One Hundred Years' History Of The Chinese In Singapore: The Annotated Edition. Ong Siang Song
tender the customary gifts, he was put in the stocks by the Sultan’s followers: and the merchants, jealous of the reputation of the Settlement as a free port, remonstrated. The Resident thought it was an improper, premature and unnecessary interference on the part of the merchants, and wrote to that effect to Sir Stamford Raffles. This gave much offence to the merchants.
At this time the provisions made by the authorities for the policing of the town were wholly inadequate to [11] the needs of the place. In September 1821 at the request of the Resident certain European merchants met for the purpose of carrying into effect the resolutions passed at a meeting of the merchants held six months previously that funds should be raised by means of voluntary subscriptions for increasing the strength of the police establishment and that a committee of three Europeans and three native merchants should be formed to take into consideration all points connected with the Police. The meeting decided to request the Resident to suggest to the inhabitants of Kampong Glam and China Town the propriety of subscribing to the proposed fund for extending the police system to these kampongs. The response was apparently not hearty, for the mercantile subscription, which was called the ‘Night Watch Fund’, amounted in the average to $54 a month – sufficient, however, to increase the police establishment by one native sergeant and nine native constables. The Chinese held aloof, but we find that shortly afterwards, as robberies became more frequent in their kampongs, they realised the propriety of subscribing to the Night Watch Fund.
Towards the end of the year 1822, Sir Stamford Raffles was back again in Singapore, busily engaged among other things in remodelling and laying out his new city. He issued a proclamation on the 29th October 1822 appointing a committee of three European gentlemen and a representative from each of the principal classes of Arabs, Malays, Bugis, Javanese and Chinese for appropriating and marking out the quarters or departments of the several classes of the native population.
In Raffles’s written Instructions given on 4th November 1822 to Capt Davis (President) and Messrs Bonham and AL Johnston (Members) on the above subject, the Chinese inhabitants were roughly divided into three classes :
(a)The lower classes, earning their livelihood by handicrafts and personal labour, who were then in [12] occupation of a considerable portion of the sea and river face, and in this class were included the Chinese artificers who had settled on the beach near Telok Ayer and Kampong Glam and who were to be removed from thence without delay.
(b)A higher and more respectable class engaged in mercantile speculation, and
(c)The cultivators who were to be excluded from the proposed town limits.
The following instructions were given to the Committee for the Chinese kampong:
From the number of Chinese already settled, and the peculiar attractions of the place for that industrious race, it may be presumed that they will always form the largest portion of the community. The whole therefore of that part of the town to the south-west of the Singapore river (except where marked out for the use of European and other merchants) is intended to be appropriated for their accommodation. …
In establishing the Chinese kampong on a proper footing, it will be necessary to advert to the provincial and other distinctions among this peculiar people. It is well known that the people of one province are more quarrelsome than another, and that continued disputes and disturbances take place between people of different provinces. It will also be necessary to distinguish between the fixed residents and itinerants. … Of the latter, those from Amoy claim particular attention, and it may perhaps deserve consideration whether on account of their importance it may not be advisable to allot a separate division for their accommodation, even to the westward of the cantonments beyond the European town and the Sultan. The object of the Government being to afford the utmost accommodation to every description of traders, but more particularly to the respectable classes … you are not to lose sight of the advantage which may arise from deviating from the rule (i.e. of concentrating the different classes of the population in their separate quarters) in special cases where the commercial interests of the Settlement are concerned. Few places offer greater natural facilities [13] for commerce than Singapore and it is only desired that the advantage of these facilities be afforded to all who are competent to avail themselves of them in the proportion of their relative importance and claims to consideration.
It being intended to place the Chinese population in a great measure under the immediate control of their own chiefs, you will fix up such centrical and commanding sites for the residence of these authorities and appropriate to them such larger extent of ground, as may tend to render them efficient instruments of police, and at the same time raise them in the consideration of the lower classes. … The concentration of the different descriptions of artificers, such as blacksmiths, carpenters, etc, in particular quarters should also be attended to.15
Raffles also gave instructions for the removal of the fish market to Telok Ayer, and directed the Committee to consider whether, in the interests of general convenience and cleanliness, it might not be advantageous to concentrate the fish, pork, poultry and vegetable markets in the vicinity of each other. It would appear that Col Farquhar fixed on a site for the market more suitable than that first proposed by the Committee, and Tan Che Sang (better known as Inchek Sang or Chek Sang),16 the principal Chinese merchant in the place at that time, agreed to build it at his own expense, if he was allowed to hold it free of tax for a certain number of years. Whether his offer was accepted or not, the records do not say.
Tan Che Sang17 is the first Chinese name mentioned in Mr Buckley’s Anecdotal History of Singapore. He was born at Canton,18 circa 1763, and at the age of 15 had left his native city for Rhio, thence he went to Penang where he remained for ten years, then to Malacca where he was for some years, and finally he settled down in Singapore. He was a wealthy man, and as there were no banks in those days he kept his money in iron boxes and slept among them.19 He was said to be a great miser, [14] but addicted to gambling. He knew his weakness and tried to conquer the vicious habit in a dramatic fashion by cutting off the first joint of one of his little fingers with an oath not to play any more when, on one occasion, he had lost a considerable sum of money at the gaming table; but the remedy proved ineffectual, for he fell a victim to the habit again.20 He died here on 2nd April 1836 at the age of 73 and was buried on the 13th: the funeral, attended by ten to fifteen thousand (?)21 persons, proceeded through the commercial part of the town on the way to the Hokien burial ground.22 It is said that Che Sang used to boast that he wielded so much influence over the Chinese section23 that any day he said the word he could empty the place of all the Europeans, but he never tried.24
He left a will in the Chinese language in which he directed that a block of land comprising 51,558 square feet with frontages on High Street and North Boat Quay (being Lease No. 298)25 ‘should be kept for the joint concern and reserved for ever as an ancestral heritage and should not be turned into money for apportionment nor sold nor alienated’; but in 1880 in an action instituted by Wee Swee Lum, executor of Tan Swan Neo deceased, a daughter of the said Tan Che Sang, against Lee Boon Neo and others, the Court held that on the true construction of the will, the direction reserving the aforesaid property for ever was void as creating a perpetuity, and that the said Tan Che Sang died intestate in respect of such property and ordered a sale thereof in thirty lots.
In Raffles’s Instructions a moderate compensation was directed to be paid to such Chinese settlers as were required to remove their dwellings, and it may safely be presumed that the market gardeners and the other cultivators of the soil who had to be excluded from the proposed new town limits were treated with the same consideration. During the four years from the founding of the Settlement, a certain number of the Chinese immigrants had given their attention to agriculture and pros-[15]pered as planters of vegetables, nutmegs, spices, gambier and pepper. It is worthy of note that in a despatch dated the 13th February 1819 reporting to the Supreme Government the occupation of the island, Raffles was already able to write: ‘The industrious Chinese are already established in the interior and may soon be expected to supply vegetables etc. equal to the demand.’ From the same despatch we learn that a number of Chinese were then already engaged