One Hundred Years' History Of The Chinese In Singapore: The Annotated Edition. Ong Siang Song
Councillors in Penang, Singapore and Malacca will be prepared to furnish a certificate when required, intimating that they are naturalised British subjects. This document will be lodged with the British Consul at the first Port the vessel may touch in China.63
The attitude of the Straits Government at that date towards Chinese naturalised British subjects visiting the country of their birth forms a strange and striking contrast to its attitude within recent years towards Chinese natural-born British subjects visiting the country of their forefathers! The Government of those days did not recognise the claim of the Chinese authorities to exercise jurisdiction over their own nationals who had expatriated themselves, while the Government of our day issues a half-hearted form of passport to Straits-born Chinese going to China, in cases where their fathers were born on Chinese soil. The requirements made by the Chinese authorities that Straitsborn Chinese applying for a passport to visit China must produce two well-known persons to declare the nationality and state the age of the applicant has often worked great hardship: and is an arrangement which the British Government should never have agreed to. Unlike the Dutch ‘peranakans’, the Straits-born Chinese have during the last twenty-five years been trained to realise the relationship in which they, as a community, stand to the British Throne and Empire. The proofs of loyalty and patriotism and the service in numerous forms to the British Empire given by that community during the Great War should justify the British Imperial Government in putting an end to diplomatic uncertainty and claiming the right to protect, by the issue of unqualified British passports, every Chinese born in the Colony, because he is a natural-born British subject, whether travelling to China or elsewhere. The local Government would then not be hampered by the observance of any special procedure of an irksome or embarrassing nature when applications for passports to China are made, and could issue such [70] passports with the same facilities and ease as are enjoyed by British subjects of all other races.
Among the grants of freehold land issued in 1845 in the district of Claymore, there were two grants numbered 1 and 25 to See Boon Tiong, who, on his retirement to Malacca in 1848, sold this property which forms part of the ‘Waverley Estate’ near the Tanglin end of Orchard Road. See Boon Tiong was born in Malacca about 1807 and came to Singapore in 1825, where he started in business, and carried it on for twenty-three years. He was for many years an intimate friend of Mr AL Johnston64 and Mr James Fraser.65 In Malacca he was engaged in business as a merchant and started tapioca planting at Linggi. He was one of the first Chinese merchants in Malacca who were honoured by being made a JP. That was in the year 1860. He used to sit with the Resident Councillor of Malacca in Quarter Sessions when the Resident Councillor was local judge. He continued to invest his savings in house property in the town of Singapore, and such property realised good prices at auction in 1911. He died in Malacca on 1st November 1888 at the advanced age of 81, leaving grandsons, one of whom is Mr See Tiang Lim, at one time a member of the Opium and Spirit Farms and a partner in Tiang Lim Brothers, chop Kim Moh, and now a retired gentleman of means.
The first serious trouble with the Chinese secret societies occurred in 1846. The decay of the Tsing [Qing] dynasty had led to constant rebellions; and the political refugees in the nineteenth century came in great numbers, especially after the Tai-ping insurrection, to this part of the world. One of the direct consequences of this was the introduction into Malaya of the Triad Society and its endless variety of sister institutions. The name Triad was given because the Society based its doctrines on the trinity of the Combined Powers, Human, Terrestrial and Celestial. The popular Chinese name is ‘Thien-tihui’
Mr Pickering66, in his paper on the subject of Chinese Secret Societies, says:
A Chinese embroidered catafalque enclosing a coffin
However degraded the Society may have become in its present hands, there is great reason to believe that originally, in the long past, it was a system of freemasonry, and that its object was to benefit mankind [72] by spreading a spirit of brotherhood and by teaching the duties of man to God and his neighbour. The motto of the Thien-ti-hui, whether acted upon or not, is ‘Obey Heaven and work righteousness’, and the association which could adopt this principle as its fundamental rule must have been composed of individuals raised far above the ideas of mere political adventurers.
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… The professed objects of the League have been in the Straits to a certain extent lost sight of. But at the same time it must be recollected that some years ago the leader of the ‘Sie-to’ or ‘Small knife’ rebellion at Amoy, was a Straits-born Chinese, and that there are doubtless now in the Straits several old Tai-ping rebels. The class of Chinese who flock to those colonies is certainly not composed of men who, either by position or education, can be expected to cherish very deeply the higher principles inculcated by the teaching of the Society: and as there are no patriotic aims to be attained under our gentle and liberal Government, the only objects for which they can strive are those lower interests which are only too dear to the average Chinese mind, such as intrigue, assistance in petty feuds, combination to extort money and to interfere with the course of justice.67
The death of the chief of one of the secret societies was the occasion of the trouble above referred to. Application to the magistrate to grant permission to bury the body in a particular burial ground (which rendered it necessary for the funeral procession to pass through the town) was granted on the condition that such procession would take the direct line of route to the burial ground and that the number of followers did not exceed one hundred. The heads of the Hoey agreed to this arrangement, but the members would not, and assembled to the number of several thousands in front of the temple at Rochore. The body of the deceased was placed in the middle of the street, and the crowd declared their intention to pass through the town, staying in such streets as they thought proper, to [73] perform ceremonies. The police attempted to stop them, and the superintendent, Captain Cuppage68, and Mr Dunman69 were ill-treated by them. An express was then dispatched for the troops, and these were placed at the head of the principal thoroughfares, and lined the roadway, so that the procession was compelled to observe the conditions originally issued by the police.
The Free Press of February 1847 mentions the case of a Chinese who died from hydrophobia in the hospital, after having been bitten four months before by a mad dog, and as several such cases occurred at this time, the magistrates issued an order for the destruction of stray dogs on the first three days of each month (except Sundays).
The first account of the Chinese community in Singapore written by one of themselves appeared in Vol I of Logan’s Journal (1847).70