One Hundred Years' History Of The Chinese In Singapore: The Annotated Edition. Ong Siang Song
junk, and on arrival, on the recommendation of the owners of the junk, he became attached as clerk to several trading vessels. During five years of a roving sea life, he was engaged in bartering with the natives, and thereby acquired a wide knowledge of the mental habits of the Malays as well as of their requirements. The various junks whereon he was employed visited from time to time practically all the coasts of the Straits of Malacca, the islands of the Rhio Archipelago and the east coast of the Malay Peninsula as far north as Singgora.
Seah Eu Chin
When he was scarcely twenty-five years of age, he was established in Kling Street and afterwards in [20] Circular Road, Singapore, as a commission agent supplying the junks trading between this port and Rhio, Sumatra and the ports of the Malay Peninsula, with all their wants and receiving from them all the produce they had collected for sale on commission. His business was successful, and he invested his profits in landed property. He was, it is said, the first to start gambier and pepper planting on a large scale in this island,35 and in 1835 acquired for this purpose a large tract of land extending countrywards for eight to ten miles from the upper end of River Valley Road among more or less what is now Irwell Bank Road to Bukit Timah and Thomson Roads. We are told that he tried planting tea, nutmegs and other tropical produce, but not succeeding as he had expected, he gave them up and tried gambier. At that time the price of gambier was 75 cents, and pepper $1.50 a picul. He was seriously intending to discontinue these plantations, but Mr Church36 persuaded him to persevere and he made a large fortune thereby. Besides being a planter, he was also a general trader in cotton goods and in tea, and had extensive dealings with European firms and was well known among them and highly respected. In 1840 he became a member of the Singapore Chamber of Commerce (composed of the principal European and native mer chants). In 1847 and 1848 he wrote, for Logan’s Journal,37 articles in the Chinese language upon the ‘Remittances made by the Chinese to their Parents’,38 and the ‘Numbers, tribes and avocations of the Chinese in Singapore’,39 which were translated and published in Volumes 1 and 2 of that Journal.
In 1850 he headed the deputation of the Chinese which waited upon the Governor-General, Lord Dalhousie, on his visit to Singapore, and Governor Butterworth40 wrote to him expressing his grateful acknowledgments for the assistance he had given in welcoming his Lordship. From 1851 onwards he was frequently summoned to act as a grand juror. He was a straight- [21] forward man, and rendered many valuable services to the Government, especially during the great Hokien and Teochew riot in 1854. He was quite fearless during those trou blous times and used to go with the Sepoys who escorted the conveyance of food to his plantations.
It was not at all remarkable that Government readily granted him in 1853 a certificate of naturalisation under Indian Act XXX of 1852. Mr Church, writing to him on 29th December 1853, referred to his grant as follows:
The Governor desires me to add that he cannot permit the certificate to leave this office without assuring you of the satisfaction it has afforded him to enrol the name of so talented and so highly respectable a Chinese resident of Singapore amongst the naturalised British subjects in the Straits of Malacca.
Later, during the time of Sir R McCausland (Recorder 1856-66), it was not unusual for the Court to advise Chinese suitors to refer their cases to Seah Eu Chin. When Col. Ord became the first Governor of the Straits Settlements under Crown rule, Seah Eu Chin was made a JP, one of the first Chinese who received this distinction from the Government.
In 1837 he married the eldest daughter of Tan Ah Hun,41 the rich Captain China of Perak, whose son, Tan Seng Poh, was for many years one of the opium and spirit farmers in Singapore. His wife died a few months after her marriage, from the effects of smallpox, and about a year later he married his deceased wife’s younger sister, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. The eldest son – the late Mr Seah Cheo Seah,42 JP, a gentleman well known for his kindness of heart and liberality – died in 1885, leaving Seah Eng Kiat43 and Seah Eng Kun44 among his sons.45 The second son, Mr Seah Liang Seah, will be referred to later. Of the other two sons, Mr Seah Song Seah, at one time a partner in the Opium and Spirit Farm, died a few years ago in China,46 and Mr Seah Pek Seah,47 JP, is a partner of Chin Huat Hin Oil Trading Co.48 He was the [22] first Hon Treasurer of the Straits Chinese British Association, and held the office for four years.
Seah Pek Seah
Seah Eu Chin49 retired from active business in 1864 when he was sixty years of age, and spent the remaining years of his life in the cultivation of Chinese literature, of which he was by no means a poor scholar. In September 1875 he was appointed trustee of the Teochew Chinese burial ground in Orchard Road, comprising 72 acres,50 where the average number of burials was about forty-five a month. He died on 23rd September 1883 at the age of 78,51 and his widow died in 1905.
Early in January 1824 the Resident, Mr Crawfurd, asked permission to forward a gold cup, with a letter dated 23rd December 1823, presented to Col Farquhar, the late Resident, by the Chinese inhabitants of Singapore. Abdullah’s description of the Colonel was ‘a man of good parts, slow at fault finding, treating rich and poor alike, and very patient in listening to the complaints of any person who went to him, so that all returned rejoicing’. Farquhar had tried to look at Asiatic problems through Asiatic spectacles and failed as administrator of the high-principled policy laid down for him by Raffles. His popularity among the natives was shown on his departure from Singapore, when they accompanied him to his ship in the harbour in numerous boats decorated with flags and accompanied with music.
In January 1824 the first census of the population was taken. Out of a total of 10,683 inhabitants, the Chinese numbered 3,317 or less than one-third. There were 74 Europeans, 16 Armenians, 15 Arabs and 4,580 Malays (the largest section of the community). Although Sir Stamford had written in 1820 that out of a population of between ten and twelve thousand, the principal element was Chinese, this did not prove to be correct, from a numerical point of view, until many, many years afterwards. It is interesting to observe the steady increase of the Chinese community from the censuses of the next twelve years: [23]
The Singapore Free Press, dealing with the census for 1835-6, supplies the following details:
In the town the total number of inhabitants was 16,148, of whom 12,748 were males and 3,400 females. The Chinese figures were 8,233. The town limits were the Rochore River as the eastern boundary, Mr Ryan’s hill (now known as Bukit Pasoh) as the western boundary and from the sea in wards to a line drawn parallel to Mount Sophia.52 The country was subdivided into two districts, Singapore Town and Kampong Glam, with respective populations of 4,184 (Chinese 2,338 including 41 females) and 9,652 (Chinese 3,178 including 72 females). Newbold53 remarks that ‘the Chinese females here mentioned are not of course natives of China, but all of a creole or mixed race and mostly from the neighbouring island of Bintang.’54
A census taken in 1849 showed that out of a total population of 59,043 the Chinese numbered 24,790 or just under 42 per cent. It was only when Singapore had been forty years under the British flag that the Chinese community formed more than one-half of the whole population. The following comparative table should prove interesting:
[24] Of the 219,577 Chinese in this Settlement in 1911 (when the last census was taken) the Census report gives the following details:—
SINGAPORE MUNICIPALITY (CHINESE)
COUNTRY (CHINESE)