One Hundred Years' History Of The Chinese In Singapore: The Annotated Edition. Ong Siang Song
present Ordnance and Commissariat Offices. The Tan Tock Seng Hospital was removed to the swampy ground on Balestier Plain, the premises being put up by the Government. The sick were accommodated in three blocks of brick buildings forming three sides of a square, while the fourth side, facing Serangoon Road, was for administrative requirements. It was not long before these buildings proved insufficient, and although the locality was condemned, ward after ward was put up as times were better and the revenue increased, and Mr Tan Beng Swee43 built a tile roofed ward at his own expense. Under the careful management of Dr Rowell44, PCMO, Tan Tock Seng Hospital became well organised, the whole place being a model of a poor-house and infirmary combined, and it was said that in 1884 it had become as much a contrast to what it had been in 1862 as a palace is to a pigsty.
In the 1867 Directory it was stated that the female [65] ward was built at the expense of Lee Seo Neo,45 the widow of the founder.
In 1880 an Ordinance was passed incorporating the institution and appointing a Committee of Management consisting of the Colonial Secretary, the Principal Civil Medical Officer, the Inspector-General of Police, the Assistant Colonial Secretary and the Protector of Chinese (all ex officio), Mr CB Buckley and five representatives of the Chinese subscribers, including, as stipulated by the Ordinance, one of the male heirs of the founder. In the old days the Hospital was generously supported by the Chinese, with one notable exception. In 1857 Syed Ali bin Mohamed al Junied46, a wealthy Arab merchant, presented it with a piece of land containing about five acres, now known as ‘Syed Ali’s land’ in Victoria Street, Queen Street and Arab Street, and from this land, leased out in lots for the term of ninety-nine years, is derived a yearly rental of $1,200.
In 1909 the present buildings at Moulmein Road were completed at a cost of nearly half a million dollars. Government bore the expense of the site and erections, with the aid of the generous gift by Towkay Loke Yew47 of $50,000 and of a bequest by Mr Wee Boon Teck48 of $4,000 and the accumulated interest from these two sums. Five wards have been named after Loke Yew, one after Wee Boon Teck and one after Tan Beng Swee. Sir John Anderson49, the then Governor, wisely decided that the Hospital should continue to bear the name of the founder Tan Tock Seng.
Mr Arthur Knight50, in his historical sketch of the above Hospital,51 records that after the completion of the present buildings attention was drawn to the large number of Chinese inmates – nearly forty – who were incurably blind, most of whom were otherwise in good health, but who were occupying space which should be available for the sick. A separate ward for the blind was, by the sanction of HE the Governor, erected on a site adjoining the new buildings and named after [66] Mr Ong Kim Wee JP52 of Malacca, who had given a donation of $12,000 for that purpose.
Born in 1798 in Malacca, Tan Tock Seng came to Singapore shortly after its foundation, with no capital but industry and thrift. He started as a vegetable, fruit and fowl seller, going into the country to buy and selling the same in town. Having saved a little money, he opened a shop on the river-side. Afterwards he joined in some speculations with Mr JH Whitehead of Shaw, Whitehead & Co53 and it was chiefly by this means that he made most of his money. Mr Horrocks Whitehead died in September 1846 at the age of 36, and his tombstone, at the Old Cemetery on Fort Canning, was erected ‘as a token of affection on the part of a Chinese friend, Tan Tock Seng’.
He was made a JP by Governor Butterworth, being the first Asiatic to receive such an appointment, and was very often occupied in settling disputes among his countrymen. His charities were very extensive and constant, and he was accustomed to bear the expense of burying poor Chinese. He died in 1850, at the age of 52 years, leaving a widow, Lee Seo Neo, three sons, Tan Kim Ching, Tan Teck Guan54 and Tan Swee Lim, and three daughters, one of whom married Lee Cheng Tee, at one time the chief partner in the firm of Cheng-tee Wattseng & Co, shipowners. Three of Mr Cheng Tee’s sons are living, Lee Pek Hoon55 (assistant manager, Straits Steamship Co), Lee Pek Swee (in Java) and Lee Pek Hock,56 a very valuable agent of the Government Food Control Department during the rice crisis.
The name of Lee Seo Neo has already been mentioned in connection with the female ward at the Tan Tock Seng Hospital. The Directory for 1873 gives her name as proprietress of a large coconut estate in Gaylang, known as Sri Gaylang, Ayer Molek.
The number of Straits-born Chinese at this time was a negligible quantity, but there was a steady stream of young men finding their way from Malacca to this [67] Settlement who practically settled down here altogether. One such individual was Cheong Ann Jan,57 who was born in 1818 and came to Singapore in 1844. He entered the service of the firm of Hamilton, Padday & Co which afterwards became Hamilton, Gray & Co in Battery Road, and he rose to the position of storekeeper in the firm which he served until his death in March 1881. Of his five sons, Cheong Swee Kiat was compradore of the Mercantile Bank at the time of his death in 1891. Another son, Cheong Swee Whatt, became compradore of the Banque de l’Indo-Chine and died in 1907. His wide business experience was of great value to his two sons, Cheong Choon Kim58 and Cheong Choon Beng,59 in the early days of the firm of Yap Whatt & Co, which was established in 1893 as Commission Agents and Import and Export Merchants.
Cheong Swee Whatt
Cheong Ann Jan’s only daughter married Tan Hoon Soon and was the mother of Tan Gin Hock, who was for many years managing partner of the firm of Hoon Keat & Co, general provision merchants in Raffles Place.
In the early part of 1844 Ho Chong Lay, a young man, about 22 years of age, arrived from Amoy. After serving a three-years’ apprenticeship, he started on his own account as a general produce merchant under the chop Teng Hin, owning several junks and sailing vessels which made voyages to Siam and Saigon (the latter port then being under the governorship of a Chinese mandarin). His business proved successful and he began investing his profits in lands and houses in Singapore, where he died in 1861 at the age of 40. A son, Ho Yang Peng, was born in 1859 in Singapore, and after completing his education at Raffles Institution, he went to Amboyna (Moluccas) to wind up the business of a produce merchant left by an elder brother who had died there. In April 1886 Mr Ho Yang Peng joined the General Post Office and was the Chinese sub-postmaster for about twenty-one years. There were then some seventy shopkeepers (Hokien and Teochew) acting as [68] remittance agents and about 4,000 itinerant collectors who made it their business to make trips at regular intervals to their own villages in China, carrying with them the savings of the working people here to their parents or families dwelling in the same villages. In the course of a year, something like a million dollars represented the total remittances by this means from Singapore. Mr Yang Peng advised the Cantonese, Hakka and Hylam tribes to arrange for shopkeepers to undertake this business, and now there are about 250 shops acting as remittance agents, while the itinerant collector has become a thing of the past. In 1902 Mr Yang Peng became a trustee and succeeded Mr Wee Theam Tew60 as President of the Board of Trustees of the Gan Eng Seng Free School,61 retiring in 1910. He bought in 1903 Mr Robert Little’s62 coconut estate (450 acres) at Siglap and developed it by planting rubber during the boom, spending a large sum of money on such development. This estate was afterwards sold at a considerable loss. Before joining the Post Office, Mr Ho Yang Peng had secured the monopoly as Farmer of all the then markets, Telok Ayer (Old Market), Ellenborough, Rochore and Clyde Terrace, and, later on, of Orchard Road market, and he continued to enjoy the rights of the monopoly until 1909, when the Farm was abolished and the Municipality assumed direct control over all markets.
On 18th September 1844 the following notification was issued by Government:
Authentic intelligence having been received that a naturalised British subject, but of Chinese origin, had incurred some risk of seizure and persecution by the Chinese authorities in consequence of his appearing at one of the Ports in China lately thrown open to British shipping as supercargo of a British vessel – and as cases of the same kind are likely to occur from the growing trade in British ships between the Ports of China and the Straits Settlements, it is hereby notified, with a view to protect persons