One Hundred Years' History Of The Chinese In Singapore: The Annotated Edition. Ong Siang Song
some were engaged in smelting the ore brought from the tin mines in the neighbouring islands, and others were employed as cultivators and artificers.
On the 4th February 1823 Raffles, who had already written to Calcutta for the removal from office of Lieut-Col Farquhar on the ground that, under his weak and inconsistent rule, favouritism and irregularities were daily arising, directed his Secretary to write to the Resident on the subject of cracker-firing as a nuisance:
I have the directions of the Lieutenant-Governor to request you will take immediate measures for preventing the Chinese from continuing the practice of letting off fireworks at the Kramat you have allowed to be erected on the Government Hill.
The Lieutenant-Governor regrets exceedingly that any such establishment should have been permitted by you, on a spot so close to the site which has been set apart for the residence of the chief authority, and he trusts you will see the propriety of causing the discontinuance of the nuisance.
The Lieutenant-Governor desires me to state that he was disturbed during the whole of last night by the nuisance complained of. I am at the same time directed to request you will cause the removal of the Chinese movable temple and lights from the great tree near the lines and which is included within the space proposed to be reserved for the Church.26
Another sore point with Raffles in the administration of Farquhar was the deliberate manner in which by [16] establishing a gambling farm he had frustrated the policy declared by Raffles in 1819 that the vice of gaming was strictly prohibited. In May 1823 Raffles asked the opinion of the magistrates as to the desirability of gambling licences, and they unanimously represented the great and growing evils arising from the vice. Despite the opposition of the Resident, Raffles issued his Regulation IV of 182327 prohibiting gaming houses and cockpits and providing for punishments extracted from the Penal Code of China concerning gambling:
Whoever games for money or goods shall receive 80 blows with a cudgel on the breech, and all money or property staked shall be forfeited to Government. He who opens the gambling house, although he does not gamble, shall suffer the same punishment and the gaming house shall be confiscated. …
Whoever gambles, whether soldiers or people, shall wear the broad heavy wooden collar one month. …
In some cases the parties are to be transported.28
The Chinese gamblers and gambling farmers were of course displeased, but were soon consoled, for they discovered that Mr John Crawfurd, who had arrived on the 9th June as successor to Farquhar, was a Resident after their own heart. We find Mr Crawfurd writing on the 15th July to the Secretary to the Government at Bengal complaining of the severity of the punishment against gambling, and he continued:
A sentence of this nature was on the point of being carried into effect by the eleemosynary magistrates of Singapore when I found myself compelled to come forward to stay the proceedings and finally to annul them.29
Notwithstanding the unanimous protest of the nonofficial section of the magisterial bench, whose opinion and advice had been sought by the Resident, on the 23rd August notice of conditions of sale of ten licensed gaming houses and of one cockpit in the Bugis kampong was issued: and on the 18th September the Resident [17] addressed a further letter to the Supreme Government in which he said that ‘the principal natives and Chinese made repeated applications for the suspension of the Regulation, stating a fact, the accuracy of which could not be questioned, that many of the lower classes had quitted the Settlement on account of being deprived of a customary amusement’.
But Raffles utterly repudiated the policy that it was necessary or expedient to relax the rules of government and morality in order to induce the immigration of Chinese and other traders. He had established ‘freedom of person as the right of the soil, and freedom of trade as the right of the port’, and with all the earnestness of his strenuous nature he pleaded with the Governor-General in Council not to sacrifice principle for expediency in the matter of the gambling farm at Singapore. ‘It is alleged’, he writes, ‘in support of the gaming farm, that by placing it under regulation, the quantity of vice is diminished, but independently of the want of authority of any human government to countenance evil for the sake of good, I cannot admit that the effects of any regulation whatever, established on such a principle, are to be put in competition with the solid advantages which must accrue from the administration of a Government acting on strict moral principles, discountenancing vice and exercising its best efforts to suppress it’.
Legalised gambling went on during the whole term of office of Mr Crawfurd (1823-6), and the revenue from that Farm which was $15,076 in 1823 was double that amount in 1826, being $30,390. There were, however, still residents who did not look at the subject merely from the point of view of revenue, and in 1827 the Grand Jury made a presentment against the Gaming Farm as an immoral nuisance and were met by this remark: ‘I did not think there were thirteen such idiots in this Island.’ Ten years later, the first Recorder, Sir John T Claridge,30 between whom and the Governor, Mr Fullerton,31 there had been a most violent quarrel, [18] made a declaration from the Bench that the Gambling Farm was illegal, and the Government reluctantly suspended the gaming-farm system. A few months after the recall of Sir John Claridge, Mr Fullerton brushed aside his decision and affirmed the legality of this method of raising the revenue. But his success was short-lived, for towards the end of the same year the Court of Directors finally abolished the Farm.
Two attempts were made later to reintroduce the Gaming Farm, the first being made by Mr Bonham,32 the Resident Councillor, in 1834, and the second by the press in 1836, but both failed.
It is interesting to observe that Abdullah, writing his Hikayat in 1840, gave a paragraph to this subject wherein he defended Raffles’s strong measures against gambling.
These measures were humane, tending to save people from destruction; for gambling is destructive of man, as it encourages cheating and evil propensities. Further, gambling is the father of wickedness and has three children: the eldest being Inchek Bohong (Falsehood), the second Inchek Churi (Thief) and the youngest Inchek Pembunoh (Murderer).33
The question of a gambling farm continued for many years thereafter to be hotly and bitterly discussed, particularly in 1860 when from June to September it was thrashed out at great length in the Free Press, and doubtless this led to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies, making inquiry about the propriety of licensing gambling houses. An opinion favourable to a farm was given by several of the old Straits merchants in London, but the matter did not proceed further. Legislation against gaming houses had been made four years previously in certain sections of the Police Act of 1856, but the inaction of the police during the fortnight after the Chinese New Year in 1862 when gambling went on unchecked was so noticeable that on 12th June a public meeting, called by the Sheriff, at the written request of thirty-three of the principal European residents, was held in the Town Hall [19] to consider what steps should be taken to deal with the gambling evil. At this meeting, which was largely attended, various views were expressed, and a Chinese gentleman suggested that licensing should be tried for a limited time, but nothing further seems to have been done. Next came Ordinance XIII of 1870, followed by amending Ordinances in 1876 and 1879, and finally the Common Gaming Houses Ordinance (V of 1888) was enacted.
As a rule, the Chinese have fully recognised the evils of the gambling habit, and before leaving the subject it deserves to be recorded that in the Federated Malay States the gambling farms, which for so many years had yielded a large revenue, have been abolished at the express request of the Chinese themselves, the change having come with the foundation of the Chinese Republic.34
In 1823 Seah Eu Chin came to Singapore from Swatow. He was born in 1805 and lived in the village of Guek-po in the interior of Swatow within the sub-prefecture of Theng-hai. His father, Seah Keng Liat