This story was first published at the MyStory portal, an initiative by the Public Education Division of the National Heritage Board.

I allowed Sang Nila Utama safe passage to Singapore after he yielded his crown as tribute. At that time, the island was called “Temasik”, but he renamed it “Singapura” or Lion City, even though there wasn’t a city there when he landed.

For centuries, I’ve supported life on this little island. For instance, the Orang Laut such as the Orang Biduanda Kallang and the Orang Selat fished in my waters.

When the British came, they came by sea. The attraction wasn’t just what could be grown on land, but what could be shipped by sea and traded on land. The island’s population grew rapidly after Stamford Raffles stepped on the shore in 1819. Immigrants came by the shipload, not just from Britain, but also from India, China and other lands nearby.

The biggest trouble Singapore has ever known came by sea too. In December 1941, an army from another island landed on several beaches, such as the one off Kota Bahru in the Malay Peninsula, north of Singapore.

Somewhere along this beach near Kota Bahru in Peninsula Malaysia, the Japanese landed and trooped south towards Singapore

From their beach heads, the Japanese army moved south to the Johor Straits, and crossed it to land in Singapore at Kranji, then pushed inland.

The Johor Straits, seen from Johor, with Kranji in the background

The British surrendered in a place that is about as far as one could get from the sea – in a factory at Bukit Timah. The days that followed were the worst of times ever. I know, because many of Singapore’s civilians were shot in my waters off Changi and Punggol beaches. The Japanese called the island “Syonanto” or “Light of the South”. The light from the Land of the Rising Sun cast long, dark shadows.

When the Japanese surrendered on an American ship in 1945 in the waters of Tokyo Bay, things were never the same again. Malaya soon declared its independence from the British Empire in 1957. Singapore followed by attaining self-government in 1959 and merged politically with Malaysia in 1963. In 1965, the island became independent, relying even more on the access provided by the seas.

I supported Singapore’s economy through entrepot trade. Even when the island became a land of factories, many goods were shipped by sea. As Singapore diversified from manufacturing into services, I continued to remain relevant for business, with the many telecommunication cables submerged beneath my waves

Since independence, Singapore has celebrated its birthday mostly near me - at the Padang near the Singapore River, and at the National Stadium near the Kallang Basin. In 2007, for the first time ever, the parade was held on water, at Marina Bay.

Marina Bay, the site of Singapore’s 2007 National Day celebration

While the story of how Singapura got its name is a legend, the history of Singapore is my story. I, the waters off Singapore, have seen history ebb and flow. Will the nation continue to be on solid ground? Much depends on those who live on its shores, but I will continue to be there for the island.

The writer enjoys journeys to wide open spaces and into the past by bicycle. He rides around Singapore occasionally to “paint with light”, photographing scenes that may shed light on bits of the island’s past. This way, he can relive in future memories of the past even when what has been photographed has disappeared. After all, when things are gone, all we have left are memories which may dim with time - and photographs.

References

Cornelius-Takahama V (2000). Sang Nila Utama. Retrieved 9 Aug 07 from http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/articles/SIP_93_2005-01-26.html

Government of Singapore (undated). World War II & Military Sites. Retrieved 9 Aug 07 from http://www.livelife.ecitizen.gov.sg/culture/heritage/worldwar2_detail.asp?plc_id=13

Hwang J (2001). Orang Laut. Retrieved 9 Aug 07 from http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/articles/SIP_551_2005-01-09.html

Miles R (2005). Syonanto (Singapore) 1942 - 1945. Retrieved 14 Aug 07 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/ww2peopleswar/stories/71/a4405871.shtml

Siew A (2006). So Much Riding on Fragile Undersea Cables. Retrieved 9 Aug 07 from http://business.asiaone.com/Business/SME+Central/Talking+point/Story/A1Story20070519-3406.html

Singapore Press Holdings (1998). Road to Independence. Retrieved 9 Aug 07 from http://ourstory.asia1.com.sg/merger/merger.html

The Changi Museum (undated). Chronological Events of WWII. Retrieved 9 Aug 07 from http://www.changimuseum.com/Chronicle/Chronicles%20body%20text2.htm

Wong H (undated). Tomoyuki Yamashita. Retrieved 9 Aug 07 from http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/articles/SIP_751_2005-01-22.html

Yip Cheong Fun (叶畅芬, 1903-1989) was a distinguished and influential Singaporean documentary photographer. Renowned internationally for his seascapes, Yip also recorded through his photographs the many different facets of Singapore life with his keen eye and humanistic understanding of his surroundings. His sensitivity to change also helped document the cultural landscape in Singapore before urbanization. [Kwek, 2006, 1]

Born in Hong Kong in 1903, Yip arrived in Singapore with his parents when he was seven months old. His father died when he was four and he then stayed with his mother at Sago Street in Chinatown. When Yip was six, he was sent to Dongguan, China by his mother as it was difficult to make a living in Singapore. However, Yip was neglected by his supposed care-givers in the subsequent four years. Fortunately, he was taken in by kind-hearted neighbours and they contacted Yip’s mother. Yip was then brought back to Singapore where he later studied at a private school in Chinatown. [Ahmad, 2007, 1]

Yip was passionate about photography. It started as a hobby to him when he was in his twenties. Working as a technician and an engineering supervisor, he managed to save up enough money to buy his first camera – a Rolleiflex - so that he could take photos for his family album.

His interest was disrupted when the Japanese confiscated his camera during the Japanese Occupation; but it did not die and he continued to pursue photography after the Second World War. [Ahmad, 2007, 1]

Yip became a member of the Photographic Society of Singapore in 1964 at fifty years old, and became the society’s vice-president in 1966 (until 1974). He was also Advisor to the Kreta Ayer Community Centre Camera Club in 1976, and played an active role in inspiring and guiding many young people who are interested in photography. [Andrew Yip, email interview, 26 March 2008]

Approach to Photography

In the early 1950s, working with a mere handful of contemporaries, Yip Cheong Fun faced a lot of difficulties, including an unsympathetic environment, scantiness of reference material, inadequate equipment, and a lack of guidance and direction. [Choy 1986, 1]

Yip’s solution to all these problems was experimentation in the form of trials and errors backed by a passionate spirit. Yip always sought to take photographs which go beyond superficial attractiveness. His photographs must carry a telling message forged by crucial elements such as content, composition, light and timing. In Yip’s words, “a good picture must have the right balance and composition.” [Choy, 1986, 1]

It is possible to manipulate a photograph after it is developed. Yip chose only to crop and to enlarge, and took care to avoid changing photographs. He relied heavily on his own judgment, experience, and intuition. “Yip’s approach to photography is not that of the photo-journalist who must make news, nor the fashion photographer who must flatter, nor the industrial photographer who must explain, nor the publicity photographer who must be an image maker. His is the artist’s approach free of the functional constraints and yet must reach out for something else. Yip decides to express a fragment of his imagination.” [Choy, 1986, 1] [“Master Lensman, Yip Cheong Fun”, 1986, videorecording]

Yip took a humanistic approach to photography. Andrew Yip, one of Yip’s four sons describes how his father “understood how photography can be a great medium not just to record truth and beauty, but to capture the defining moments of the changes that affect all of us in any human situation, and to interpret the dynamic interplay of the elements that constitute life and the human spirit.” [Andrew Yip, 2006, http://www.yipcheongfun.com/yipcheongfun.htm]

Indeed, the humanistic approach to photography was shown throughout his seascape photography, child portraiture and documentary photography.

Seascape Photography

In 1950s, Yip spent some time photographing the seascape, of the fishermen and the successors of the Chinese junks which first brought him from Singapore. The shimmering lights and reflections on the sea’s surface in many of his photographs became the hallmark of his seascape works. [Ahmad, 2007, 2]

The photograph “Rowing at Dawn”, Yip’s most recognised photograph, was taken at Tanjong Rhu where many Chinese junks anchored during this period of time. Yip took a sampan with his friend and captured this special moment in the heavy morning mist using a Super Ikonta which he bought after the Japanese Occupation. The solitary boatman rowing in the misty morning light, in his view, was the symbol for the new Singapore which has just gained self-government in 1957. Yip celebrated the end of colonialism and “the dawn of a new day, new hope and new beginning for Singapore”. [“Master Lensman, Yip Cheong Fun”, 1986, video-recording]

Child Portraiture

Yip also used to visit the Malay Kampongs at Geylang Lorong 3 after the early morning boat trips very often in the 1950s. And he would often take pictures of the children living there and gave them supplementary copies on the subsequent visit.

One of the photographic works that Yip was very fond of was the one with a young boy looking straight into the camera with his hands placed on a wooden beam. His brother stood behind the child and held tightly onto the wooden beams as well. “4 hands and 2 eyes are all in one row,” Yip said while touching this precious piece of photograph, “what is most outstanding is the child’s eyes.” [“Master Lensman, Yip Cheong Fun”, 1986, videorecording]

Although Yip did not reveal his feelings towards this photograph, the inclusion of a wooden beam that created distance and the four hands tightly holding on to it that created tension suggested some of Yip’s thoughts of childhood. What is most special about this picture is that the brother has only four fingers on each hand. This unusual scene has captured the intense feelings of tension, suffering and pain. [Andrew Yip, interview, 16 April 2008]

Indeed, Andrew Yip believed that his father’s work on child portraiture was affected by his early childhood which was filled with his memories of fleeing from floods, famine and wars in China and the difficult time living in Singapore with his mother. The photograph “Father’s Love”, where a father was trying to help his daughter to get down from a large piece of rock, would be deeply moving if one understood that Yip has lost his father at four. [Andrew Yip, email interview, 29 March 2008]

Bridget Tracy Tan, Director of Gallery and Theatre in the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in Singapore, commented on Yip Cheong Fun’s child portraiture: “Yip was known as a child-portrait photographer in his time, made famous by his many images of children, some dark, some compelling, some uncannily exhilarating, and others still reserved, impenetrable…. The depth of Yip’s perception is as much about the children as it is about himself.

“If we read a burden of anxiety upon a face, we understand full well that Yip’s childhood was not an unblemished one. If we read the light of innocence and imagination  upon a face, then we know Yip’s experiences bore the same if not as a child himself, then as that within his own children, all six of them. If we catch the outbreak of happiness through smiles and laughter, we know that this kind of joy is not limited to heady childhood, but lives on well into old age.” [Tan, 2006, also mentioned in email interview with Andrew Yip, 29 March 2008]

Documentary Photography

Yip influenced not only the people who were enthusiastic about photography, but also the people who were interested in the preservation of Singapore’s memory of the past. Chong Wing Hong, for example, was one of them. As a veteran columnist with Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao, Chong compiled a book of essays to preserve his memories of Chinatown where he grew up in. Blooms in Glimpse: Story of Kreta Aye is a 179-page book containing 34 essays in Chinese and 22 black-and-white photographs by Yip, having managed to “crystallize my memories of Kreta Ayer in his pictures.” [Teo, 2006, 1]

Chong also emphasized one photograph taking by Yip that consists of a silhouette of a woman heaving a cart through a torrential downpour specially. He said that the person in the straw hat was a fitting symbol of Singapore, more apt than even the Merlion. Chong said, “The picture represents how Singaporean once braved the storms to build up this country, and it still represents our fighting spirit today.” [Teo, 2006, 1]

Kelvin Tan, the president of the Singapore Heritage Society, notes that documentary photographs are “a powerful reminder of a way of life that is probably gone for ever.” He defines the documentary photography as having the specific aim of recording a present reality for future generations: “Singaporeans must be made to realize great photographs are not the sole preserve of Henri Cartier-Bresson or Alfred Stieglitz. We have our own masters too. More important, they documented our past, not someone else’s.” [Kwek, 2006, 2]

Yip is perhaps one such ‘master’. Through his camera, he has recorded a wide range of human activities that constituted a large part of Singapore’s cultural landscape in its early days. For instance, through his pictures, we see “another Singapore when we look at a Taoist priest leaping through a wall of flame amid a flurry of “Hell Notes”, or the silhouette of a woman heaving a cart through a torrential downpour, or an opium addict surrounded by waves of smoke.” [Tan, 2006, 1] [Kwek, 2006, 1]

In 2006, Ken Kwek wrote of the need to revive the waning art form of documentary photography and expressed his concern that “Singapore is forgetting the photo artists who spent their lives capturing a cultural landscape that would be rapidly effaced in the name of economic progress.” Yip, in his view, was one of the few photographers who have “registered the pain of modernization” poignantly. He also used Yip’s late 1960s photograph of an old tree crumbling in the foreground of a burgeoning metropolis as an example of the emotional schisms of urbanization. [Kwek, 2006, 1]

The sensitivity to the changes in his social and physical environment, the persistence in recording the changes and the passion for photography had also enabled Yip to document a large number of photographs showing the physical and social impact of urbanization. For instance, Yip stood on the same spot at New Bridge Road in 1955 and again in 1978 to take pictures of Chinatown, documenting the changes over twenty-three years.

Yip passed away on 16 September 1989. He collapsed at Lakeside MRT station at around midnight, clutching a loaded camera after taking pictures of the Lantern Festival at the Chinese Garden. But as seen from above, his influence remains and continues to prevail even after his passing. His mastery of photography can be attested to the numerous local and international awards won, including the Cultural Medallion awarded by the National Arts Council in 1984.[i] [Ahmad, 2007, 2]

A photography enthusiast myself, researching Yip was an illuminating experience. Yip’s photographs reveal a Singapore totally different from the one I am more familiar with. My favourite photograph by Yip the one called “Father’s Care”. The love and care the father shows his daughter makes the photograph comes alive. Almost as if defying his difficult childhood, he managed to capture this warm tender moment, a moment worth pondering upon, especially during present times of extreme materialism.

The author is a first-year student studying applied mathematics and computer science in NUS. She enjoys poetry, photography, walking and running. Taking up a scholarship to study in Singapore meant placing herself at the boundaries of two different cultures. While remaining a proud citizen of China, she is at the same time grateful to Singapore.

More information on Yip and his photographs can be found at An Ingenious Reverie - The Photography of Yip Cheong Fun, a website maintained by his son, Andrew Yip.

References

Ahmad Nureza. “Yip Cheong Fun” Updated 21 December 2007. (http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/details/SIP_465_2004-12-23.html) Cited 17 April 2008. Singapore Infopedia, National Library of Singapore.

Andre W. Keye. Chinatown: Different Exposures. Singapore: Fashion, 2004.

Ang Chwee Chai. “Foreword” Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. By Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore: C. F. Yip, 1986, p. 5

Choy Weng Yang. “The Photography of Yip Cheong Fun” Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. By Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore: C. F. Yip<, 1986, pp. 140-141.

Corrie Tan. “Remembering Yip Cheong Fun.” Life News. The Straits Times 1 April 2006.

David P. C. Tay. “Message” Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. By Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore: C. F. Yip, 1986, p. 6.

Ken Kwek. “Revive Waning Art Form of Documentary Photography”. Rev. others. The Straits Times 22 December 2006.

Master Lensman, Yip Cheong Fun. Videorecording. Singapore: Television Corporation of Singapore, 1986.

“Photographer Yip Cheong Fun dies.” News. The Straits Times 19 September 1989.

Tan, Bridget Tracy. An Ingenious Reverie: the Photography of Yip Cheong Fun. Singapore: National Library Board, 2006.

Teo, Eisen. “Glimpse of a Chinatown childhood.” Life News. The Straits Times 9 June 2006.

Thulaja, Naidu Ratnala. “New Bridge Road.” Updated 7 July 2003. (http://infopedia.nlb.gov.sg/articles/SIP_310_2004-12-17). Cited 17 April 2008. Singapore Infopedia, National Library of Singapore.

Tommy Koh (Editor-in-chief). Singapore: the Encyclopedia. Singapore: National Heritage Board with Editions Didier Millet, 2006.

Yip, Andrew. E-mail interview. 26 March 2008.

Yip, Andrew. “About Yip Cheong Fun.” Updated 21 August 2006. (http://www.yipcheongfun.com/yipcheongfun.htm). Cited 17 April 2008.

Yip Cheong Fun. Yip Cheong Fun’s Pictorial Collection. Singapore: C. F. Yip, 1986.

[i] (1971) Honorary Excellence Distinction conferred by Federation Internationale de l’art Photographique (International Federation of Photographic Art); (1974) Honorary Fellowship conferred by the Photographic Society of Singapore; (1980) One of ten Honorary Outstanding Photographers of the Century (Seascapes), Photographic Society of New York, USA; (1984) Cultural Medallion, National Arts Council, Singapore. 

This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the birth of David Marshall (1908–1995), the celebrated Singapore nationalist, politician, lawyer and diplomat. Born on 12 March 1908 into a Sephardic Jew family, Marshall rose to prominence in the late 1940s as a brilliant young criminal lawyer whose extraordinary legal acumen and oratorical skill left him victorious in numerous court cases. He was so skilled in law that Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong regarded him as “the greatest criminal advocate that has ever graced the halls of justice in Singapore and Malaya – A giant among pygmies at the criminal Bar.”[i

Marshall subsequently entered politics at the head of the Labor Front party and became Singapore’s first elected Chief Minister between 1955 and 1956. As Chief Minister, Marshall was a fearless opponent of British colonialism and led the early political struggles for Singapore independence. A socialist by inclination, he helped found the Singapore Worker’s Party (WP) in 1957 after he left the Labor Front. Afterwards he became a vocal critic of the People’s Action Party (PAP) which came to power in Singapore in 1959.

In spite of this, the PAP government appointed him Ambassador to France in 1978, a post he accepted and held with distinction, and which was later expanded to include the embassies of Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. He retired as in 1993 and passed away two years later on the 12 December 1995. Marshall was, in short, a key figure in Singapore’s post-war history.

Besides his achievements on the public stage, Marshall also left a lasting impression on many prominent people who knew him privately. Professor Tommy Koh, Singapore’s Ambassador-at-large and Chairman of the National Heritage Board, studied under Marshall as a young lawyer and remembered him as “a gifted teacher… [who] brought both learning and enthusiasm to his classes…a truly an unforgettable person”.[ii] Professor Koh Kheng Lian, Emeritus Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore, recalled Marshall as “a man of great humanity and compassion, a man who lived life to the fullest, a man dedicated to his profession, his country and his people”.[iii] Marshall was regarded as by his admirers an exemplary person, both professionally and ethically.

In 1984, the National Archives of Singapore conducted an in-depth oral history interview with David Marshall containing valuable insight into his ethical beliefs and how they were formed. The rest of this article draws on this interview.

Racial Discrimination and Anti-colonialism

Reflecting on his youth in the interview, Marshall pointed to three experiences that were essential to shaping his ethical convictions – the racial discrimination he bore under British colonialism, his reading of the Christian Bible, and his experience as a prisoner-of-war during the Japanese occupation.

When asked what drove him to join politics, Marshall replied, “Politics was an accident. I was thrust into politics by a sense of outrage, a deep sense of anger”.[iv] Marshall’s outrage was directed against the systematic racism he endured as an Asian Jew under British colonial rule. Colonialism was justified by the claim that white men were biologically and culturally superior to men of all other races.

“I used to resent little pin-pricks [which] were, I thought …unfair about you know [the] ‘white man, brown man’ relationship,” he said. “Like you call me ‘Jowdy Jew, brush my shoe’, and next thing I know is I hit you on the nose…I wanted to break the sonic barrier against Asians and especially against Jews.”[v] Marshall’s uncompromising stance against British colonialism correlated to his contempt for their racism.

Marshall’s revulsion at what he termed “the leprous concept of racial superiority”[vi] was reinforced by his study of the Christian Bible, which he read thrice as a youth. Although he was a Jew proud of his Jewish origins, Marshall was inspired by the stories of heroism and human community found in the Bible:

“Frankly, looking back, I consider that [reading the Bible] was perhaps the most formative aspect of my character. Because the King James’ version has an organ sonority of language which sank into me at a very impressionable age. And also the wonderful stories of [a] heroic global view of life and passionate dedication to human rights that you find in the Bible. It appealed to me very much.”[vii]

Of particular influence on the young Marshall were Biblical tales of men who struggled for justice against stronger adversaries, stories which reflected his own later struggles against British colonialism.

The Japanese Occupation: Marshall’s Adulthood Initiation

In his interview, Marshall singled out his experience as a prisoner-of-war during the Japanese occupation as the decisive event that shaped his adult worldview. Marshall had volunteered as a British soldier in Singapore following the German invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938, and was made a prisoner-of-war following the crushing defeat of the British military in Singapore and Malaya by the Japanese in 1941.[viii] Marshall recalled the terrible years that would reshape his thinking:

“[The Japanese Occupation] taught me humility….. Three and a half years as a prisoner taught me humility…..I realized [as a Japanese prisoner-of-war] that man is capable of cold-blooded cruelty. I can be angry, and I have no doubt I can be cruel for five, ten minutes. But the Japanese cruelty was cold-blooded, permanent and eternal. Man’s inhumanity to man in fact, in real life, made its presence really known to me when I became a prisoner, and saw it in action.

“Of course, I have known cruelty before. But wide-spread, long-term, cold-blooded, permanent cruelty, I’ve never experienced before, not even from the British Imperialists no matter how arrogant they were. That was a major shock, the feeling that here were human beings who were not on the same wavelength as me at all, who were not even human from my point of view.”[ix]

The war experience was to solidify Marshall’s political faith in socialism. It was during this period that Marshall’s belief in human community, his distaste for class-distinction and his faith in the common man’s capacity for goodness were more fully developed:

“The cohesion of disparate prisoners, from different parts of the United Kingdom, from different parts of Europe……was something touching…..There were some egoists who cracked under pressure. There were some who even committed suicide because they couldn’t take any more.

“But by and large, there was an unspoken…comradeship…..It kept the humanity alive within me, and made me perhaps recognize more clearly that great qualities….qualities that I appreciated in human beings, were not necessarily confined to the wealthy or educated…. That the rough, semi-educated laborer, odd-jobs man had human qualities which were good and which felt good and which were of value to its fellow prisoners. Where, some of the educated and intelligent cracked up or went about whining….”[x]

The war experience would also disenchant Marshall to the value of status symbols as accurate measures of human worth:

“Perhaps I learnt most of all the frailty of human beings, the absurdities of the status symbols of carrying a Captain’s star or a Major’s crown and turning out to be a long streak of piss. Whereas the cook who was the Lance-Corporal turned out to be a really worthwhile human being.”[xi]

Marshall’s brand of Socialism, which he briefly explained in the interview, was in many ways a reflection of the lessons he learnt as a Japanese prisoner:

“My…understanding of socialism, my own approach was an effort to create the foundations for the opportunity of all our people to attain the conditions of living compatible with human dignity. Why did I call it socialist? Because it moved away from the concept of wealth to the concept of human qualities and respect for the human individual, and not respect for his bank account.”[xii]

Marshall as Loyal Critic of Singapore Society

Marshall’s critique of materialism and status anxiety, and his concern for human dignity and community which he considered to be universal ends, expressed themselves in several critical observations he made of Singapore society. In the interview, Marshall commented that there was a tendency in Singapore’s culture to devalue goods of utmost importance that could not be measured in utilitarian terms – like wisdom and culture; and conversely, an inclination to overvalue goods that were quantifiable – like money and intelligence.

This he thought encouraged a culture of selfish egotism which undermined national unity and bonds of trust between Singaporeans:

“I think it’s very important to make [the] distinction today [between intelligence and wisdom] when there is so much emphasis on the genetic inheritance of intelligence. I think it’s very dangerous to over-emphasize the value of intelligence…..as a prisoner of war….I learnt a deep respect for the qualities of the humble. The innate wisdom, the loyalty, the decency which, from the point of view of intelligence, is possibly an aberration.

“Because, intelligence requires, seems to compel, an egoistic approach, an egocentric approach to life. And if you really look at that in the long term, egocentrism is very, very limited and very destructive in the long term. And we are, in my view, creating an ethos of egocentrism in Singapore and the concept that intelligence is the be all and end all of all virtues. Well, that’s totally wrong.

“The wisdom of centuries which are stored in the treasure house of religion and ancient philosophies of need for an understanding of the unity of humanity, cooperation with fellow beings. You know the lovely remark of Dostoevsky “God and the devil can live alone, but man needs his fellow man”….that we all have a duty to contribute to the common good. But we haven’t got any of that in Singapore. In Singapore you scramble for what you can achieve for yourself. And status symbols of Mercedes Benz, swimming pool, a string of women and horses and that is, those are the symbols of success. I think we are going through a dangerous phase.”[xiii]

Marshall also expressed reservations about Singapore’s work culture:

“We [in Singapore] have the constant drum beat now for productivity. My criticism is that this is a little lop-sided. We work to live, we don’t live to work. And the [Singapore] approach is one that is [of] a purely productive animal…..I think that [this] is now going beyond the bounds of reason…this constant driving and nagging about productivity and failing to recognize that people have a right to live as well as a need to work……we’re not seen to have any cultural existence.

“We’re not seen to be able to contribute to the finer graces of living. But we are viewed as economic animals with the same awe as we view robots…It’s a question of recognizing that work is an integral part of individual identity and essential for true enjoyment of living. But concurrently, to recognize that work is not the only element in living. That there are other elements to life. The joy of children. The joy of marriage. The pleasure of travel. The pleasure of study….Life is such a miracle, it is multi-faceted [in] the opportunities it gives for the uplift of the human spirit.”[xiv]

But Marshall was not a blind critic, raging at the world. He held himself to the same standards he held others to, recognizing his own limitations, and paying tribute where it was due – even to his opponents. Commenting on his own leadership ability, he said:

“I don’t think I had leadership qualities….for me a leader is a great administrator, organizer….I’ve been a vivid personality. But that doesn’t mean I have leadership quality. I had the fire of anger, the excitement of great ideas, emotional approach almost uninhibited, but not the intellectual organizational approach of great leaders. That I didn’t have, and don’t….frankly, I don’t think I would have been equal to the ramifications of running the country.

“Watching now from outside, the activities of the [Singapore government], all in all they deserve the highest praise: with no background, no real aid from outside to guide their infant steps, to have achieved so much stability, international respect and economic growth.”[xv]

Marshall also paid tribute to the personal qualities of Dr Goh Keng Swee, a leading member of his long time political adversary, the People’s Action Party:

“Keng Swee was a pragmatic top-notch civil servant, a genius as an administrator, a man of ‘sea-green’ integrity, a man of personal charm and warmth if you got close to him, very humble. Genuinely, no showmanship about it, genuinely humble….he speaks to the high as well as to the low….with the same approach.

“He had an extraordinary….total freedom from arrogance, from superiority, from any inferiority; he just was….a natural human being. And to me, a perfect human being…..it’s so much part of the air he breathes….to serve his country and his fellow human beings. And never a lie from him, never any malice from him. Even when I was the black plague to the PAP…”[xvi]

Marshall was a vocal critic of Singapore yet he remained a loyal Singaporean. His opinions were controversial, contestable and perhaps fool-hardy at times, but few can doubt his sincerity, courage and personal integrity. He was always ready to stand up for what he thought was right, and it is the memory of his nobility that his friends and admirers celebrate on his birthday centenary.

Adapted from ‘David Marshall: Singapore’s First Chief Minister’ taken from the National Archives of Singapore’s online ETC (Entering The Collection) Newsletter 2008 (http://www.a2o.com.sg/a2o/public/html/etc/index.htm), with permission from author. Kevin holds a Masters in History from the National University of Singapore, and is currently an Assistant Archivist at the National Archives of Singapore.

[i] Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, “David Marshall and the Law – Some Reflections on his Contributions to Criminal and Civil Justice in Singapore”, speech given at the Symposium in Commemoration of the 100^th Birthday of Mr David Marshall, 12 March 2008.

[ii] Professor Tommy Koh, “The Rich Legacy of Singapore’s First Nationalist”, Keynote address at the Symposium in Commemoration of the 100^th Birthday of Mr David Marshall, 12 March 2008.

[iii] Professor Koh Kheng Lian, “A Man of Humanity and Compassion”, The Straits Times, 13 March 2008.

[iv] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 2.

[v] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 2.

[vi] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 3.

[vii] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 1.

[viii] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 2 and 3.

[ix] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 3.

[x] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 3.

[xi] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 3.

[xii] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 4.

[xiii] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 19.

[xiv] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 19.

[xv] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 2.

[xvi] David Saul Marshall, Oral History Interview, Acc 000156, Reel 4.

Continuing The First Hospital for the Mentally Ill

The Grand Jury made their last Presentment on 18 October 1865, and was abolished by Ordinace VI on 1873 passed on 9 September 1873 (Lee 1978, 204). At that point of time, doctors had both clinical and administrative duties to fulfil (Ng 2001, 15). As a result, clinical matters took up the bulk of their time, while the running of the Asylum was neglected (Ng 2001, 15). Moreover, men had always been in-charge of caring for the lunatics at the Asylum. This was inconvenient due to lunatics in the female wards, so in January 1867 the first female employee to work in the Medical Department was sought (Ng 2001, 14).

The administration of the Straits Settlements was transferred from the India office to the Colonial Office on 1 April 1867, and the Settlements became a Crown Colony (Lee 1978, 205). The immediate impact on the Medical Department was an in-depth inquiry into the state of affairs in all hospitals. The Governor, Sir Harry Ord, was at first indignant until it was made clear that the purpose “was to indicate the standard of care expected” and not to put blame (Lee 1978, 205).

Since then, the Asylum was to be managed according to the Digest on Hospitals and Asylums, published on 14 January 1867 and sent to Singapore on 18 December 1867 (Lee 1978, 205). The law in place at the time of transfer was the Indian Lunacy Act of 1858, which was a simplified version of the Shaftesbury’s Act for the Regulation of the Care and Treatment of Lunatics passed on 4 August 1845. The Digest also incorporated the spirit of provisions of the English Act, and that was the benchmark expected after 1869 (Lee 1978, 206).

An outbreak of cholera in the Asylum and the surrounding Kandang Kerbau area in July 1873 (Ng 2001, 15) necessitated a temporary shift of the Government General Hospital’s patients to the military hospital at Sepoy Lines, an area adjacent to Chinatown and Pearl’s Hill where Indian troops were stationed to guard Singapore(Lee 1990, 7). Soon after, it was decided that the shift was to be permanent, so construction of a proper building began (Lee 1990, 7).

At the same time, a new site for the Asylum was being sought so that occupation therapy could be introduced (Ng 2001, 15). It was decided that the Asylum would also shift to Sepoy Lines (Ng 2001, 15). The General Hospital was completed in 1882 (Lee 1990, 7). A second cholera outbreak in August 1887 forced Dr Tripp, Acting Surgeon in charge of the Asylum, to call for an early shift to the new building (Ng 2001, 16).

The new Asylum was built on cottage principles (Ng 2001, 16) with a series of detached buildings (Lee 1990, 7), and had accommodation and work facilities. Based on John Collony’s ideas, the lunatics were assigned accommodation first by gender and second by type of mental illness (Ng 2001, 16). Treatments no longer focused solely on purgatives and included sedatives.

Additionally, it was thought that “a medical man skilled in lunacy should be given charge of the Asylum” (Ng 2001, 17), so Dr William Gilmore Ellis, the first medical specialist to be appointed in Singapore, took over from Dr Tripp (Ng 2001, 18). He said that effective treatment was difficult because the lunatics came from all over the region and it was near impossible to gather each individual’s medical history (Ng 2001, 26). Dr Ellis also abolished strait jackets and the only mechanical restraint used was locked gloves (Ng 2001, 18). He showed that the mentally ill could be treated by doctors without loss of dignity, just like any other patient (Ng 2001, 2).

Treatment in those days was based on the idea that treatment should be “holistic and focused upon the lifestyle of the patient”, so “crucial elements included ‘kindness, freedom from restraint, regular hours, good food, open air exercise and occupation. Little luxuries such as betel-nut and tobacco were given’” (Ng 2001, 17).

Since the shift to Sepoy Lines, there were no big changes. In 1903, female lunatics were moved to the Pasir Panjang ward (which was used to house patients of beri-beri) to make way for the Straits and Federated Malay States Medical School (Ng 2001, 20; Samuel 1991, 185), later renamed as King Edward VII College of Medicine in 1921. Male lunatics remained at Sepoy Lines till overcrowding resulted in their eventual transfer to Pasir Panjang in 1907 as well, and then to Central Mental Hospital at Tanjong Rambutan in Perak in 1914 (Ng 2001, 21).

In the 1920s, the government decided to make use of the medical graduates to staff a new asylum (Ng 2001, 22). Right up to that point, care for the mentally ill was the responsibility of a few expatriate nurses and health attendants who lacked training in nursing (IMH 2003, 16). On 3 November 1924, the Legislative Council debated the construction of the new Mental Hospital (Ng 2001, 22). Construction began in early 1926 and was completed in the latter half of 1928. The Mental Hospital was located off Yio Chu Kang Road (Ng 2001, 22).

Dr E. R. Stone had taken over as the first medical superintendent and in his 1928 report, he pinpointed “privation and starvation…heredity, alcohol, fevers and critical periods of life” (Ng 2001, 23) as causes of mental illness. 1928 also witnessed the introduction of farm work, which was the earliest semblance to rehabilitation (Ng 2001, 23). To further improve treatment and the overall running of the Hospital, a request was made in 1929 for an Assistant Medical Superintendent who had Diplomas in Psychological Medicine and Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, as well as experience in farming and gardening (Ng 2001, 23).

Two things were of particular interest at the Hospital. First was an attendance-taking machine. It was a metallic box installed with a ‘keying-in’ device (Ng 2001, 24). “Once ‘keyed-in’, a time-keeping device in the telephone operator’s room would be activated and a graph could then be plot” (Ng 2001, 24).

The second was the clock tower that carried the Hospital bell, which was cast in Leicester, England (Ng 2001, 24). “Each of the four sides of the clock tower had a clock face and was even illuminated in the hours of darkness. The bell was rung three times daily at 5.00am, noon and 4.30pm to announce mealtimes, and chimed to herald festive occasions, to mark the change of work shifts and to alert staff of patients absconding from wards” (Ng 2001, 24). The importance of the bell diminished with time and by the 1950s, it served only as a fire alarm and amusement for the inmates as some of them were known to have climbed up the tower to ring the bell for fun (Ng 2001, 24).

The author has just completed her first year as a Psychology major in the University Scholars Programme at the National Univeristy of Singapore. She is interested in social psychology, biological psychology and abnormal psychology. She hopes to work in a hospital setting in the future, and hence the choice of topic for the essay. The Institute of Mental Health is the largest local medical facility for the mentally ill and I feel it should have a properly compiled history. Outside my major, I love reading up on history, especially on ancient civilizations such as India and Athens, and mythology.

Reference List

Ng, Beng Yeong. 2001. Till the Break of Day: A History of Mental Health Services in Singapore, 1841–1993. Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Lee, Yong Kiat. December 1978. “The Lunatic Asylum in Early Singapore (1819-1869)”. Chapter 5 in The Medical History of Singapore. Singapore: Southeast Asian Medical Information Centre (SEAMIC), a special project of the International Medical Foundation of Japan (IMFJ) started in April 1977.

Institute of Mental Health/Woodbridge Hospital <(Singapore). 2003. Loving Hearts, Beautiful Minds: Woodbridge Hospital Celebrating 75 years. Singapore: Armour Publishing Pte Ltd.

Ng, Beng Yeong. 2001. “History of Psychiatry in Singapore”. Section 1, Chapter 2, in Psychiatry for Doctors, edited by Kua Ee Hock, Ko Soo Meng and Lionel Lim Chee Chong. Singapore: Armour Publishing Pte Ltd.

Lee, Edwin. March 1990. Historic Buildings of Singapore. Singapore: Preservation of Monuments Board.

“Indian Rebellion of 1857 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Indian Rebellion of 1857. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mutiny. (Accessed on 17 April 2008.)

Samuel, Dhoraisingam S. December 1991. Singapore’s Heritage: Through Places of Historical Interest. Singapore: Elixir Consultancy Service.

Continuing The Early Years (1819-1840)

Completed in 1841, the Insane Hospital was situated at the corner of Bras Basah Road and Bencoolen Street (Ng 2001, 9; IMH 2003, 16). In spite of the unfortunate death that occurred, due regard was still not given to mental health care. Conditions at the Hospital were not better than had been at Convict Gaol. It was a 30-bed hospital, and “the number of lunatics seldom exceeded 30 or 40” (Ng 2001, 9). The lunatics were taken care of by warders who also guarded the convicts jailed in the adjacent brick structure (Ng 2001, 9).

Colonel W. J. Butterworth was made Governor of the Settlements on 14 June 1843 (Lee 1978, 196). On his familiarisation tour of government institutions, he noticed the poor conditions at the Hospital (Ng 2001, 9; Lee 1978, 196). On 20 June 1844, the Singapore Free Press reported one of nine Presentations by the Grand Jury, who played an important role in influencing the management of lunatics in Singapore and whose role was different from those in criminal courts (Lee 1978, 195). The Grand Jurors had noted that little was being done to care for the mentally ill in addition to the lack of space at the Hospital (Lee 1978, 196).

Governor Butterworth was annoyed as he had believed improvements would have been made since his last visit (Lee 1978, 196). He then ordered that the Hospital be put under the personal charge of Dr Thomas Oxley, who had become Senior Surgeon in 1844 (Ng 2001, 9; IMH 2003, 16). Dr Oxley’s first step was to appoint Assistant Apothecary Henry Lloyd, a qualified medical person, to be in charge of the Hospital and personally answerable to him for the care of the lunatics (Lee 1978, 197).

By February 1846, Dr Oxley reported improvements in the Hospital conditions (Ng 2001, 9; IMH 2003, 16; Lee 1978, 197). He was also actively sourcing for avenues to supplement the Hospital income (Lee 1978, 197). Dr Oxley made three such attempts. The first was picking oakum for sale. The second was basket weaving (Ng 2001, 9; Lee 1978, 197), which was the earliest semblance to occupational therapy (IMH 2003, 16). The money earned from the sale of oakum and baskets provided for two sets of clothing per person (IMH 2003, 16).

The third was the manufacturing of gutta percha (nutmeg) sheets for surgical purposes to be sold to the Medical Board at Calcutta at ten percent below market rate (Lee 1978, 198). This failed because the Board found better quality ones could be produced elsewhere (Lee 1978, 198). Additionally, Dr Oxley introduced a system of non-restraint and attempted to change the Hospital’s public image. But the latter was to no avail due to prevalent misconceptions (Lee 1978, 197).

Throughout the colonial period, “isolation of the insane with proper justification was then thought necessary and custodial care was the mainstay of the day” (Ng 2001, 9). Treatments were administered under the belief that mental illness was caused by “a foreign body that had to be expelled from the body” (Ng 2001, 11). Hence, all lunatics were forced to take purgatives which induced diarrhoea and vomiting once every month, regardless of their physical condition. For those who were “under peculiar excitement”, “soothing medicines” were given and they were locked in their cells without restraints (Ng 2001, 18).

1847 and 1848 were uneventful save for the persisting shortage of accommodation at the Hospital. Under these circumstances, Dr Oxley was forced to discharge “harmless” patients to make room for more “dangerous” ones (Lee 1978, 197). Act IV of 1849 worsened the overcrowding (Lee 1978, 198). It stated that people who broke the law when of unsound mind would not be sent to jail but to the Hospital instead (Lee 1978, 198). This was Singapore’s first legislation regarding the mentally ill, and the first person committed under the Act was Lim Say Soon who was charged for murder on 21 August 1848 (Lee 1978, 198).

Since Dr Oxley’s complaints about the overcrowding were ignored, on 11 April 1849, he wrote to absolve his staff from blame should anything untoward happen if more people were sent to the Hospital (Lee 1978, 198). When the Grand Jury looked into the issue on 24 April 1850 following a spate of contagious skin disease in the Hospital, Dr Oxley took the chance to reiterate his point and highlight the poor living conditions at the Hospital (Lee 1978, 198). As a result, on 17 May 1850, the Governor gave orders for the Hospital to be disinfected as a temporary measure and that plans for a new extension to be submitted (Lee 1978, 198).

Together with the Superintending Engineer, Dr Oxley submitted a proposal suggesting that the old building be kept for those “whose insanity is at times of a violent character” and the new building for those who would respond to medical treatment. The plan was approved by the Government of Bengal on 9 August 1850 (Lee 1978, 199). Finally, the Hospital was enlarged in 1851, increasing accommodation to forty-eight beds (Lee 1978, 199). Unfortunately, this was for a hundred and thirty-one patients (Ng 2001, 11).

A typical day at the Hospital in the 1850s consisted of work (picking oakum and cleaning of dormitories) and exercise, as well as breakfast and dinner at 9am and 3pm respectively. Meals were the same everyday – rice, curry and fish. Clothing was only changed every Sunday (Ng 2001, 11; Lee 1978, 199).

Only locals were admitted to the Insane Hospital. Europeans sent to the European Seamen’s Hospital as they considered it an “insult” (Ng 2001, 12) to be put among the locals. However, they caused serious problems as shown in a letter written by the Medical Officer in-charge dated 25 June 1850. A George Fox had struck a Chinese Toty (attendant) as a result of a lack of “means of properly confining or efficiently watching him” (Lee 1978, 199).

As a result, policy was changed to authorise Medical Officers to send Europeans to the Insane Hospital (Ng 2001, 12; Lee 1978, 199). As expected, this policy was not well-received among the Europeans (Ng 2001, 12). For example, the French Consul had protested when Louis Allard, a Frenchman, was admitted in February 1852 (Lee 1978, 199). Hence, the few insane Europeans were sent back to Europe unless they were poor (Ng 2001, 12; Lee 1978, 199).

On 17 August 1853, the Grand Jury suggested that the old Hospital building be torn down because it was inappropriate for convicts to be put in the Hospital by the Superintendent of Convicts as punishment (Lee 1978, 199). Dr Oxley was infuriated as this was untrue. Admissions were approved of only by himself and the Superintendent of Police. Further worsening the overcrowding, lunatics from Malacca were transferred to the Hospital. Dr Oxley’s subsequent request for more staff was also turned down (Lee 1978, 200).

A few months before his retirement in 1857 (Ng 2001, 12), on 7 April 1856, Dr Oxley brought up the issue of overcrowding to the Governor once again (Lee 1978, 200). No action was taken until a donation of $3,600 was made by Low Joon Teck and Chung Sam Teo, two Chinese merchants who had government monopoly to sell opium in Singapore (Lee 1978, 200). The Governor immediately wrote to India to build “a medical complex which would include a new General Hospital, Lunatic Asylum, Medical Stores and Dispensary” (Lee 1978, 200). The Indian government approved, but stated that the Government would provide fully for the Asylum while the donation from the merchants would be used solely for the General Hospital and the Asylum should be separate from the General Hospital (Lee 1978, 200).

Ironically, the former decision slowed the process rather than hastening it. When the Indian Mutiny broke out on 10 May 1857 in Meerut, India, government spending was limited to those of military importance. Work on the General Hospital continued, but since no funds were available for the Asylum, the old one was simply repaired (Lee 1978, 201).

With an increasing number of people being admitted, inadequacy of existing facilities and the passing of Act XXXVI of 1858 that allowed for the Government to establish Lunatic Asylums, the Governor-General finally agreed to build the new Asylum as planned in 1856. There were also plans for the Asylum to cater to the needs of the entire Straits Settlements and hence the rejection of a proposal to build an Asylum in Malacca for lunatics there. The proposal had been made because those from Malacca were unwelcome due to the lack of space here (Lee 1978, 201).

1861 saw two changes to the Insane Hospital. Its premises was now at a site near Kandang Kerbau Maternity Hospital and the Hospital was renamed the Lunatic Asylum (Ng 2001, 13). The larger building was put aside for mild cases of lunacy while the smaller buildings, where confinement cells were located, were designated for dangerous lunatics (Ng 2001, 13; Lee 1978, 203). There was a deliberate effort to have “shrubs, flower beds and grass plots” (Ng 2001, 13) in the grounds around the Asylum in order to create a pleasant environment.

Although nearly doubling in size to 100 beds, the average number of lunatics admitted was 119 (Ng 2001, 14). The number of lunatics increased tremendously because few died or were ever discharged. The general consensus was that “mental maladies are seldom fatal and generally permanent” (Ng 2001, 13). Lack of space and facilities at the Asylum were constantly reported to the government in the 1870s, but to no avail (Ng 2001, 14).

Continue: Mental Health towards the Twentieth Century

Reference List

Ng, Beng Yeong. 2001. Till the Break of Day: A History of Mental Health Services in Singapore, 1841–1993. Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Lee, Yong Kiat. December 1978. “The Lunatic Asylum in Early Singapore (1819-1869)”. Chapter 5 in The Medical History of Singapore. Singapore: Southeast Asian Medical Information Centre (SEAMIC), a special project of the International Medical Foundation of Japan (IMFJ) started in April 1977.

Institute of Mental Health/Woodbridge Hospital <(Singapore). 2003. Loving Hearts, Beautiful Minds: Woodbridge Hospital Celebrating 75 years. Singapore: Armour Publishing Pte Ltd.

Ng, Beng Yeong. 2001. “History of Psychiatry in Singapore”. Section 1, Chapter 2, in Psychiatry for Doctors, edited by Kua Ee Hock, Ko Soo Meng and Lionel Lim Chee Chong. Singapore: Armour Publishing Pte Ltd.

Lee, Edwin. March 1990. Historic Buildings of Singapore. Singapore: Preservation of Monuments Board.

“Indian Rebellion of 1857 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Indian Rebellion of 1857. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mutiny. (Accessed on 17 April 2008.)

Samuel, Dhoraisingam S. December 1991. Singapore’s Heritage: Through Places of Historical Interest. Singapore: Elixir Consultancy Service.

Mental health in Singapore has its roots in the West. The first medical personnel in the field were mostly from Britain. Medical education in the early years was almost exclusively for the British, until the establishment of King Edward VII College of Medicine on the island in 1907. Hence, many ideas influential through the years flowed over from the West.

When Sir Stamford Raffles set foot on the island on 28 January 1819, he had with him Sub-Assistant Surgeon Thomas Prendergast, who was the medical officer-in-charge in the expedition. In May, he was joined by Assistant Surgeon William Montgomerie, a more senior officer. Their duties were of military and civil nature, and they served in Singapore till 1823 and 1827 respectively before returning to Bengal (Lee 1978, 194).

In June 1827, the medical duties were shared between Surgeon B. C. Henderson and Assistant Surgeon Warrand, who came with a detachment of troops to relieve Montgomerie. Henderson was responsible for the General and Pauper Hospitals while Warrand was responsible for the convicts and troops (Lee 1978, 194). No institution for the mentally ill was available then.

Prior to 1819, the population of the island was estimated to be only about a hundred and fifty (Ng 2001, 7). After 1819, the population grew at a rapid pace, due to migrants from the Southeast Asian region, China and India coming Singapore to take advantage of the employment opportunities generated by a growing entrepot trade (Ng 2001, 7). As a result of this large influx of penniless people, overcrowding, bad living conditions and a habit of opium smoking led to a high rate of physical and mental illness (Ng 2001, 7; IMH 2003, 15).

However, the medical needs of the natives were not British priorities (IMH 2003, 16). Provision of health and medical facilities and services was limited because the government felt that the population was made up of immigrants who were not planning to make Singapore their home (Ng 2001, 7). The mentally ill were referred to as “insane”, and unless they were deemed dangerous, they were left to their own devices (Ng 2001, 8). This meant an almost complete neglect of the mentally ill.

The first sign of the need to care for the mentally ill was a request to send John Hanson, a Dane who had lived in Singapore for about five years, “to Calcutta or any other place where a Lunatic Asylum may be established” by the Superintendent of Police S. G. Bonham to the Secretary to Government in 1828 (Lee 1978, 194). In a report by acting Senior Surgeon W. E. E. Conwell, it was noted that Hanson was being treated at the Singapore Infirmary and was otherwise confined in a jail since there was no suitable place for people like him (Lee 1978, 194). However, even after Straits Settlements in 1832 and the headquarters of the Medical Department in 1835 (Lee 1978, 194; Ng 2001, xix), there was still no institution for the mentally ill.

The jail was called the Convict Gaol, and lunatics were taken care of by the inmates (Ng 2001, 8). Conditions in the jail were far from ideal, overcrowding remaining the biggest problem. In 1835, Senior Surgeon William Montgomerie, who was promoted and returned to Singapore in 1832, received orders for himself and Assistant Surgeon Thomas Oxley to continue visiting the lunatics and convicts in the jail in their capacity as Medical Officers (Lee 1978, 194).

Hence, instead of improving mental health care, the practice of putting lunatics in jail became more ingrained. Special allowances were given to the Sheriff’s Department, instead of the Medical Department, for care of lunatics – for instance: “Gaoler 25 Rupees; Overseer 15 Rupees; Two Convicts 10 Rupees” (Lee 1978, 194).

There were remonstrations from the public. In the Singapore Free Press on 21 February 1838, a contributor to the forum section argued that “it has been proved that in recent cases of insanity under judicious treatment, as large a proportion of recoveries will take place as from any other acute disease of equal severity” (Lee 1978, 195).

The Editor of the newspaper also highlighted the fact that “there is space enough in the hospital yard to construct a suitable building for their reception, and we hope that the absolute necessity there exists for providing something in the nature of a Lunatic Asylum will not be overlooked.” (Ng 2001, 8; Lee 1978, 195) Despite this, little was done to improve the situation.

The wakeup call came in October 1840, when one of the lunatics was killed by another in the jail (Ng 2001, 8; IMH 2003, 16; Lee 1978, 195). Bonham, who had become Governor by then, immediately requested that Montgomerie write “a report on the number and state of the lunatics under treatment, and also suggestions for their better management” (Ng 2001, 8; Lee 1978, 195). Montgomerie reported on 16 November 1840 that there were 22 insane patients and he expected that the yearly average of seventeen patients would increase with growth of the settlement (Lee 1978, 195).

In the report, he also suggested the Lunatic Asylum be built for 24 patients and should anymore room be needed, buildings would be added on. In addition, floors “should be laid with bricks on edge, embedded in good mortar so as to admit of being washed, and prevent the patients lifting the floors, which constructed with tiles as in the Jail, they have been enabled to do so;” and “wood for the walls and bed places in consequence of very bad effects having arisen from patients in the Jail having destroyed the bed places and by squatting on the floor and leaning against cold walls, have in several instances cramped their limbs and stiffened their joints so as to cause lameness.” (Lee 1978, 195) He did not suggest sending lunatics to India because he felt that they would feel more comfortable “among their countrymen than among strangers” (Lee 1978, 195, Ng 2001, 9).

On 28 November 1840, Governor Bonham presented the case to the Government of Bengal. The Governor of Bengal accepted the plan on the recommendation of the Military and Medical Boards. The Asylum was to be built for “’the custody of the patients’ and the same number of staff attended them as when they were in the Jail” (Lee 1978, 196). The resolution, dated 12 May 1841, had stated that the “gross expense [was] not to exceed $775.10” (Ng 2001, 9). The eventual expenditure proved to be slightly higher (Ng 2001, 9).

Continued in The First Hospital for the Mentally Ill (1841-1928)

Reference List

Ng, Beng Yeong. 2001. Till the Break of Day: A History of Mental Health Services in Singapore, 1841–1993. Singapore: Singapore University Press.

Lee, Yong Kiat. December 1978. “The Lunatic Asylum in Early Singapore (1819-1869)”. Chapter 5 in The Medical History of Singapore. Singapore: Southeast Asian Medical Information Centre (SEAMIC), a special project of the International Medical Foundation of Japan (IMFJ) started in April 1977.

Institute of Mental Health/Woodbridge Hospital <(Singapore). 2003. Loving Hearts, Beautiful Minds: Woodbridge Hospital Celebrating 75 years. Singapore: Armour Publishing Pte Ltd.

Ng, Beng Yeong. 2001. “History of Psychiatry in Singapore”. Section 1, Chapter 2, in Psychiatry for Doctors, edited by Kua Ee Hock, Ko Soo Meng and Lionel Lim Chee Chong. Singapore: Armour Publishing Pte Ltd.

Lee, Edwin. March 1990. Historic Buildings of Singapore. Singapore: Preservation of Monuments Board.

“Indian Rebellion of 1857 – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.” Indian Rebellion of 1857. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_mutiny. (Accessed on 17 April 2008.)

Samuel, Dhoraisingam S. December 1991. Singapore’s Heritage: Through Places of Historical Interest. Singapore: Elixir Consultancy Service.

From fiery exchanges on internet forums to commentaries in international dailies on the outburst of pro-Tibet protests around the world, most often than not, the word “history” is thrown around putatively from both side.[i] A notable example came from a recent Jakarta Post editorial stating that “any student of history cannot but condemn the occupation (of Tibet).”[ii]

Despite some insightful points made on the cultural ties between Indonesia and Tibet by Anand Krishna, a well respected spiritual activist, I cannot agree that he speaks for all “students of history”. Placards waved by Pro-China demonstrators from San Francisco to Canberra with the words, “Tibet was, is and will always be a part of China” (emphasis mine) continues to betray the partisanships of the issue.

The point that I am trying to illustrate is how polarised the history of can be when faced with the “Tibet question”. The complexity of the issue is illustrated by a well-informed but alas inadequate Straits Time editorial’s attempt on presenting some “bedrock truths” about Tibet. It states that “romanticised nonsense spewed about Tibet does not change the fact that it has been a part of Chinese empire for three centuries.”[iii]

This opinion fails to consider the historical political structure of the Manchu empire and the Spiritual master-student relationship between the Dalai Lama and Manchu emperors. In an effort to shed more light on the subject, a survey of existing western works addressing the 1951-1959 “invasion” of Tibet is carried out to highlight how Tibet’s history have been used and abused.

Available literature on the “invasion” of Tibet can be roughly grouped into those with partisan positions and those which hold the middle-ground. Partisan discourses include a Tibetan Lobby, informed by the Tibetan Diaspora and sympathisers, and discourses informed by a cold war mentality. Pro-China scholarships are carried out by Chinese scholars based in America and China sympathisers.

Discourses shrouded in cold-war mentality usually serve as the fulcrum of American anti-communist effort in South Asia. The authors’ chief concerns are generally with Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) operations in Tibet during the 1950s, placing the Tibet issue within the context of the Cold War. The Cold War mentality also laid the foundation for future accusations against the atrocities of the Chinese invading forces through the reports of the International Commission of Jurist (ICJ), an organization tasked to carry out a full-scale investigation of what happened in Lhasa.

The ICJ was hardly impartial. It had “evolute” from the Investigating Committee of Free Jurists (ICFJ), an organization funded by the CIA (to the tune of least U.S. $650,000) to “publish anticommunist propaganda”. ICJ’s primary purpose has been explicitly stated in American Bar Association Journal as “gather(ing) and publish(ing) documented reports throughout the world of systematic Communist injustice behind the Iron Curtain.”[iv]

The work of ICJ has also informed many partisan scholars’ work such as Hugh E. Richardson’s Tibet and its people and a self-proclaimed handbook for American higher education in Tibetan studies, Tibet: A handbook by Helmut Hoffman. [v]

Post Cold War scholarship persists in the same vein regardless of attempts to repackage them. Jane Ardley’s The Tibetan Independence Movement: Political, religious and Gandhian perspectives (2002) and ex-CIA operative in Tibet, John Kenneth Knaus’s Orphans of the cold war (1999) are examples of some of these works.[vi] These works continue to be a wellspring of inspiration for hawkish US legislators addressing the perceived “Chinese threat” through its rise as an economic power.

Donald S. Lopez Jr, a scholar on Tibetan Buddhism has examined the introduction of Tibetan iconography into mainstream American popular culture in the 1970s-90s and interpreted it somewhat exaggeratingly as “spiritual colonialism”. The cultivation of Tibetan Buddhist sensitivity has laid the ground for garnering greater political sympathies towards the Tibetan cause.[vii] This juxtaposition of reverence for Tibetan culture with explicit calls for Tibetan independence is not only based on ICJ’s accusation of cultural genocide but can also be seen as part of the Dalai Lama’s political strategy in his struggle with the Chinese government.

Publications put out by lobbies such as International Campaigners for Tibet (ICT) and Tibet Information Network (TIN) usually carry such partisan scholarship. Publishing houses, such as Snow Lion and Shambala Publishing, were also set up to propagate literature for the Tibetan cause,. Patt David’s misleadingly named work, A strange liberation: Tibetan lives in Chinese hands published by Snow Lion, does not detail the existing livelihood of Tibetans as it suggests, but consists of two accounts of the Chinese “invasion” by two Tibetan nobles, including Tibet’s poster female resistance fighter, Ama Adhe.[viii]

University Presses are also keen to publish works by Tibetans, such as Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa’s Tibet, a political history and Tsering Shakya’s The dragon in the land of snows: a history of modern Tibet since 1947.[ix] Both authors were key Tibetan government officials prior to the “invasion”, which implies that they could be personally invested when telling their sides of the story.

Literature which presents China’s case also began to appear within the western academic sphere soon after the “invasion”. Such works are written by Chinese and foreigners, Marxists and non-Marxist scholars and largely empathises with the pre-‘liberated’ general Tibetan populace.

In Li Tieh Tseng’s revised edition of The Historical Status of Tibet (retitled Tibet: Today and Yesterday), he suggested that “Tibet’s independence should be the Tibetan people’s choice” but – in adopting President Wilson’s self-determination principle – “do not think that those landed aristocrats and feudal lords of Tibet who took refuge in India can speak for the Tibetan people.”

The Gelder brothers, journalists who travelled to Tibet in 1962, while being sceptical of the claims by the “Chinese Communists”, saw for themselves the legacy of the exploitative Tibetan nobles and religious bureaucrats.[xi]

Han Suyin also recorded the testimonies of atrocities committed against novice and child-monks from poor families within the Sera monastery, the world’s largest active religious site.[xii]

(The Sera Monastery is in the foreground)

(Monks in Sera Monastery)

Anna Louise Strong, a Marxist scholar who defected to Beijing, also helped promoted Beijing’s line in the West.[xiii] These works started to abate as the Tibetan lobby’s influence increased during the 1970s and 1980s, but some of their arguments were followed up by middle-ground scholars.

Amidst such polarized discourses, scholars such Dawa Norbu, A. Tom Grunfeld and Melvyn C. Goldstein took a more middle-ground approach in trying to present more balanced perspectives of the issue.[xiv] I am not suggesting that these scholars do not have ideological positions on the issue of political legitimacy, but they have been able to synthesise arguments from both sides and generally refrained from being overtly partisan. These works have been able to evolve out of the Kuhnian limitations of organised institutions or discourses because they recognise inherent problems within existing scholarship and attempt to resolve them.[xv]

The case of Dawa Norbu is especially informative of the prevailing climate amongst the Tibetan Diaspora. Because he had dared to veer away from official discourses, Norbu has been criticised and accused of being a traitor by the Dalai Lama camp. What Norbu had aimed to highlight was the ambiguity of a united Tibet and that “fractionism” has to be factored into any discourse on the Chinese “invasion”. He also suggested that Tibetan’s claim of legitimate sovereignty phrased in modern terminologies only appeared after contact with the Communist Chinese’s own claim of sovereignty in Tibet.[xvi]

Hence, the Tibet issue is not as clear-cut as various commentators have made it out to be. In highlighting the plurality of discourses above, I hope to demonstrate that to understand what is happening in Tibet today, one has to not only know its “history” but understand how various “histories” have been created.

The author graduated with honours in History from NUS in 2005. He is currently Publication Executive at Chinese Heritage Centre and is interested in History of Modern China-Tibet relations and Chinese Overseas. The article is partly based on researches carried out in the author’s undergraduate years and the opinions expressed are within his personal capacity.

[i] My personal favourite is a comment made by a local radio DJ on the morning aftermath of the London Olympic torch relay hubbub: “These people (the protestors attempting to extinguish the Olympic torch) does not know the history!” Having made the comment after reference to the political status of Tibet, “History” here presumably refers to the history of Tibet, not that of the Olympics nor the torch relay. The perceived separation of the Olympics and politics makes for more discussion, for a recent survey of historical works on the issue, see Allen Guttmann, “Sports, Politics and the Engaged Historian”, Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 38, No. 3, Sports and Politics (July 2003), pgs. 363-375. It is sufficient to note here that the Olympic torch relay was invented as part of the Third Reich’s propagandistic spectacle at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

[ii] Anand Krishna, “Indonesia, Tibet and the secret of ‘terima kasih’”, The Jakarta Post (24 March 2008). Thanks to Gille Massot for posting the article to Taoism-singapore yahoogroup.

[iii] “What Tibet is to China”, The Straits Times (18 March 2008).

[iv]Tom Killefer, “Free lawyers and Cold War. The International Commission of Jurists” American Bar Association Journal, 41 (May 1995) p. 417, cited in Tom A. Grunfeld,The making of modern Tibet (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, Rev. ed. 1996), pgs. 146-147.

[v] Hugh E. Richardson, Tibet and its history, (Boulder: Shambhala 2nd ed., rev. and enl., 1984), pgs. 241-243; and Helmut Hoffman in collaboration with Stanley Frye, Thubten J. Norbu, Ho-chin Yang, Tibet: A Handbook (Bloomington: Published for the Asian Studies Research Institute by the Research Center for the Language Sciences, Indiana University, 1975) pgs. 80-81.

[vi] See Jane Ardley, The Tibetan Independence Movement: Political, religious and Gandhian perspectives, (New York: Routledge, 2002) and John Kenneth Knaus, Orphans of the Cold War: America and the Tibetan struggle for survival (New York: PublicAffairs, c1999).

[vii] Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pg. 207.

[viii] Patts David, A strange liberation: Tibetan lives in Chinese hands (Ithaca, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 1992).

[ix] Tsepon W.D. Shakabpa, Tibet, a political history (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1967) and Tsering Shakya, The dragon in the land of snows: a history of modern Tibet since 1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

[x] Li Tieh-Tseng, Tibet: Today and Yesterday (New York: Bookman Associates, revised ed., 1960) pg. xiii.

[xi] Stuart & Roma Gelder, The timely rain; travels in new Tibet (London, Hutchinson, c1964).

[xii] Han Siyun, The Open City - A journey to Tibet (New York: G. P. Punam’s Son, 1977). Sera Monastry is a key site during recent protests.

[xiii] Anna Louise Strong, When Serfs Stood up in Tibet (Beijing: New World Press, 1965).

[xiv] Tom A. Grunfeld, The making of modern Tibet(Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, Rev. ed. 1996).

[xv] For a discussion of institutional influences on academic scholarship refer to Thomas S. Kuhn, The structure of scientific revolutions (IL: University of Chicago Press, 3rd ed, 1996).

[xvi] See Dawa Norbu, China’s Tibet policy (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001).

During a Chinese New Year gathering, a conversation between my mother and her friends somehow shifted to how various Post Office Savings Bank (POSB) branches were silently being renovated into Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) outlets instead. They agreed that this was a “smart move that will not cause a lot of disapproval” since people were not aware that it was happening. They then talked about their childhood days when they had just started saving with the POSB. They excitedly recall how they exchanged their savings for stamps to paste on their cards.

This was not the first time I have heard of collecting stamps to save, but it was something I had not experienced before. As such, it made me question how my parents’ generation remembers the POSB, in contrast to my own experience, and why this experience is only articulated through the context of the acquisition of POSB by DBS.

Using my parent’s recollections of the POSB savings campaign as a start-point, this essay explores why this memory is seldom retrieved and talked about. Primarily, children are understood as a cohort with the unique experience of being inculcated with the value of savings through the campaign. However, there are other factors affecting their memory such as the campaign mechanisms which suggest that the experience is stratified. Furthermore, given the nature of the finance sector, the contribution of children remains relatively insignificant and neither are they concerned with issues of the economy. Finally, utilizing a generational perspective, I explore the generational subordination of childhood memories, by that of adults, and posit that after the children grow up, these memories remain subordinate.

In addition to interviewing my parents, I have also consulted various POSB Annual Reports and commemorative books for background information of the schemes introduced.[i] Newspaper articles were also useful for information regarding the outcomes of the schemes, as well as various public opinions towards the issue at hand.

The POSB was established by the British colonial government on 1 January 1877. Before Singapore’s independence, the POSB was part of the Postal Department. After 1965, the then Minister for Finance Dr Goh Keng Swee, noted POSB’s continuous decline in deposits (Tan, 2005:330), and saw potential in “mobilizing national savings” (Lim, 1997:21).

One outcome was the creation of the Savings Bank Committee to formulate measures to revitalize the bank. In 1968, a “thrift drive” for students was introduced to encourage them to “be thrifty and to save at the postal savings bank” through two schemes: the Schools’ Savings Competition (SSC) and the Students’ Gift Account Scheme (SGAS) (The Straits Times, 9 August 1968). The SSC was for the “highest average amount of savings per student over a specific period” made through their schools (The Straits Times, 25 April 1969); while the SGAS gave children with a minimum balance of $5 in their POSB account, an additional $5 by the Government payable to their account (Singapore POSB, 1969).

The ‘thrift drive’ was a success as a significant number of accounts were opened. For instance, it was reported that a total of 26,449 accounts were opened, “more than the combined figure for the first four months of the campaign (which was launched in January)” of which, 23,233 were opened at schools (The Straits Times, 7 June 1969). By the end of the year, a total of 144,383 new accounts were opened in schools, almost eighty-three percent of the 174,506 new accounts opened that year (Singapore POSB, 1969). The competitions lasted for ten years until 1977. POSB saw the programme as successful in “inculcating the habit of thrift among large numbers of young people in schools” (POSB, 1978:21).

Parents’ Memories

My parents both opened POSB accounts through their schools. My mother remembers the van coming to her school, and all the students would queue up to bring their savings and their bank card to collect the stamps. She also remembers the excitement and joy of getting a stamp. Because her family was not very well off, every five cents saved was considered an accomplishment.

Similarly, my father remembers wanting to have the money to “save” at the bank, even seeking out alternative means to get the money. When questioned about the SSC, they were unaware of the event, as they were more interested in collecting the stamps. They also debated over whether it was a bank book or a card. A blogger “laokokok” confirmed it was a card, sharing pictures of the “Save At School” stamp card (See Figure 1) and the five cents stamps (See Figure 2) they used to collect.

Figure 1: “Save At School” Logo (Photo Credit: laokokok, My First POSB)

Figure 2: Five Cents Stamps (Photo Credit: laokokok, My First POSB)

A Limited and Stratified Experience

The memory of the SSC is limited to the school-going children from 1968-1978. As such, I argue that they form a cohort which Ryder (1997:68) defines as “the aggregate of individuals (within some population definition) who experienced the same event within the same time interval. In this case, the students experience the same savings campaign in Primary and Secondary school across the limited time frame of 1968-1978.

I suggest that although the students are, as Mannheim (1997:41) described, “similarly located… as they are all exposed to the same phase of the collective process” of experiencing