill” or “height” in Japanese), was set up just days after the Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942. Like the unit’s other branches, OKA 9420 was run by some of Japan’s top doctors and scientists. Its first head was Yoshio Hareyama, who was soon replaced by Ryoichi Naito.

The latter and his colleagues worked out of the stately building at Outram Park – the Singapore General Hospital’s College of Medicine today (and home to the Ministry of Health). As Singaporean war survivor Geoffrey Tan, 91, recalled in his 2001 memoir Escape from Battambang: A Personal World War II Experience, the building housed up to six labs for Unit 731’s diabolical remit.These were designated as Dai-ichi (No. 1), Dai-ni (No. 2), Dai-san (No. 3) and so on. Tan worked in Dai-ni.

The restored College of Medicine Building within the grounds of the Singapore General Hospital. During the Japanese Occupation, the building was requisitioned by the Japanese and housed OKA 9420, the Singapore branch of Unit 731, the biological warfare research operative of the Imperial Japanese Army that was headquartered in Shinjuku, Tokyo, with another branch in Harbin, China. Bubonic plague-infested rats and fleas were bred at the Singapore facility along with other deadly disease-carrying pathogens. The building today houses the Ministry of Health, the Singapore Medical Council and the College of General Practitioners. Courtesy of Preservation of Sites and Monuments, National Heritage Board.

Burrowing Through Bookshelves
The terrifying details of Singapore as a base for Unit 731’s evil first came to light when Singaporean researcher and collector Lim Shao Bin was invited by the Singapore Society of Asian Studies to speak on the subject at the National Library on 4 November 2017. The Straits Times followed up with a newspaper report on 13 November. ¹

Lim, 61, began ferreting out the ugly truths about Unit 731 when he was in his 20s, poring through piles of books and papers cramming the dusty shelves of bookshops lining shabby but genteel Kanda Street in Tokyo.

Lim is no eccentric, but an avid history buff and collector of memorabilia such as old postcards and photos of Singapore. His quest to uncover and piece together hidden details of the Japanese Occupation, including the atrocities of Unit 731, is his way of finding closure for his paternal grandfather’s senseless murder by the Japanese just after they surrendered to the Allied Forces in 1945 (see text box below).

It helped that the younger Lim is equally adept at reading, writing and speaking Japanese. His study of the language is so serious that he has taught himself old Japanese script, the language in which the books and documents he sought were written. Over some 40 years, Lim rifled through and acquired all the wartime records and other documents he could find on Unit 731.

Lim did not, however, rely on Kanda Street alone. His burning questions about Unit 731 spurred him to trawl the internet for clues of its heinous activities. Lim may be an amateur researcher or, as he puts it, “an investigator of war crimes”, but his zeal and eye for detail are impressive. For instance, he was able to refer me to an August 2002 paper by the late American scholar Sheldon H. Harris, and point to references in it to OKA 9420, including the 150 physicians who worked at the Singapore unit.

He adds that Unit 731 not only had a lot of clout, but also an “extraordinary” budget for its activities. Lim said he gleaned this from the 1991 memoir by a former OKA 9420 worker, Koichi Takebana, entitled Fleas, Rats and Plague: I Saw All Three. Crucially, Takebana’s book contains vital information about OKA 9420’s chain of sub-units. This was instrumental in helping Lim retrace the murky workings of this clandestine unit because the chain showed Singapore to be the Southeast Asian headquarters of Unit 731, along with other units in the Malayan towns of Tampoi in Johor and Kuala Pilah in Negeri Sembilan.

In his memoir, Takebana also said that when he was first shipped in to Singapore, he reported for work at OKA 9420 at Outram Park. He started out as a clerk of sorts but later took charge of the huge boilers in the unit’s backyard, and soon became aware of what he called the “critical” (i.e. biological warfare development) lab within the area, which had huge facilities.

The Workings of OKA 9420
Ironically, it was claimed that OKA 9420 was set up to rid Singapore of the plague and other infectious diseases. Some among its 600-strong staff thought that was true. Among them was Geoffrey Tan, who was one of those involved in making the anti-tetanus vaccine in Dai-ni lab. Tan stuck it out for four months before quitting. When Lim met Tan recently and asked him why he was willing to work there in the first place, the latter said that if the Japanese were developing vaccines against tetanus, “they cannot only be doing bad things”.

In 2000, former Singaporean cabinet minister Othman Wok, who worked as a lab assistant in OKA 9420, wrote in his biography, Never in My Wildest Dreams, that he was certain Singapore had been a base for making biological weapons. ² For one thing, he was made to trap rats and then check his rodent bounty for fleas, which his colleagues in the lab would then retrieve for later use. Unfortunately, Othman, who died on 17 April 2017 at the age of 92, did not say more in his book about OKA 9420’s shady misdeeds.

But Lim unearthed more on this subject in Kanda Street. Besides the plague, he learnt from wartime documents found in Kanda Street bookshops that OKA 9420’s three labs cultivated such pandemic horrors as cholera, smallpox, malaria, typhus, dysentery and anthrax.

In some British wartime documents, there is also mention of the malaria parasite cultivated in the Singapore labs and used to kill hundreds of British soldiers in 1942 when the IJA invaded Buin and Bougainville Island in Papua New Guinea.

No Need for Bullets
Harbin, the capital city of Heilongjiang province in China, is today famous for its beer and the annual ice sculpture festival, but during World War II, its outlying hamlet Pingfang served as Unit 731’s hub in China.

Passers-by bowing to Japanese soldiers outside a Japanese-owned shop in Singapore during the Japanese Occupation, c.1942–45. Unknown to the local population at the time, the Japanese had set up a laboratory in Singapore to cultivate
pathogens that could cause pandemics such as anthrax, cholera, smallpox and malaria. From Shashin Shuho, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Lim’s research shows that after Japan unleashed the Nanjing Massacre between December 1937 and January 1938, Unit 731 began researching the optimal conditions necessary for breeding biological weapons, such as plague-carrying fleas from rats, in order to obliterate the Chinese economically and efficiently.

Tropical Singapore and Malaya were ideal breeding grounds because Unit 731’s research showed that fleas thrived best in places that had temperatures of between 27 and 30 degrees Celsius, and 90 percent humidity.

Despite these hospitable conditions, it appeared that there were insufficient rats in Malaya and Singapore for IJA’s diabolical ambitions. Hence, in late 1943, the Japanese military transported 30,000 rats by military jets from Tokyo to Singapore to bolster the local rat population. The IJA also sent truckloads of the vermin to two places in Malaya: Permai Hospital in Tampoi, in the middle of a Johor jungle, and a school in Kuala Pilah. The Japanese also sent rats to Bandung in Indonesia.

The rats flown in from Japan, along with those caught locally, were housed in what Lim calls “plantations” within the OKA 9420 compound in Outram Park. Each rat farm, as it were, consisted of a hut within a small garden. The floor of each hut was a huge metal plate, bolted down. On each plate rested four cages, into which the rats were released. It must have seemed like heaven as food scraps were scattered liberally about these cages.

Once the captive rats were bloated from the frenzied feeding, the lab workers would inject them with the plague bacteria. When the rats became sick, millions of fleas would be unleashed on them. The bloodsuckers went straight to work, feeding on their dying prey.

Lab workers would then isolate the fleas, now swollen with plague-rich blood. This involved an ingenious plan of shovelling flea-embedded soil or sawdust into a box, with mounds of dirt atop the box, and then shining a light on the fleas at an angle. The fleas, which hated the glow, would then flee to the box’s darkest corners, where lab workers would scoop them up as one would raisins. The “raisins” would then be examined under microscopes in the labs, which were located right next to the plantations. Here, lab workers had to “verify” if the fleas were incubating the plague bacteria in their systems, according to Lim.

Millions of the “verified” fleas were then flown to Thailand every two or three months “in big glass jars”, says Lim, ready for Japanese war planes to drop on their hapless foes.

The neo-classical College of Medicine Building (c.1949) with its stately row of fluted Doric columns was erected in 1926 to house the King Edward VII College of Medicine. Ironically a building dedicated to the training of medical doctors would later be turned into a facility to spread diseases among people. Ong Kay Ann Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Wartime records show that 10,000 rats sickened by the bubonic plague could yield 10 kg of plague-bearing fleas – and one needed only 5 g of fleas, or an estimated 1,700 fleas, to finish off around 600 people, as Lim learnt from reading the documents. With 10 g of fleas, the effects were quadrupled, easily wiping out as many as 2,400 people at once. “The Japanese found it a most effective weapon of war,” he notes. On one of their subsequent bombing blitzes, war planes carrying clay bombs filled with oxygen and plague-infected fleas obliterated more than 9,000 people in China, according to Chinese wartime records. “There was no need for bullets,” adds Lim wryly.

From a 2009 Japanese research report, Lim further learnt that in June 1940, 3,031 people in China’s Jilin province died after being infected by plague-bearing fleas originating from Unit 731, while in October that same year, another 9,060 people died in Zhejiang province, located south of Shanghai.

To top it off, and as an experiment, Japanese land troops contaminated the wells of several of the villages they invaded in Zhejiang with bacteria. “That was so senseless,” observes Lim, noting that they never repeated that experiment.

OKA 9420 maintained huge boilers that bubbled and belched steam 24 hours a day so that workers always had boiling water on hand to disinfect themselves and sterilise their equipment instantly. Meanwhile, Lim learnt from online Japanese wartime records that the Japanese disposed of the rat carcasses by incinerating them in nearby furnaces built for that express purpose.

In late June 1945, OKA 9420 suddenly vanished from Singapore – weeks ahead of the official Japanese surrender on 12 September 1945. At first, everyone at its Tampoi base moved wholesale to Singapore on 15 June that year, and then nine days later, the entire arm was relocated to Laos for no discernible reason. Its workers also burned all traces of their records and research in Singapore, says Lim grimly, leaving no evidence of its existence.

This sketch is a simplified version of a rough map of Unit 731’s branch in Permai Hospital, Tampoi. The
map was published on page 44 of the 1991 memoir, Fleas, Rats and Plague: I Saw All Three, by former
OKA 9420 worker Koichi Takebana. The dividing wall in the sketch was about 4 m high, and separated
the biological warfare production units from those providing support services such as washing, cooking,
sterilisation of equipment and logistics. Drawn by Cheong Suk-Wai, based on information by Lim Shao
Bin and Koichi Takebana. All rights reserved, Cheong Suk-Wai, Lim Shao Bin, Koichi Takebana and the
National Library Board, Singapore.

Free but not Forgotten
Lim says that OKA 9420’s head Ryoichi Naito and his colleagues were never tried as war criminals. “After the war, the Americans occupied Japan,” he recalls. “They started interviewing and tried to arrest war criminals. And one critical thing they sought more information about was biochemical warfare in Harbin. They wanted the key men.”

The Americans tracked down Naito who, in his fluent English, told them that he would turn over all the medical records, data from experiments and papers to the US on condition that they let him walk free. The Americans did just that, granting Naito and the rest of Unit 731 immunity from prosecution for war crimes.

Naito, his deputy Iichiro Otaguro and their ilk went on to rebuild their lives by, among other things, setting up clinics to treat everyday folk, joining academia and rising to professorships and, in some instances, becoming politicians. But the truth eventually surfaced. “In the 1980s and 90s,” says Lim, “the doctors among these men started to retire and mentor younger doctors. When the latter found out that their mentors had done such bad things, they were shocked.”

Some of these younger doctors formed non-governmental organisations, which published accounts of what their founders had learnt about Unit 731’s experiments. Why was Japan not rocked by such findings? Lim puts it down to the thick fog of negation surrounding Japan’s war crimes, including from Japan’s powerful and vociferous right-wing politicians. Also, he mused sadly: “Children do not appreciate their grandfathers’ histories.”

From left to right: Professor Nobuyoshi Takashima, Dr Yosuke Watanabe and Lim Shao Bin, holding a rare 1938 map showing Tokyo as the centre of the world. This photo was taken on 15 February 2018, during the Japanese dons’ yearly sojourn to Singapore to commemorate the Fall of Singapore on 15 February 1942. Courtesy of Cheong Suk-Wai.

Some Japanese do, though. On 15 February this year, Lim introduced me to Nobuyoshi Takashima, 76, professor emeritus at Ryukyu University, who has been researching the dark days of the Japanese Occupation in Singapore and Malaya for more than 40 years. As Prof Takashima speaks no English, his friend, Dr Yosuke Watanabe, 47, visiting fellow at the Center for Asia-Pacific Partnership, Osaka University of Economics and Law, acted as translator.

When I asked Prof Takashima what, as a Japanese, he would like to say to Singaporeans, he hesitated and then said: “Now is the time for making peace from humanism, not for condemning war criminals.” He hoped that the OKA 9420 stories that Lim has unearthed would spur Singaporeans to learn more about their history.

Prof Takashima added that his interest in Unit 731 was piqued when one of his students took him to visit the Tampoi site in the 1980s. That started him off on his quest to uncover the atrocities committed by the IJA in Southeast Asia. “The Japanese Occupation is not researched much in Japan,” he told me, explaining why, in 1983, he established his now-yearly Takashima Tours, taking a busload of his countrymen on tours of former World War II sites in Singapore and Malaysia. In the course of his travels, Prof Takashima came to know Lim, and the firm friends now meet and regularly exchange information on Unit 731 and the IJA via email.

In 2010, Prof Takashima wrote and published a guidebook of such sites in Malaysia, and in 2016, he published one such book on Singapore. Among his inner circle of enthusiasts are his 75-year-old wife Michi Takashima, Dr Watanabe and the journalist Fuyuko Nishisato, whose 2017 book on Unit 731 titled Behind Bayonets and Barbed Wire: The Secrets of Japanese Army Unit 731, has been mentioned by news agencies such as China’s Xinhua.

Prof Takashima and his contemporaries have also taken to visiting Singapore every February to commemorate the Fall of Singapore, followed by a chicken rice dinner with Lim at Chin Chin Eating House, a well-known coffee shop on Purvis Street.

What Lim cannot stomach, even more than the grisly fates of plague victims, is what he sees as Unit 731’s “lack of remorse” for any of their actions. He says of Unit 731’s surviving Japanese officers: “All these soldiers write about somebody else’s stories, not their own dirty work.”

A GRANDSON’S RELENTLESS QUEST In the 1970s, it was rare for a Singaporean to snag a scholarship to study and work in Japan, and most would be overjoyed at such an opportunity. A portrait of Lim Kui Yi, the paternal grandfather of Lim Shao Bin whom the Japanese Imperial Army killed in Melaka on 5 September 1945. Courtesy of Lim Shao Bin. But when Lim Shao Bin won the chance to work for Japanese precision engineering company NMB – which was among the first Japanese multinationals to set up shop in Singapore after independence in 1965 – he had mixed feelings about it. For one thing, he had rued since he was a boy that his paternal grandfather, Lim Kui Yi, had died at the hands of Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) soldiers during the Japanese Occupation. Lim, who was born in 1957, remembers, “When I was a kid, I was just told ‘Grandpa had been killed during World War II.’” So I assumed he was killed by Japanese aerial bomb attacks in Singapore. “But after I got the scholarship, my father told me the truth: Grandpa had been killed after the Japanese surrendered in August 1945.” His grandfather was the head of the feedback unit of Melaka’s temporary city council, set up right after the Japanese surrender to give the city some semblance of governance. On 5 September, the council members celebrated Japan’s defeat at Jonker Street by waving flags of the Kuomintang, the Chinese party led by General Chiang Kai-shek that defended China against the marauding IJA during World War II. According to Lim’s father, Lim Chow Sin, the open revelry enraged the Kempeitai, the Japanese secret police who were still around in Melaka at the time. “So on 5 September 1945, they stabbed Grandpa to death and threw his body down a well in Pulau Besar, Melaka.” Thus, when Lim Shao Bin touched down in Japan for the first time in 1980, at the age of 23, he felt conflicted. “It was quite confusing; I was supposed to learn from these people but I also thought, ‘I shouldn’t learn blindly from this place.’” But as a true Singaporean who was “a bit kiasu”, he did his best at work. Yet, burning within him was one big question: “Why was there a war in Malaya to begin with?” So began his quest to understanding all he could about the Japanese Occupation – and also, as he says, find “closure” for his grandfather’s senseless killing. Every month, he would have to report to NMB’s Tokyo office on Kanda Street, where the bookshops were. He recalls: “After visiting the office, I would drop by the bookshops and soon found that I could find wartime documents if I was patient enough.” The budding collector started small, rifling through the bookshelves for old postcards. He started to find things relating to Singapore. Paying tribute to Kanda’s old-style shops and their owners, he says: “It’s a special trade. When they purchase something to put on their shelves, they price their purchases with pride and professionalism. So if they say something is worth 2,000 yen, you can be assured they are right. They respect sincere collectors.” Kanda’s bookshop owners also, up till recently, traded on “cash only” terms. Lim adds: “World War II split Japan into two worlds. Before the Japanese surrendered, they were so confident of themselves. They learnt from the West but modernised their culture, including language, without the need of foreign languages like English.” This occasionally led to some blind spots; for instance, there is no traditional Japanese word for “rubber” because the trees had never grown in Japan. But, Lim notes, when Japan lost the war, Japanese egos were deflated, and of one of the repercussions was that people began corrupting the Japanese language with words from the English lexicon, resulting in a Japlish form called waise-eigo, yielding mish-mash words such as bakku-mira (“back mirror”), chia-garu (“cheergirl” or cheerleader) and hafu (a “half-blood” or person of mixed ancestry). Today, he considers himself a bona fide, if not formally trained, “historian” and sometimes refers to himself as a “historical detective” – and one keen to revive interest in Singapore’s history before the nation gained independence on 9 August 1965. He says wistfully: “After independence, I think we emphasised too much on what was happening on this small island and lost the history of the years before 1965.” Since 2012, he says, visitors to quiet Kanda Street have trebled. It is more proof that history does matter, for the increase in literary foragers is due to China and Japan’s squabble over the necklace of islands south of Japan, which China claims under the name Diaoyu, and which Japan knows as Senkaku. The tensions are still taut today; on 31 January 2018, China ordered the Japanese consumer goods giant Muji to destroy all its catalogues that contained what China called “a problem map” because it omitted the Diaoyu/ Senkaku islands. Lim says: “There are now buyers from the US, Japan, China, Taiwan and Korea in Kanda, all looking for books on Diaoyu or Senkaku.” Lim’s most recent sojourn to Japan was in early December 2017 to join his friend, Nobuyoshi Takashima, at the World Peace Forum in the old port city of Yokohama. It is clear that Lim is as much a bridge-builder as he is a truth-seeker. Prof Takashima, 76, is professor emeritus at Ryukyu University, and he has been researching the war crimes of the IJA in Southeast Asia for the past 40 years. The next step of Lim’s quest is to find someone who can help him read and decipher a cache of medical reports from Unit 731 written by Iichiro Otaguro. “After independence, so much of Singapore history emphasised the years after 1965. I would like what I’ve found to spur future generations of Singaporeans to rediscover the history of our war years. Let’s not make it a case of children forgetting their grandparents’ past”, says Lim with a pensive smile.

Notes

St John’s Island was once home to new migrants, opium addicts and political detainees. Marcus Ng charts the island’s transformation from a place of exile to an oasis of idyll.

It’s well known that Stamford Raffles landed by the banks of the Singapore River on 29 January 1819 to establish a British trading port on the island.¹ Most accounts of this colonial milestone, however, skim over the minor fact that a day earlier, Raffles’ fleet of ships had anchored off St John’s Island. This was where representatives of the local ruler – the Temenggong of Johor, Abdul Rahman – met and assured the British that Singapore harboured no Dutch settlers who would be hostile to rival powers.²

Early modern Singapore was a by-product of geographical serendipity coupled with commercial desperation. Raffles’ mission was driven by the British quest for a regional port that could rival Dutch-controlled Melaka. Raffles also knew that the island enjoyed regional pedigree as “the site of the ancient maritime capital of the Malays”.³ Beyond that, Singapore was largely terra incognita to Europeans.⁴

(Left) Scene at St John’s Island, showing newly arrived migrants at the quarantine centre waiting for the ferry to take them to the mainland Singapore, c.1908. Courtesty of National Archives of Singapore.
(Right) The living reefs of St John’s Island. In the distant background is the skyline of mainland Singapore. Photo taken by Ria Tan on 31 August 2004. Courtesy of WildSingapore.

Siquijan to Sekijang
The islands that clustered along Singapore’s southern coastline, however, were already longstanding landmarks to sailors plying the waters between the Straits of Melaka and the South China Sea.

Detail of a 1924 map showing St John’s and other  adjacent islands. Survey Department Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The Portuguese were undoubtedly familiar with St John’s Island. Portuguese-Bugis cartographer Manuel Godinho de Erédia marked two islands as “Pulo Siquijan” in a map he had drawn in 1613 that was part of a manuscript titled Declaracam de Malaca e India Meridional com o Cathay. In another map he drew in 1604, titled Discripsao Chorographica dos Estreitos de Sincapura e Sabbam. ano. 1604 (Chorographic Description of the Straits of Sincapura and Sabbam 1604 A.D.), Erédia sketched a maritime passage called estreito nouo (“New Strait”) which ran south of Pulau Blakang Mati (present-day Sentosa) before passing north of Pulau Sekijang and turning east.⁵

“Pulo Siquijan” was Erédia’s (mis) rendering of Pulau Sekijang, Malay for “barking deer island”. Passing sailors then played a centuries-old game of Chinese whispers, distorting “Sekijang” into “St John’s” by way of “Sijang”.⁶ Erédia’s depiction of two islands sharing the same name, however, was no error. Two neighbouring isles bore the moniker “St John’s” and were marked as such in charts, including one produced by French hydrographer and geographer Jacques-Nicolas Bellin in 1755 and another by the Honourable Thomas Howe in 1758.⁷ It was only in 1899 that one of the two St John’s islands – the eastern one – which housed a hospital for patients afflicted with beri-beri, was renamed Lazarus Island.⁸

In Malay, the islands continue to share a nomenclatural link: Lazarus Island is known as Pulau Sekijang Pelepah (pelepah means “palm fronds”), while St John’s Island is Pulau Sekijang Bendera (bendera means “flag”) on account of a flagstaff that stood on it between 1823 and 1833. According to H.T. Haughton, “these islands are supposed to be two roe-deer at which the spear-reef (Terumbu Seligi) off Blakang Mati is being aimed”.⁹ The tales that gave rise to these names, unfortunately, are lost, as are any deer that may have once inhabited these islands.¹⁰

Gone too are names that one Captain George Thomas assigned to nearby islands in the late 1700s.¹¹ Hoping perhaps to expand the Biblical theme, he marked Pulau Tekukor (north of St John’s Island) as “Luke” and the Sisters’ Islands as “Mark” and “Matthew”. These names, however, failed to stick and only St John’s survived in later charts.

Gateway to Singapore
St John’s Island was not only Raffles’ gateway to Singapore. The hilly island, located south of the Singapore harbour, also became a crucial landmark for the fledging port on the mainland. Before Raffles left the settlement, he issued instructions “to establish a careful and steady European at St John’s with a boat and small crew, for the purpose of boarding all square sailed vessels passing through the Straits”.¹² An apocryphal account credits one Loughony with this task of informing passing captains “that the port is open” for business.¹³ St John’s Island, by hosting this crew of heralds, was instrumental in placing Singapore on the mental maps of mariners at a time when news could spread only as fast as the swiftest craft.

St John’s turn on the frontlines of colonial enterprise was brief. By 1834, the island was all but abandoned. “The only inhabitant was an old Malay, whose small thatched habitation was surrounded by cocoa-nut, orange, guava, plantain, and other tropical fruit-trees”, observed a visiting naturalist, who added, “The view from the summit of this elevated island was both extensive and beautiful; the small islands near us were either covered by a wilderness of wood, or else the jungle was cleared away” for pineapple plantations.¹⁴

The pineapples were still extant in 1847 when Dr Robert Little – a medical practitioner who was appointed first Coroner of Singapore in 1848 – visited the two St John’s Islands. He wrote:

“… we crossed to 2 islands called Pulo Sakijang about 1¼ mile from Blakang Mati. On landing on the nearest we ascended a hill covered with pine apples [sic] and found one house with one inhabitant… from this island we pulled to the other of the same name, and found on the beach a colony of Bugis, consisting of 7 men and inhabiting 3 houses. This had been a settlement for 40 years, and they permitted no women to be located with them, the only reason they gave for this misogynistic feeling, was that women invariably quarrelled and prevented them from working.”¹⁵

The aim of Dr Little’s sojourn to St John’s was to investigate remittent fever (malaria), which he mistakenly believed was caused by miasma from dying coral reefs.¹⁶ Medical interest in St John’s Island came from other quarters in 1848, when a medical committee suggested the use of “St John’s or one of the neighbouring islands” for the segregation of leprous convicts.¹⁷ The subject was raised again in 1857 – when the leper population in Singapore had reached alarming levels – to no avail. However, in the end, St John’s Island was never used to accommodate lepers.¹⁸

Quarantine Island

St John’s transformation into a rather less welcoming destination began in 1873, after a severe cholera outbreak in Singapore that claimed the lives of 357 people. Under pressure from the mercantile community, Andrew Clarke, the British Governor in Singapore, approved a proposal by Acting Master Attendant Henry Ellis to establish a lazaretto (a facility to isolate and treat patients with contagious diseases) on St John’s Island.

Ellis’ wishlist for the site included a steam cutter (patrol boat), a floating police station and a hospital as well as burial grounds on nearby Peak (Kusu) Island.¹⁹ St John’s stint as Singapore’s “Quarantine Island” thus began in November 1874 when the barely completed lazaretto took in between 1,200 and 1,300 Chinese passengers from the cholera-stricken S.S. Milton from Swatow (now Shantou), China.²⁰

By 1908, the quarantine facility on St John’s had expanded to encompass the entire island, which was populated with sheds housing the occupants of infected or suspected ships,²¹ be they new migrants to Malaya or religious pilgrims returning from performing the Haj in Mecca.

St John’s became known as Singapore’s “Quarantine Island” in November 1874 when the first load of 1,200 to 1,300 Chinese passengers from the cholera-stricken S.S. Milton from Swatow (now Shantou), China, arrived on the island. This 1930 photo shows passengers being vaccinated against infectious disease upon disembarkation. Courtesy of The National Archives of the UK, ref. CO1069/560 pt1 (23).

In reality, quarantine was defined by the class of passage. First- and second-class cabin passengers could simply present themselves for clearance before disembarking, while hapless passengers in steerage (who shared a deck or hold) were quarantined for two to three days. From the 1920s, most cargo-hold travellers were required to transit at St John’s Island for inoculation before proceeding to Singapore, with migrants from China subject to at least a week’s quarantine.²²

For the British, St John’s Island was an achievement “which every resident may be proud”. The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser reported in 1926:

“With thousands of Chinese arriving at Singapore every week, and with smallpox on two out of every four immigrant ships entering the port, Singapore and the Peninsula are nevertheless kept practically free from that disease… Certainly the treatment which the immigrants received on the island is about as pleasant an introduction to Malaya as they could expect. They arrive hungry, dirty and miserable after a deck passage through the China Sea, and they spend five blissful days – or it may be a fortnight – with nothing to do, wholesome food to eat, and the beaches of the island on which to lounge away the first hours of leisure they have known in their lives.”²³

Another report in The Straits Times in 1935 feted St John’s as the “largest quarantine station in the world” − after New York’s Ellis Island and El Tor in Egypt − with the means to detain up to 6,000 people in 22 camps. The island then also housed “several hospitals for actual cases of smallpox, cholera, plague, chickenpox, measles and kindred diseases, and the barracks and temple for the 15 men of the island’s Sikh Police force, the gardeners’ quarters and mosque, the coolies’ and workmen’s quarters, the Coroner’s court and the lock-up”.²⁴

Memories of Quarantine

Henry Ellis’ initial plans to use Peak (Kusu) Island as a burial ground were soon cut short when a community leader named Cheang Hong Lim raised strenuous objections to this idea. Instead, Lazarus Island took its place; from the early 20th century onwards, passengers who died upon or shortly after arrival were buried here.

Minister for Health Armand J. Braga visits the Opium Treatment Centre on St John’s Island when it opened in 1955. The centre trained opium addicts in various tasks, such as carpentry and woodworking, for their  rehabilitation into productive society. It closed in 1975. Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

Writing to the Colonial Engineer J.F.A. McNair in 1875, Cheang offered a glimpse into Kusu’s cultural life, which British authorities had overlooked. He wrote:

“… a small Island called Peak Island, lying opposite to this Colony of Singapore, has, for upwards of thirty years been used by many of the Chinese and native Inhabitants of this Settlement as a place for them to resort to at certain periods every year, for the purpose of making sacrifices, and paying their vows to certain deities there called ‘Twa Pek Kong Koosoo’ and ‘Datok Kramat’, and as that place has lately, to the great prejudice of their feelings, been desecrated by the interment therein of a number of dead bodies. Your Petitioner is desirous of applying for a Title to the same, in order to prevent that place from being any longer used as a Burial Ground.”²⁵

Teo Choon Hong, who arrived in Singapore from Amoy (now Xiamen), China, in 1937, recalled his quarantine experience with the National Archives of Singapore in 1983. He said in Hokkien:

“I was quarantined on Kusu Island (later in the interview, he clarified that he had meant St John’s Island) as the British thought that there were germs on the lower berth of the steamer that might lead to infectious diseases. Only those on the lower deck were quarantined. Those who stayed in the cabins did not have to go. There was a class distinction…. Being quarantined on Kusu Island was inhumane. We were bossed around like chickens and ducks. The British saw us Chinese as beasts. After being given some rations, it felt like we were camping – we had to cook and eat there. I was quarantined for two days before being released”.²⁶

Teong Eng Siong offered a more sanguine view of his stay on St John’s Island after he arrived from Foochow (now Fuzhou) in 1948:

“Every batch of people who came here had to stay at Qizhang Hill²⁷ for a short three to five days, so as to ensure that there were no infectious diseases and such. After three or five days, I was allowed ashore…. We had three meals a day. Breakfast consisted of bread and milk tea. There were two small slices of bread. At that time, it was not enough. Then in the afternoon, it was lunch, and at night it was dinner. The meals all had eggs, and some stir-fried vegetables and fish. We had two time slots a day to shower, because at that time, the weather was hotter, hotter than now. It made us more comfortable. Living quarters-wise, there were many people living together in a big hall.”²⁸

For Saravana Perumal, who came from Jaffna, Ceylon, in 1947, St John’s Island was an “isolated place”. “We were locked up in the camp,” he told the National Archives in 1983.²⁹ “We were given rations, firewood, pots to cook and prepare our own food. It gave me a sort of fright there because of centipedes, cockroaches…”

Years later, in 1955, Perumal returned to St John’s Island when he was transferred there to help establish an Opium Treatment Centre. This centre, he explained, trained opium addicts in various tasks for rehabilitation into productive society. “After a month, when they are certified fit for work, they were given the jobs of carpentry where they made tables, chairs, furniture, rattan work, tailoring…”³⁰

The treatment centre at St John’s, which operated until 1975, was one of the island’s new functions after the war. But quarantine continued even after Singapore gained independence in 1965 as the government had adopted a precautionary stance against the risk of infection from deck passengers from China and India.³¹ It was only in 1971 that deck passengers from China were exempted from compulsory quarantine if they had valid health certificates.³² Those from India had to wait until 1973 for compulsory quarantine to end. St John’s quarantine centre officially closed on 14 January 1976.³³

Island and Prison

In 1948, parts of St John’s Island were converted into a detention centre for political prisoners.³⁴ Earlier, during World War II, the island had already acquired a political-military dimension when it housed Japanese and German civilians. During their stay, the Germans erected a Chinese-style moon gate by the island’s western shore, which still stands today.³⁵

In 1948, part of St John’s Island was converted into a detention centre for political prisoners. In 1956, C.V. Devan Nair (extreme right) – who became Singapore’s third president in 1981 – along with (from left to right) Lim Chin Siong, Sydney Woodhull and Fong Swee Suan, his colleagues from the People’s Action Party (PAP), were detained on St John’s until the PAP was returned to power in 1959. This photo was taken by Lee Kuan Yew, the first prime minister of Singapore, in 1959. Photograph taken by the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

C.V. Devan Nair, who became Singapore’s third president in 1981, was among those detained on St John’s Island for anti-colonial activities. With little else to do but immerse himself in books, Nair dubbed the island “St John’s University”.³⁶ His studies were interrupted one fateful day in 1952 by a visitor who described the island thus:

“There, amid beautiful old tembusu trees, stood some government holiday bungalows, and not far away, long rows of barrack-like buildings surrounded by chain-link fences for opium addicts undergoing rehabilitation. One of the bungalows was also ringed with chain-link topped with barbed wire. This housed the political detainees.”³⁷

That visitor was a young anti-colonial lawyer named Lee Kuan Yew, and the fateful meeting between the two men led to Nair becoming one of the convenors of the People’s Action Party (PAP) at its founding in 1954. Nair would later be detained again in 1956, along with his party comrades Fong Swee Suan, Lim Chin Siong and Sydney Woodhull, until their release in 1959 when the PAP returned to power³⁸ in the Legislative Assembly general election that gave Singapore the right to self-government and paved the way for Lee to become the first prime minister of Singapore.

An Island Getaway

By the mid-1970s, plans were afoot to convert Singapore’s southern islands into beachside holiday destinations.³⁹ In part, these developments were aimed at replacing a stretch of the shoreline at Changi that would be buried under the new airport.⁴⁰ St John’s Island would join Kusu, Sisters’ Islands and Sentosa to become an idyllic getaway from the confines of the congested mainland.

Meanwhile, before any transformation into island paradise could take place, St John’s island housed a final batch of “detainees”: about 1,000 Vietnamese refugees fleeing their homeland, who occupied the island between May and October 1975 as they awaited resettlement in the West.⁴¹

Since 1976, St John’s Island has become entrenched in the memories of a new generation of Singaporeans: as a site for offshore school camps, holiday bungalows, wet and wild weekends at its swimming lagoons protected by walls of rock. It is also fondly known as “cat island” to some, in reference to the abandoned felines that now outnumber children in the corridors of a former primary school established in the 1950s for families of staff residing on the island.⁴²

Scores of cats now dwell at the former school premises on St John’s Island. Photo taken by Marcus Ng on 2 September 2014. Courtesy of Marcus Ng.

Echoes of the past returned in 1999, when fences and barbed wire lined parts of St John’s Island as the authorities braced for a wave of illegal migrants fleeing political turmoil in Indonesia.⁴³ Thankfully, the storm abated but the fences still stand, perhaps as a precautionary measure.

In the interim, the two St John’s Islands were conjoined by a causeway. Further plans for a “canal-laced marine village with recreational and mooring facilities and waterfront housing” failed to materialise as the business climate changed.⁴⁴ Singaporeans, sparked perhaps by the preservation of Chek Jawa on Pulau Ubin, also began to see their islands less as “underutilised” spaces than as treasures of national and natural heritage.

New landmarks emerged in the 2000s: a Marine Aquaculture Centre where seabass are bred, and Singapore’s only offshore Marine Laboratory where researchers investigate diverse facets of marine science, ranging from giant clams to coral ecology and anti-fouling solutions for the shipping industry. Another milestone occurred in 2014 when St John’s western shore was designated part of the Sisters’ Islands Marine Park.⁴⁵

A signboard at the end of the jetty invites visitors to explore the Marine Park’s Public Gallery on the island’s southern peak. The path from the jetty runs through compounds of barbed wire and beckons towards a row of low houses, home to the island’s last residents.⁴⁶ Turn left and the trail winds past old bungalows, lush mangroves where fiddler crabs frolic at low tide, and patches of coastal forest. On the other side of the island are the former quarantine quarters turned campsites, which overlook beaches that still attract sizeable crowds on weekends.

The bustling city seethes beyond St John’s seawalls, always looming but still far enough to imagine that the island, as it was in the not-too-distant past, is not where Singapore ends, in space and thought, but a gateway to hope, to promise, to a future in harmony with its history and habitats.

Notes

Gretchen Liu casts the spotlight on the Lee Brothers Studio Collection. Comprising some 2,500 images, this is the largest single collection of photographic portraits in the National Archives of Singapore.

Between 1910 and 1940, Lee Brothers Photographers was a well-known landmark along Hill Street. In the years before amateur photography became widespread, hundreds of its clients – the prospering and aspiring, the famous and unknown, Chinese, Indian, Malay and European, resident and visitor – climbed the wooden steps to the top floor of a shophouse at No. 58-4 in search of that small bit of immortality: the studio portrait.

(Left) Lee Brothers Studio at 54-8 Hill Street, 1910s. Lee Brothers Studio Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.
(Right) The interior of Lee Brothers Studio at 54-8 Hill Street, 1920s. Lee Brothers Studio Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

The brothers started their business in the three-storey shophouse located prominently at the corner of Hill Street and Loke Yew Street. The corner location was ideal because the additional windows provided the main source of illumination and kept exposure times to a minimum. Typical of Victorian photographers, the studio was equipped with decorative painted backdrops imported from Shanghai and Europe, and various props ranging from imitation masonry, drapery, potted plants and porcelain dogs to toys for children, rustic benches and handsome drawing room chairs.

All of the equipment was of the best quality while the processing chemicals were the purest available. The British-made main studio camera was a large wooden affair with squared bellows connecting the front lens panel with a rear panel carrying the focusing screen and the plate holder. It rested on a heavy wooden stand that could be raised, lowered or tilted so as to frame the sitter appropriately, and was fitted with cast-iron castors for mobility.

Sharing the work behind the camera – adjusting the lens, inserting the treated glass plates, calculating the exposure times, removing the plates and processing them in the darkroom – were the Lee brothers, King Yan (1877–1957) and Poh Yan (1884–1960). For over half a century, from 1940 until 1994, copies of over 2,500 of these original photographs and some glass plate negatives were kept by Poh Yan’s eldest son, Lee Hin Ming. The photographs were mostly excess or uncollected prints while the negatives had been deliberately set aside. In 1994, this collection was entrusted to the National Archives by 80-year-old Hin Ming, thus ensuring the survival of a unique and eloquent record of the people of Singapore in the early years of the 20th century.

A Family of Photographers
Lee King Yan and Lee Poh Yan belonged to a large Cantonese family from the village of Siu Wong Nai Cheun (literally “Small Yellow Earth Village”) in Nam Hoi county, Guangdong province. According to family lineage records, the village was founded by Lee Shun Tsai from Zhejiang province in the 13th century.¹  From this village, members of the family ventured forth to operate more than a dozen photographic studios in Southeast Asia, including eight in Singapore.

The Lee family with Poh Yan and King Yan standing third and fourth from the left respectively. Marjorie Lau Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

King Yan and Poh Yan, who were born in China, belonged to the 21st generation and learned photography from their father, Lee Tit Loon. In its early days, the art of photography was considered a trade secret. In some European cities, photography was a protected profession that no one who had not served as an apprentice could join.² In the Lee family, it was the brothers and sons who handled the camera and processed the plates, while employees were engaged as retouchers, finishers and mounters.

By 1900, Tit Loon was managing the successful Koon Sun Photo Studio at 179 South Bridge Road. He had four surviving sons, three of whom became photographers: King Yan, Poh Yan and Sou Yan. The fourth, Chi Yan, was sent by the Methodist mission to study in the United States and became a minister and teacher until his early death in the mid-1920s. When Tit Loon retired to his home village, Koon Sun Photo Studio was left in the hands of Poh Yan and Sou Yan.

King Yan, however, struck out on his own. By 1911, he had established Lee Brothers Photographers at 58-4 Hill Street, and by 1913, Poh Yan had joined him. Younger brother Sou Yan continued to run Koon Sun for several years, closing it around 1917 before returning to China.

The move out of Chinatown and into the more salubrious Stamford Road area was significant. With a population of over 185,000, Singapore was one of the busiest ports in the world and the most cosmopolitan city in Asia. Nearly three-quarters of the population were Chinese, but there were large groups of peninsular Malays, Sumatrans, Javanese, Bugis, Boyanese, Indians, Ceylonese, Arabs, Jews, Eurasians and Europeans.³ Men still outnumbered women by eight to one but there was a steady increase in the number of Chinese women immigrants and more babies being born in the Straits Settlements,⁴  a fact reflected by the impressive number of baby and family photographs in the Lee Brothers Collection.

It wasn’t long before King Yan and Poh Yan were photographing many of the well-known personalities of the day, including Dr Lim Boon Keng, Mr and Mrs Song Ong Siang, Mr and Mrs Lee Choon Guan, Dr Hu Tsai Kuan, rubber planter Lim Chong Pang, rubber merchant Teo Eng Hock, banker Seet Tiong Wah, the families of Tan Kim Seng and Tan Kah Kee, and Dr Sun Yat Sen during his historic visits to Singapore.

Many of the photographs in Song Ong Siang’s landmark 1923 publication, One Hundred Years’ History of the Chinese in Singapore, were supplied by Lee Brothers Studio.⁵ The Methodist missionaries who patronised the brothers – both active church members – included Sophia Blackmore, the founder of Methodist Girls’ School.

The photographs of these luminaries are found among the many more captivating portraits of the anonymous, but obviously prospering, inhabitants of Singapore: plump satisfied towkays, formidable nonyas of all ages bedecked with exquisite jewellery, European merchants and their well-dressed wives, beguiling wedding couples and, perhaps most endearing of all, enchanting family portraits of all races.

In the early 1920s, the two brothers parted company on amicable terms and King Yan opened Eastern Studio on Stamford Road. The decision may have been dictated by domestic circumstances as both men had large and still growing families. The 1923 edition of Seaports of the Far East contained a highly flattering description of Eastern Studio that highlighted King Yan’s expertise: “One of the best photographers in Singapore is Mr Lee Keng (sic) Yan, proprietor of the Eastern Studio, who has been operating locally for thirty years, and is an expert in every branch of his trade.”⁶

King Yan came to Singapore with his father in 1891 as an apprentice photographer. In 1897, he married Tong Oi Yuet in St Stephen’s Church in Hong Kong. They returned to Singapore and had 12 children. Three of his sons became photographers. A Methodist and an active YMCA member, King Yan was one of the first in Singapore to cut off his queue and was known in photographic circles as mo pin lou or “the man with no pigtail”.

Lee King Yan behind the camera. Marjorie Lau Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

On the eve of World War II, King Yan evacuated Eastern Studio because of vibrations to the shophouse structure caused by the frequent passing of heavy trucks along Stamford Road. He continued to operate Venus Studio in nearby Eu Court, a branch of Eastern Studio that he had opened in the 1930s. Unfortunately, these premises were damaged during a Japanese air raid, and the archive of negatives and prints destroyed. After the war, King Yan continued to work from his home at 26 Dublin Road. When he died in 1957 at age 80, his obituary in The Straits Times described him as “one of the pioneers of photography in the country” and the “grand old man of photography”.⁷

Poh Yan, who maintained an avid interest in new advances in photography throughout his life, married Soh Moo Hin in China in 1902 and they raised 13 children. Two sons became involved in photography. Lee Hin Ming, the eldest, ran the family-owned photographic supply company Wah Heng for many years and was also a founder and director of Rainbow Colour Service. Youngest son Francis Lee Wai Ming developed a keen interest in photography, kindled by watching his father in the darkroom, and bought his first camera with the profits made from taking identity card photos for fellow students at St Andrew’s School. He became a freelance photojournalist in the 1950s.

For many years, the business premises of Lee Brothers at Hill Street doubled as the family home and the older children were called upon to perform simple tasks in the studio. The ground floor was used mainly as storage. The first floor front room was the reception area with the living quarters behind. The top floor contained the studio and darkroom. At night, the reception area became the children’s bedroom as mats were unrolled and spread out on the floor. As the number of children increased, more living space was secured in a block of flats behind on Loke Yew Street.

When the Hill Street studio was acquired for redevelopment in the 1930s, Poh Yan moved to a smaller unit nearby at the corner of Hill Street and St Gregory’s Place. Business had, by this time, steadily declined due to the economic depression and the popularity of amateur photography. At the time of the move, three-quarters of the firm’s glass plate negatives had to be destroyed because of insufficient storage space.

With the imminent outbreak of World War II, Poh Yan permanently closed the studio. Although some family members continued to reside in the Hill Street shophouse, he and his wife moved to a farm at the eighth mile of Thomson Road. He passed away in 1960 at the age of 76.

The last of the family’s photographic enterprises to survive was Wah Heng and Co., importers of photographic materials at 95 North Bridge Road, of which King Yan, Poh Yan and their many cousins were shareholders. The firm stocked a “remarkable range of goods” for both beginners and experts in photography, and did business “throughout the Straits Settlements, Federated Malay States and the Dutch East Indies”.⁸

Studio Portraits
The Lee brothers were practitioners of a tradition that began with the invention of photography by Frenchman Louis Daguerre in 1839. The possibilities of studio portraiture were seized upon as the most exciting benefit of the new invention. The daguerreotype photographic method spread quickly and became available in Singapore by 1843 when G. Dutronquoy, proprietor of the London Hotel, placed an advertisement in The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser on 4 December 1843, promising that a picture can be taken “in the astonishing short space of two minutes”, “free from all blemish” and “in every respect perfect likenesses”.⁹

(Left) Lee King Yan with his wife and children, 1919. Lee Brothers Studio Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.
(Right) Lee Poh Yan (holding child on lap) with his wife and children, c.1930. Lee Brothers Studio Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore.

In the 1860s, portrait photography was further invigorated by the introduction of the inexpensive carte-de-visite in France. Originally intended as a visiting card with a photographic portrait mounted on it, such cards were later produced in great numbers for friends’ albums.¹⁰ A further revolution took place not long after with the introduction of superior paper photographs made with the wet collodion process, or wet plate process. This new method gave a high-quality negative on glass with excellent resolution of detail from which an unlimited number of prints could be made.¹¹

The commercial possibilities of the wet plate process were staggering. Any quantity of prints could be ordered from the best results of a studio session, and supplied at terms attractive to both photographer and customer. The first to exploit this technical advance in Singapore was Edward A. Edgerton who, in 1858, advertised his “photographic and stereoscopic portrait” services at his Stamford Street residence.¹²

Another early European photographer who established a photo studio in the settlement was John Thomson, who went on to become one of the most celebrated of all 19th-century photographers. He arrived in Singapore in 1862 equipped with the knowledge of the latest advances in commercial photography in Europe, and advertised a range of new services involving “micro-photographs”.¹³

Of all the European studios, however, the most enduring was G.R. Lambert & Co, which operated from the 1880s until around 1917. The official photographers to the King of Siam and Sultan of Johor as well as for major political events in Malaya, G.R. Lambert & Co maintained branch offices in Sumatra, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. By the turn of the century, the firm had amassed one of the “finest collections of landscape views in the East, comprising about 3,000 subjects which were mainly purchased by globe-trotters as travel souvenirs and pasted into large leather-bound albums”.¹⁴

Chinese photographers were also active in Singapore in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as evidenced by the many examples of their work that have survived in family albums or turned up in antique shops. Such photographs are usually mounted on cardboard and carry names such as Pun Loon at High Street, Poh Wah at Upper Chin Chew Street, and Kwong Sun, Koon Hin and Guan Seng along South Bridge Road. While important examples of historic photography in their own right, the subjects are often posed stiffly and lack individual character.

In contrast, the Lee brothers achieved both subtlety and naturalness in their work. Their genius lay in their ability to combine the technician’s dispassionate skill with the camera, the scientist’s understanding of the subtleties of the darkroom and the artist’s finely developed sense of human character and human expression.

In many of the portraits found in the collection – all of which were taken circa 1910 to the mid-1920s – a dignity and timeless elegance is apparent, which tempts us to look upon the faces of those who climbed the steps to Lee Brothers Studio as though we might almost know them today.

All photos are from the Lee Brothers Studio Collection. Identities of the subjects are unknown as these photos are unrecorded excess or uncollected prints kept by the Lee Brothers Studio.

Notes

Is the Vanda Miss Joaquim a human-made hybrid or a happy accident? In this cautionary tale, Nadia Wright, Linda Locke and Harold Johnson recount how fiction becomes truth when it is repeated often enough.

While doing research on the Armenian community in Singapore back in the 1990s, Australian historian Nadia Wright read an account of how the daughter of a prominent Armenian family in Singapore, Agnes Joaquim ¹ (Ashken Hovagimian), had stumbled upon a never-before-seen orchid bloom by accident in the family garden.

In the authoritative The Gardeners’ Chronicle, published on 24 June 1893, however, Henry Nicholas Ridley, the first Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens (1888−1911) stated unequivocally that Agnes Joaquim had crossed two different orchids, the Vanda Hookeriana with the Vanda teres and produced the orchid which he later named Vanda Miss Joaquim.² Intrigued as to why Ridley’s account had been replaced by a tale of chance discovery in various stories about the flower in Singapore, Wright decided to investigate. 

This is the first published image of the Vanda Miss Joaquim. Image source: The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 26 June 1897, p. 427, Biodiversity Heritage Library. Digitised by UMass Amherst Libraries.

The Birth of a Bloom
In 1893, Agnes Joaquim, or possibly her brother Joe (Joaquim P. Joaquim), showed Henry Ridley a new orchid. After carefully examining the bloom, having it sketched, and preserving a specimen in the herbarium of the Botanic Gardens, Ridley sent an account of the orchid’s origin and appearance to The Gardeners’ Chronicle, a respected English horticulture periodical founded in 1841. He wrote:

“A few years ago Miss Joaquim, a lady residing in Singapore, well-known for her success as a horticulturist, succeeded in crossing Vanda Hookeriana, Rchb. f., and V. teres, two plants cultivated in almost every garden in Singapore. Unfortunately, no record was kept as to which was used as the male. The result has now appeared in the form of a very beautiful plant, quite intermediate between the two species and as I cannot find any record of this cross having been made before, I describe it herewith.”³

In an 1894 paper delivered to the prestigious Linnean Society in England, Ridley reiterated that Vanda Hookeriana had been “successfully crossed” with V. teres, Lindl., “producing a remarkably handsome offspring, V. x Miss Joaquim.” This paper was published unaltered in 1896.⁴  Ridley, who lived to be 100 years old, never wavered in his statement. When Isaac Henry Burkill (Ridley’s successor at the Botanic Gardens) checked all of Ridley’s herbarium specimens and redid the labels, he saw no reason to dispute Ridley and recorded Joaquim as the creator.

Ridley sent cuttings of Vanda Miss Joaquim to Sir Trevor Lawrence, President of the Royal Horticultural Society and one of the world’s leading orchidists, where it was nurtured in his orchid house at Burford Lodge, in Dorking, England. Flowering for the first time in Europe in 1897, Vanda Miss Joaquim was displayed at the Royal Horticultural Show in London, winning a First Class Certificate. In describing the event, The Gardeners’ Chronicle noted that “the plant was obtained from a cross between V. teres and V. Hookeriana some years ago by Miss Joaquim at Singapore”.⁵

(Left) The First Class Certificate awarded to Sir Trevor Lawrence, President of the Royal Horticultural Society, at the 1897 Royal Horticultural Flower Show for his Vanda Miss Joaquim hybrid. Image source: RHS Lindley Collections, The Royal Horticultural Society.
(Right) A detail from the Vanda Miss Joaquim specimen sheet of the first spike of flowers received in April 1893 by the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The flower was the same one described by Henry Ridley in The Gardeners’ Chronicle in June 1893. The label beneath the specimen is Ridley’s handwriting. Courtesy of the Singapore Botanic Gardens Herbarium.

In Singapore, Joaquim’s orchid debuted at the 1899 Flower Show. The Straits Times commented that “one of the most noticeable flowers was the orchid Vanda Miss Joaquim, named after Miss Joaquim and raised by that lady”.⁶ The Singapore Free Press confirmed Joaquim’s achievement, reporting that “Miss Joaquim showed a hybrid which has been named after her, that she has, after repeated trials, succeeded in cultivating”.⁷

From 1893 until 1981, the orchid was accepted, with few exceptions, as a hybrid bred by Joaquim. Robert Rolfe, editor of The Orchid Review and an authority on orchid hybrids, placed Vanda Miss Joaquim among the 106 cultivated hybrids created in 1893. Subsequent issues of The Orchid Review, The Gardeners’ Chronicle and other leading contemporary horticultural journals reiterated the fact that Joaquim had crossed the parent orchids, as did all the editions of the authoritative Sander’s Complete List of Orchid Hybrids. 

An extract of the list of Vanda orchids showing natural and artificial ones published by Sander & Sons. All rights reserved, Orchid Hybrids: Sander’s Complete List, Containing the Names and Parentages of all the Known Hybrid Orchids Whether Introduced or Artificially Raised… (p. 81). (1915). St Albans; Sander & Sons.

Sowing the First Seeds of Doubt
In 1931, The Straits Times announced that a new hybrid orchid – the Spathoglottis Primrose – had been produced in Singapore. It was the first orchid raised using the new technique of germinating seeds in a sterile culture. This orchid was described as the second hybrid to be produced in Malaya or, as the newspaper playfully added in parentheses, “the first if Vanda Miss Joaquim came into being as the result of a happy accident”.⁸ No reason was offered for this speculation and the mischievous aside was not taken up.

Richard Eric Holttum, who was Director of the Botanic Gardens between 1925 and 1942 and again from 1946 to 1949, accepted Ridley’s description, as did his later successors Murray Ross Henderson (1949–54) and John William Purseglove (1954–57). In Hawaii, Harold Lyon (the first Director of Honolulu’s Foster Botanical Garden), who was involved with the propagation of Vanda Miss Joaquim there, believed Ridley.

Agnes Joaquim’s nephew Basil J.P. Joaquim, a prominent lawyer in Kuala Lumpur, corroborated Ridley’s view and was cited in  The Straits Times in 1951 as saying “this hybrid was not discovered in the garden… [but was the result of [an] artificial pollination… performed by my unmarried aunt, Miss Agnes Joaquim”.⁹ Articles published in local newspapers also regarded the orchid as an artificial hybrid created by Joaquim.

(Left) Henry Ridley, first Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens (1888–1911), was described as “a genius”, “a keen observer and a great naturalist”, and “a botanist of exceptional capability”. His article published in The Gardeners’ Chronicle on 24 June 1893 unequivocally states that Agnes Joaquim had bred the Vanda Miss Joaquim. Image source: Makepeace, W., Brooke, G., & Braddell, R. S. J. (Eds.). (1921). One Hundred Years of Singapore (p. 78). London: J. Murray. (Call no.: RCLOS 959.91 MAK)
(Middle) Richard Eric Holttum, Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens (1925–1942 and 1946–1949), was an orchid hybridiser himself and he regarded the Vanda Miss Joaquim as Singapore’s first artificial hybrid orchid. Courtesy of Singapore Botanic Gardens.
(Right) Humphrey Morrison Burkill, Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens (1957–1969), alleged that artificial orchid hybrids were not produced in Singapore until 1928. He said that among plants used in creating hybrids was the “natural hybrid Vanda Miss Joaquim” which he described as a “delightful accident of nature”. Image source: Sharp, I., & Lum, S. (Eds.). (1996). A View from the Summit: The Story of Bukit Timah Nature Reserve (p. 29). Singapore: Nanyang Technological University and the National University of Singapore. (Call no.: RSING 333.78095957 VIE)

However, at the 1963 World Orchid Conference held in Singapore, Humphrey Morrison Burkill, who was appointed Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens in 1957, sowed the seeds of dispute, alleging that artificial orchid hybrids were not produced in Singapore until 1928. He added that among the plants used in creating hybrids was the “natural hybrid Vanda Miss Joaquim” which he described as a “delightful accident of nature”.¹⁰

Burkill’s claims not only contradicted those of his father Isaac Burkill (Director of Botanic Gardens, 1912–25) and other former directors, but also cast doubt on Ridley’s character. Ridley had not only officially reported the genesis of the Vanda Miss Joaquim in 1893 but also successfully created orchid hybrids himself, in 1896 and 1902. Yet, the younger Burkill gave no supporting evidence for his puzzling assertion.

References to Vanda Miss Joaquim’s origin decreased in the late 1960s and during the 1970s, reflecting declining interest in the orchid. While some in Singapore referred to it as an artificial hybrid, others began to repeat Humphrey Burkill’s allegation that it was a natural hybrid. Like him, none gave any reason for doubting Ridley’s official account.

The Discovery Myth
On 15 April 1981, Vanda Miss Joaquim was declared Singapore’s national flower. While fame was assured for the orchid, Agnes Joaquim’s true role was tossed aside when newspaper reports of the day described the flower as a natural hybrid which she had chanced upon in her garden. When a nephew of Agnes Joaquim, Basil E. Johannes, was invited to Singapore for the launch of the National Flower Week in July 1981, he further contributed to the confusion by claiming that Agnes Joaquim had discovered the flower – not only contradicting what his cousin Basil J.P. Joaquim said in 1951, but also Ridley.

Arriving at Changi Airport on 21 July from Perth, Australia, where he had been living for over two decades, the 88-year-old Johannes declared to the reporter who interviewed him that “Aunt Agnes found the flower one morning [in 1893] when she was loitering in the garden. She was so excited that she took it to the director of the Botanic Gardens straightaway”.¹¹  Local newspapers ran with Johannes’s story, alleging that Vanda Miss Joaquim was a natural hybrid and making no mention of Ridley’s original account.

Issued on 10 March 1963, this stamp with a face value of 30 cents features the  Vanda Miss Joaquim. It is one of the stamps in the Fishes, Orchids & Birds Definitives series. Image source: Stamp Community Forum.

In his book on the Vanda Miss Joaquim published in 1982, Teoh Eng Soon further enshrined Johannes’s story in print, embellishing it with more detail: “One morning while Agnes was loitering alone in the garden she came upon a new orchid flower nestled in a clump of bamboo… Agnes could not contain her excitement. Straightaway she took it to the Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens.”¹²

Arshak Galstaun, President of St Gregory’s Board of Trustees, which looked after the affairs of the Armenian Church in Singapore, and an old friend of Johannes’s was dismayed by this turn of events. In fact, he said so at Teoh’s book launch and wrote to the media refuting it.

Galstaun regarded Ridley’s statement in 1893 that “no record was kept as to which of the plants was used as the male” as evidence that Joaquim had been experimenting with orchid hybrids for some time. He was certain that Ridley would not have made that comment if the hybrid had been created naturally.¹³

Believing Johannes’s recollections to be based on hearsay and pure conjecture, Galstaun reasoned that the “positive written record of a scientist of Mr Ridley’s stature” should hold sway over the reminiscences of an elderly person. But his views published in the Malayan Orchid Review in 1982¹⁴ were brushed aside, and again it was claimed that the orchid was a natural hybrid.¹⁵

There was no further opposition to this fictitious story: an example of when something is repeated often enough, it sometimes becomes accepted truth. Subsequent newspaper mentions of the orchid said it was a natural hybrid. Even when the centenary of the orchid took place in 1993, there was no reference to Ridley’s account.

A diorama at the Singapore History Museum and a brochure on the National Orchid Garden stated that the orchid was discovered by Miss Agnes Joaquim, as did a display board at the Singapore Botanic Gardens as recently as 2016. All of that reinforced the view that Singapore’s national flower had popped up serendipitously in Joaquim’s garden one day.

Debunking the Myth
In 2000, Nadia Wright wrote an article in the Malayan Orchid Review, maintaining that Agnes Joaquim had crossed the orchid as Ridley had recorded. Explaining why the discovery story was false, she declared it was time to set the record straight.¹⁶  Although Wright based her reassessment on publicly available historical evidence, her article was criticised by those who believed that the orchid was a natural hybrid discovered by chance.

Aiming to discredit Wright’s research, the detractors echoed Teoh Eng Soon’s spurious claim that “nearly every orchidist since [1893] believed that [Joaquim] had discovered a natural hybrid”.¹⁷

The debate continued until 2007. In her book on Singapore’s Armenians published in 2003, Wright reiterated her stand, adding that Joaquim was the first woman in the world to breed an orchid.¹⁸That book and Wright’s subsequent article in 2004 came under fire, but no credible evidence to refute Ridley’s findings was offered in return.¹⁹

Although Wright explained why the account of the orchid’s origin written by a respected botanist and orchid expert, and accepted by other experts should be believed over confused and unsubstantiated speculations, her views were summarily dismissed by the authors of a book on Vanda Miss Joaquim.²⁰

The authors accepted Teoh’s reconstructed account as factual, declaring that Teoh was right simply because he “described the event” in detail.²¹ Yet Teoh could not provide concrete proof of how he became privy to his information, including details such as Joaquim was “alone” when she found the orchid “nestled in a clump of bamboo”. The Vanda Miss Joaquim needs “full sunlight and plenty of air movement” in order to thrive, and thus it was most unlikely to have grown in the shade of a bamboo clump as alleged.²²

The book repeated Teoh’s claim that Johannes was right, declaring that he was “the only living person to have met her [Agnes Joaquim]”.²³ The authors, however, failed to mention that the 88-year-old Johannes was born in 1893, the year Vanda Miss Joaquim originated, or that Johannes had spent his infancy in Java, only coming to Singapore to live in 1901 when he was eight years old: two years after Joaquim’s death. Johannes would have met Joaquim only when the family was visiting Singapore and when he was very young (he was only six years old when she died). Members of the extended Joaquim family were stunned by Johannes’s remarks to the press.

Whatever the case, these facts cast serious doubt on the credibility of Johannes’s testimony, as does an oral history interview he gave to the National Archives in July 1981 which showed that his recollections were neither consistent nor accurate.

Basil Johannes’s older brother John, who was born 10 years earlier in 1883, told a very different story. In the 1890s, John Johannes attended Raffles Institution and no doubt lived with his grandmother and Joaquim at the family home. He was 16 years old in 1899 and more likely than his younger brother to have had first-hand knowledge of the orchid. In later years when John Johannes walked past a flower shop displaying Vanda Miss Joaquim orchids, he would cross his two forefingers and proudly tell his daughter Hazel that her grand-aunt had bred the orchid.

Hazel Locke’s (nee Johannes) account of her father’s actions was scathingly dismissed by various people who insisted that Johannes’s claim that the orchid grew in a clump of bamboo was “a report of an observation”.²⁴ How the proponents of the discovery theory reached these conclusions is unknown.

It is likely that Basil Johannes was confusing Agnes Joaquim’s “discovery” with a much later event. One day in the 1930s while walking in Malaya, his cousin Basil Joaquim came across an unusual orchid, which he sent to the Director of the Botanic Gardens to see if it were a new orchid.

Discrediting Ridley
To push for acceptance of Basil Johannes’s account, its supporters turned on Ridley. They suggested that Ridley’s statement about Agnes Joaquim crossing the orchid was “allegorical rather than factual”, or that it was based on an “assumption”.²⁵

But Ridley was known to be a careful observer and recorder. Had Joaquim found the orchid, Ridley would have written it up accordingly as he had done with other natural hybrids. Besides, the wording of Ridley’s article reinforces the fact that Joaquim had produced the orchid. Had she just stumbled upon it by chance, there would be no need for Ridley to mention the fact that she had failed to record the pollen parent. Ridley would gain nothing by concocting a false claim; indeed, his reputation as an orchid expert would have been at stake, not to mention his position as the first Director of the Botanic Gardens.

Critics tried to discredit Ridley by claiming that he did not know how to hybridise orchids. They questioned his specific expertise as his interests ranged “from agriculture to ghosts”, implying that he had only a superficial knowledge about many subjects. They dismissed Ridley’s expert account in The Gardeners’ Chronicle because it was written after he had lived “in Singapore only 4–5 years and before acquiring the expertise he had in later years”.²⁶

Agnes Joaquim succeeded in crossing Vanda Hookeriana (left)  with Vanda teres (right) to create the hybrid Vanda Miss Joaquim. Photos by David Lim. Courtesy of the National Parks Board.

In truth, Ridley was an orchid expert when he arrived in Singapore in 1888. As a Fellow of the Linnean Society, his prolific output covered 10 papers on orchids. These included his detailed observations of orchid self-pollination and an influential paper on “The Nomenclature of Orchids” presented at the 1886 British orchid conference. Indeed, England’s leading orchidists of the time, such as Frederick Burbidge and James Veitch, turned to Ridley with queries on orchid fertilisation. Yet his account was rejected in favour of that of Basil Johannes who admitted that he knew nothing about growing plants.

Ridley’s account was further dismissed because Joaquim had not kept close records of her work. The aforementioned Robert Rolfe lamented that earlier hybridists too had not kept records as to which was the seed parent. However, their work has not been dismissed because of this supposed failing.

It has been claimed that because Ridley did not describe how the seeds were germinated in his report, Joaquim could not have made the cross. But then, such information was not included in other articles on hybrids in The Gardeners’ Chronicle; they simply gave the names of the hybridiser, the parent orchids, and a detailed botanical description of the new flower. This was exactly what Ridley’s article did.

Indeed, biologist Joseph Arditti, a strong supporter of the discovery myth, noted that William Herbert, a pioneer in hybridisation, had given “no details regarding his germination method”.²⁷ Yet, inexplicably, Arditti accepted Herbert’s hybrid as genuine, but not Joaquim’s.

The Plot Thickens

Vanda x Miss Joaquim. Image source: Linden, J., & Linden, L. (1897). Lindenia Iconographie des Orchidées (Series 2, vol. 13).

It has been suggested that Agnes Joaquim would not have known how to germinate seeds and that successful methods of germination had been developed only after her death. This is far from true. In fact, Vanda Miss Joaquim was one of 106 artificial hybrids created in Britain in 1893. Joaquim’s achievement was not an anomaly – she was doing in Singapore what others were already doing in Britain and elsewhere.

Information on germination was readily available in books as well as in horticultural journals. Besides, it has been suggested that Joaquim had sown the seeds onto a base of coconut dust, from where they germinated.²⁸  Curiously, it was inferred that if the pollination was done by a bee, then the seeds could germinate, but if the pollination was done by Joaquim, the seeds could not have done so.

There was no end to the efforts to disparage Joaquim. Her critics pointed out that Joaquim did not breed any other orchids, apart from the one she had been falsely credited with. Claiming that hybridisers tended to make several crosses in their lifetimes, they concluded that she could not possibly have created the Vanda Miss Joaquim. But the fact is all hybridisers start with one cross. What further weakened the critics’ spurious claims is that the very source they cited reported that half of all breeders in that study produced only one hybrid.²⁹

As they did with Ridley, Joaquim’s detractors doctored quotations to belittle her role. For example, they quoted The Straits Times of 12 April 1899 as reporting that Joaquim “succeed [sic] in cultivating” the Vanda Miss Joaquim, but downplayed the word “cultivating” in this context to mean merely “growing”.³⁰

Elsewhere, they omitted Ridley’s reference to Joaquim by claiming that he “only wrote that the cross was between Vanda Hookeriana Rchb.f. and V. teres” when in fact he had specifically reported that Joaquim had “succeeded in crossing” these two orchid species.³¹

They also misquoted Singaporean pioneer breeder John Laycock, who said the question as to how Agnes had succeeded in germinating the seed into a flowering plant “must now forever remain unanswered”.³² Laycock’s words were rewritten into something quite different from what he had intended – that the question of whether or not Joaquim bred the orchid “must now forever remain unanswered”.³³

If the Vanda Miss Joaquim is a natural hybrid as alleged, then what was the agent of the pollination? Could it be carpenter bees, as it has been claimed before? But there is no evidence in history of these bees ever creating another Vanda Miss Joaquim. And there never have been any reports of naturally occurring Vanda Miss Joaquim orchids being found anywhere.³⁴

Besides, if bees had done the pollinating, Ridley would have said so. In his observations, Ridley carefully distinguished between an insect visiting a flower and pollination by a human. Noting that carpenter bees did the “greatest amount of pollination in Singapore”, he compiled a list of plants they pollinated.³⁵35 He did not record carpenter bees as visiting or pollinating either Vanda Hookeriana or Vanda teres, although he noted that such bees did assist in the fertilisation of other orchids.³⁶

Arditti insisted that “all orchid scientists and knowledgeable orchid growers believe that Vanda Miss Joaquim is a natural hybrid”.³⁷ But he did not substantiate this sweeping statement. Indeed, to the contrary, Harold Johnson’s review of literature shows that until 1981, almost all publications accepted Vanda Miss Joaquim as an artificial hybrid and only a few after 1963 suggested differently.³⁸

It is worth remembering that Botanic Gardens director Richard Holttum, who closely reviewed his predecessor Isaac Burkill’s work, regarded Vanda Miss Joaquim as an artificial hybrid. In 1928, Holttum quoted Ridley’s original report, commenting on the skill and care with which Agnes Joaquim had raised the plant and describing it as “her orchid”.³⁹ Again in 1972, he quoted Ridley’s report as evidence of the orchid’s origins.⁴⁰

Getting it Right – Finally
Ridley was widely respected for his role in establishing the Singapore Botanic Gardens as a reputable attraction and, in 1955, was described by historian Sir Richard Winstedt as “the man whose influence on Malayan history is second only to that of Raffles”.⁴¹ Yet, after 1981, Ridley’s pronouncement on the origins of the Vanda Miss Joaquim became sidelined. Although contemporary orchid experts accepted Ridley’s statement that the orchid was deliberately created, the discovery story was perpetuated by a television drama, online articles, in books and even in scholarly journals.

In 2009,  The Straits Times repeated that Agnes Joaquim had bred the orchid, but in news reports published in 2011, 2012 and 2015, it moved to a more neutral position without attributing credit to her. However, signs of change began to appear. For example, in 2011, a sample question from the Singapore citizenship quiz asked who had bred the orchid. The correct answer was Agnes Joaquim.

Finally, in 2015, after careful deliberation, Joaquim was inducted into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame in recognition of her hybridisation of the orchid. Hazel Locke (Basil Johannes’s niece) accepted the award on Joaquim’s behalf. The award was presented by Halimah Yacob, then Speaker of Parliament (and currently President of Singapore).

But the journey towards correcting history was not over yet. In 2016, matters came to a head after Hazel Locke’s daughter, Linda Locke, came across a display board at the Singapore Botanic Gardens that failed to recognise Joaquim’s role. The younger Locke embarked on further research to evaluate the conflicting arguments put forward by various people and was able to confirm that the evidence presented by Johnson and Wright was indisputable.

Locke persisted in her efforts to correct official records of Singapore history and managed to convince the National Heritage Board (NHB) to conduct its own review of all historical source materials. Only then did NHB, together with the National Parks Board, arrive at the conclusion that Agnes Joaquim had indeed crossed the parent plants to create Vanda Miss Joaquim. NHB and the Singapore Botanic Gardens amended their official records in 2016.

This news was brought to the attention of other government agencies – the National Library Board, for instance, corrected its articles about the orchid on Singapore Infopedia, its online encyclopedia − and in September 2016, The Straits Times ran a full-page report accepting that Agnes Joaquim was responsible for creating the hybrid orchid.⁴²

(Left) Vanda Miss Joaquim orchids in bloom. Courtesy of Linda Locke.
(Middle) A close-up of a Vanda Miss Joaquim. Courtesy of National Parks Board.
(Right) A painting of the Vanda Miss Joaquim that won Sir Trevor Lawrence, President of the Royal Horticultural Society, the First Class Certificate at the 1897 Royal Horticultural Flower Show. Drawn by artist Nellie Roberts in 1897, it is simply titled “Miss Joaquim Agnes”. FCC/RHS. Image source: RHS Lindley Collections, The Royal Horticultural Society.

Truth had finally triumphed, but its vindication was hard won, with a war of words and various parties taking different sides since the late 1950s. Much ado over a trivial matter, some may say. However, when the bloom in question is Singapore’s national flower, it is important that its correct history is told. This is all the more timely as we commemorate the 125th anniversary of the Vanda Miss Joaquim in 2018.

AGNES JOAQUIM Agnes Joaquim’s lineage can be traced to the diasporic Armenian community who sank roots in Singapore soon after the settlement’s founding in 1819. Joaquim’s grandparents were Isaiah Zechariah, one of the founders of Singapore’s Armenian Apostolic Church of St Gregory the Illuminator – more simply known as the Armenian Church – and Ashkhen Arathoon, after whom Agnes Joaquim was named. Her parents were Parsick Joaquim, an Armenian from Madras, and Urelia Zechariah, a Singapore-born Armenian. Parsick Joaquim arrived in Singapore around 1840 and worked as a merchant and trader. Together with Simon Stephens, he founded Stephens & Joaquim in 1849. In 1852, Parsick Joaquim married Urelia Zechariah and lived on Hill Street near other Armenian families and the church. His business thrived, and in 1861, the family moved to a mansion overlooking Tanjong Pagar, which he named Mt Narcis, after his eldest son. When the mansion was demolished in 1901, the carriageway leading to the house was named Narcis Road. (Left) Photo of Agnes Joaquim on a locket that once belonged to her, with an inscription of her name on the reverse side. The locket is now in the possession of Linda Locke, her great grand-niece. Courtesy of Linda Locke. (Right) Agnes Joaquim died of cancer on 2 July 1899 at the age of 45. Her tombstone is found within the grounds of the Armenian Church in Singapore. It was originally located at Bukit Timah Cemetery. Her tombstone bears the inscription “Let her own works praise her”.Courtesy of Prem Singh.   Parsick Joaquim died unexpectedly in 1872, leaving his wife to raise 11 children, the youngest of whom was three years old. Fortunately, he left the family well provided for. Agnes Joaquim, born on 7 April 1854, did not marry and was no doubt an immense help to her widowed mother, although their workload eased when the four youngest sons were sent to boarding school in England. Joaquim led a busy social life, attending various balls and festivities. However, it appears she was a strict woman in her later years, shooing her young nieces and nephews out of sight whenever guests arrived at the house. Joaquim was a skilled and artistic needlewoman. She embroidered a beautiful altar cloth for the Armenian Church, and at the 1891 Flower Show, she was complimented for her most attractive bouquet composed of orchids and delicate grasses. However, it was in the garden that Joaquim excelled, putting her fingers and mind to work. She won an impressive number of prizes in the annual flower shows before finally making her mark in history with her hybrid, Vanda Miss Joaquim. Exhibited at the annual Flower Show in April 1899, the Vanda Miss Joaquim won First Prize for the rarest orchid, and more importantly, recognition for her years of work. However, Joaquim was not destined to live long. She developed cancer and her condition took a turn for the worse when she contracted pneumonia. She died on 2 July 1899 at the relatively young age of 45. Local newspapers reported Joaquim’s death, describing her as the sister of “respected townsman” Joe Joaquim, her younger brother, and an eminent lawyer and Municipal Commissioner. Joaquim was buried in Bukit Timah Cemetery, and when the grounds were acquired by the government, her tombstone was one of those rescued and moved to the Armenian Church grounds. Today, it rests in the Garden of Memories in the church grounds, with a pot of orchids – the Vanda Miss Joaquim, naturally – on either side. The epitaph on the tombstone reads: “Let her own works praise her”, a reminder of the enduring legacy Agnes Joaquim left behind.

Notes