Early Singapore was a colourful place, with merchants and pirates, coolies and colonials. But it was also full of animals. Sometimes there were so many of them, there would be a plague and the people had to deal with them as best as they could. Munshi Abdullah, the famous scribe and linguist of 19th century Singapore wrote about such an occasion.

In the 1820s while William Farquhar was still governing Singapore, there came a great infestation of rats. Do you see them picking at food and crumbs on Pg 14 of The Little Singapore Book? There were so many rats they overran warehouses and homes, chewed through the wood, stole food and ransacked the godowns. Even Munshi Abdullah’s pet cat was attacked by a pack of large rats one night. So big were they that their hefty weight could knock a person down if he wasn’t careful out walking at night.

They were a real nuisance and people began to complain.

But without rat catchers and pest busters then, what could Farquhar do? First, he asked everyone to try to catch the rats. But all they did was complain and hope their neighbours would do the deed.

Seeing that the rat problem was still there, Farquhar then offered to pay one ‘wang’, or coin, for every rat caught and killed. With this reward, everyone sprang into action and started catching rats with every ingenious idea they could think of. For about a week, thousands of dead rats were brought in every morning, and Farquhar was kept busy paying the people a wang for each dead rat.

But the numbers never fell. There were as many dead rats brought in every morning. Could people be bringing the same carcasses in day after day?

So Farquhar ordered a large trench to be dug and all the dead rats were buried. This seemed to do the trick. From that day, fewer and fewer rats were caught every day and soon, the plague of rats was over.

But it was peaceful for only a short while.

Soon after, people in Singapore became bothered by centipedes. Have you been bitten by one before? It can be very painful.

That’s what happened to lots of people when they were walking along Singapore River, or even when they were at home. The Munshi complained that all he had to do was sit at home for a while, and a few fat centipedes would drop from the ceiling onto his lap and promptly give him a few good bites.

When Farquhar heard about this problem, he again offered a reward of a ‘wang’ for every centipede caught. This plan worked again as people once again devised ways to catch the offending creatures and made every effort to hunt them down. Hundreds of centipedes would be brought in every morning. This time, they were promptly buried. After a few days, the numbers dwindled until finally, the Munshi wrote: “The lipan (centipede) war was also ended and people ceased to mourn from the pain of their stings.”

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Once upon a time, the Singapore River was crowded with bumboats. They carried goods such as nutmeg and pepper between the ships moored out at sea and the warehouses, which were also called godowns.

Back in the day, bumboats came in all colours, shapes and sizes. Some were powered by motors, some depended on oars. Others were guided by long poles as they crawled slowly along. Most of them had big rubber tires strapped to their sides, in case they bumped into each other in the busy river. And all of them had “faces” painted on their bow, so that they could “spot” danger.

But lots of traffic meant that the Singapore River got really really dirty. After Singapore became independent, there was a massive national campaign to clean it up and bumboats were eventually banned from it.

These days, you can spot a few bumboats trawling the river. These are river taxis and they now carry only people, not goods.

The post Singapore’s Bumboats appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

But from 25 to 28 March 2015, Singaporeans queued like they had never queued before! You’ll see a picture of how we queued on page 64 of The Little Singapore Book.

A few days before, on 23 March 2015, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister and founding father, passed away at 91 years old. Everyone in Singapore was very sad and lots and lots of people wanted to pay their respects to this man whom people knew as the “Father of Modern Singapore”. When his body lay in state at the Parliament House, massive queues of people formed on the first day, as tens of thousands of people waited to see him one last time. The line snaked all around the business district of Shenton Way, along the historic Singapore river, in front of shophouses and office buildings, until it reached the Parliament House. The queue was eight hours long, and  whether in rain or under the hot sun, Singaporeans were willing to wait in line.

For four days, volunteers, policemen and army soldiers helped to organise the queue which now wound its way many times around the Padang, to the floating platform at Marina Square, and back again. The queue went on non-stop day and night for four days, with people often waiting for as long as eight hours. The only time the queue was closed was when the crowds grew too large and the organisers needed to clear those who were waiting.

Old people, pregnant women, the handicapped and little children had an ‘express queue’ which was a little shorter. For that, they still had to wait for over an hour.

During this national week of mourning, Singaporeans of all shapes, sizes, colours and ages came together to help each other, handing out food and water and umbrellas for those patiently waiting. It was an amazing sight. It also showed how much people respected Mr Lee, the country’s first Prime Minister, who took us from Independence to First World success in 50 short years.

By the time the queue was closed on 28th March 8pm to prepare for the State Funeral,  over 415,000 people from all walks of life had queued to say farewell to Mr Lee.

The post When Singapore Queued For A Week appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

Nutmeg
It may not look like much with its egg shape and wrinkled skin, but the seed of the nutmeg tree is one of the most important spices in the world. It was so so valuable that countries fought many many wars over it.

When the British arrived in Singapore, they tried planting nutmeg on the island. They were successful and for a while, everyone wanted to grow nutmeg. But a disease killed off the nutmeg trees and by the 1860s, no one grew it anymore on the island.

Gambier
This comes from the leaves of the plant. It is used to tan leather, as a dye,

a food additive and as a medicine. Singapore once had many gambier plantations. It was also the main centre of the gambier trade until the 1900s.

Pepper
This is the tiny tiny fruit of a flowering vine. When dried, it is known as a peppercorn and is used for cooking. It is often grown together with the gambier plant in Singapore. Pepper is one of the world’s most important spices and Singapore was a once regional center of the pepper trade

Rubber
At one time, this was the most important crop not just in Singapore, but the whole of Malaya. It is harvested by collecting a sticky milk called latex from the tree. Did you know that the best way to harvest it was discovered in Singapore more than 100 years ago? It is still being used today!

The post Once Upon These Crops appeared first on Pepperdog Press.

The six buildings you see on page 16 of The Little Singapore Book are just a few examples of the buildings and organisations built by these philanthropists. Two of them are hospitals for the poor, and they are still around today.

The Thong Chye Medical Institution was started as a free clinic almost 150 years by a group of Chinese immigrants. Traditional Chinese physicians or doctors there took care of the sick free of charge! Lots of rich merchants and businessmen donated money to help run this free hospital, and lots of poor people got the help they needed. One of the biggest donors was a man called Gan Eng Seng. (A school is named after him too.)

Even though it no longer runs out of the beautiful old building which it used to occupy along Eu Tong Sen Street, Thong Chai Medical Institution is still around today and continues to provide free medical care to the poor, thanks to the generous philanthropists from a long time ago!

Another hospital that helped the poor was the Chinese Pauper’s Hospital. It is more than 170 years old, making it one of the oldest hospitals in Singapore. Most people know it today as Tan Tock Seng Hospital. It was first built at Pearl’s Hill, but had a move a few times over the years before it arrived at its current location. It is named after Tan Tock Seng, a rich Hokkien merchant who gave money and land to build this hospital in 1844. But many people may not know that other rich merchants also helped to build the hospital, like his own son Tan Kim Cheng, and Syed Sharif Omar al-Junied, a wealthy Arab spice trader, who also donated land for the hospital!

Did you know?
Hospitals in 19th century Singapore were very different from the hospitals now. Can you imagine that a very, very long time ago, many patients would run away from the hospital so that they could expose their sores and beg for money along the roads? To prevent them from doing that again, these misbehaving patients would be caned as punishment! That surely would not have helped the patients get well sooner! Aren’t you glad things are not like that anymore? We sure are!

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