A scouting conundrum

When you search on the Internet, the same one-line information of "an experimental Boy Scouts troop formed by the YMCA Penang in 1908" is repeated ad nauseum as if there isn't any new information to add about the Scout movement's beginnings. Even the official Scouts Association of Malaysia doesn't say more. This is simply some data that has been accepted by the Scouting community in Malaysia as an historical fact without need to question or researched further, full stop. Isn't anyone inquisitive enough to try and find out more?

The formation of this experimental Boy Scouts troop didn't happen by accident. In February of 1908, Robert Baden-Powell had called on all boys to enrol themselves as Peace Scouts, a fascinating organisation with secret signs and war songs. (1) 

The Revd George Frederick Pykett (b. 1864, d. 1932), who was already the principal of the Anglo-Chinese School, would have played a huge role in getting this experimental troop together at the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in Penang, which he had set up in 1905. So it came to pass that Scouting became an activity of the YMCA Penang and it complemented their St John Ambulance First Aid classes. At that time, the YMCA operated from premises in Logan Road which was reputedly vast enough to hold a football field (2). Where in Logan Road was this premises though? I don't know exactly although I've been told that it was close enough to the field at Westlands School when this latter school came into existence in 1935.

Little is known about the early activities of the experimental troop but there is this picture (see below) which showed a group of Boys Scouts at the YMCA in Logan Road. At the back of the picture was an attestation by Goh Guan Ho (b. 1891, d. 1969) before a Justice of the Peace in 1966 that the picture was taken in July 1908. 

Goh Guan Ho was born in Singapore. (3) It is known that he had his early education at the Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore in 1904 where he won a General Progress prize in Standard VII (4) but by 1907, his family had relocated to Penang. While studying at the Anglo-Chinese School in Penang, he had won the first prize in the Penang Chamber of Commerce examination in 1907. That same year, he passed the First Aid examinations held by the St John Ambulance Corps and had then joined the Penang Chinese Volunteer Corps. In 1908 when this Boy Scouts picture was taken, Goh Guan Ho was the Head Boy of the Anglo-Chinese School in Penang. (5) Later in his life, he was President of the Penang Bar Committee and Advisor of the YMCA among many other positions he held publicly. He began his political career in 1954 and was elected to the Municipal Council on an Alliance ticket. Three years later when George Town was granted city status by Queen Elizabeth II, he became the first Mayor. However in  1959, he was defeated by the Socialist Front candidate, Tan Phock Kin, in the Federal election. Goh died in November 1969, three years after making his attestation regarding the Boy Scouts picture. (6) You may wonder why I ramble at length about him. Why not? He was the central character in this story; he was also a respected personality in Penang. Besides, there's a road that's named after him: Goh Guan Ho Road is very near to Rifle Range. 

But let's get back to the two images at the end of this story. There's a controversy whether the information on its reverse side is accurate or not. While Goh Guan Ho said that it was taken on the YMCA ground in Logan Road in July 1908. a Scout historian in Singapore by the name of Wan Meng Hao was disputing this.

When this picture first appeared on a blog story by Yeoh Suan Choo in July 2018, she was contacted by Wan Meng Hao two years later who claimed that the "scouting photos were taken in Singapore, not Penang. Sorry but the certifications by the JP in 1966 are wrong. Mr Goh was residing at that time in Singapore, not Penang." 

Wan Meng Hao also made reference to his book, Scouting in Singapore 1910-2000, which he had co-authored with Kevin YL Tan. The book was published by The Singapore Scout Association in 2002. It's an excellent book, by the way. On Page 13 of his book, he had also used this picture by Goh Guan Ho and captioned it as "Possibly the earliest picture of Scouts in Singapore. According to Goh Guan Ho (extreme right), this picture was taken sometime in 1909 at Fort Canning. Goh left Singapore in 1916 to study law and later moved to Penang."

Well, who was right? Goh Guan Ho as mentioned in the book or Goh Guan Ho as written behind the picture? Which Goh Guan Ho is to be believed?

I can't say much about the conflicting statements but I was thinking aloud to my friends yesterday that if this location should be Fort Canning, would it also possibly show up in present-day pictures of the Fort Canning Park? After all, if the Singapore government is very concerned about heritage conservation, they would have tried to conserve all the buildings in the Fort Canning Park today, not tear them down. Somewhere, shouldn't there be a brick building that may look similar to the one in the centre of the picture?  

So I decided to visit the Tripadvisor website. I know that on this website, visitors love to contribute pictures of their travel destinations. I located the link to the Fort Canning Park and found 1,883 pictures there. I must say that I did click through all the pictures but found no picture of buildings remotely close to the arches shown in the picture. I know this is not even sleuthing around Fort Canning personally but this is the best that I can do for the moment. Perhaps Wan Meng Hao can identify the building. It would be very helpful all around. 

Anyway, Yeoh Suan Choo had backed away from pursuing this matter further with a reply saying that she was no authority on Scouting, was not a researcher and so had to leave it to Wan Meng Hao to check out the story.

Well, I have been intrigued by these pictures for three years now - despite not being a Scout myself - and new evidence have been uncovered, thanks to the National Archives of Singapore which had placed some early copies of the Straits Echo newspaper online for people to read. That was why I was writing at length about Goh Guan Ho. In 1908, Goh Guan Ho was no longer residing in Singapore. How could he be, when he was already transferred to the Anglo-Chinese School in Penang to continue with his schooling? Furthermore, he was now the Head Boy, a respected post that placed him apart from the "rest of the boys." That's him standing on the far right in the picture. Next to him was E Roberts who was later to become the assistant general secretary of the Straits Settlements in 1910. 

Goh Guan Ho had also identified the person on the far left as George Pykett. It's a red herring as far as I am concerned. People tend to think that the George Pykett here referred to the Principal of the Anglo-Chinese School. Far from it. This George Pykett was his contemporary, one of two sons of Revd George F Pykett, the other being Dick Pykett who was also in the picture but not identified. Why do I say this? First, seeing how he had addressed the more senior E Roberts with a Mister salutation, Goh Guan Ho wouldn't be so brazen to refer to his old school headmaster simply as George Pykett. He would have added a Reverend to the name. Second, it was known that Revd George F Pykett was not in Penang from March (7) till November 1908. (8) He was on a long furlough leave to the United Kingdom and the United States. And thirdly, I had stared and stared at the picture and concluded that the fellow looked too young to be the 44-year-old Revd Pykett at that time. (Okay, that last part was a bit subjective but it was good enough for me.)  

So let me strongly suggest here on my blog that the picture was indeed of the Logan Road premises of the YMCA Penang in July 1908. The people identified by Goh Guan Ho were all part of a larger group of Penangites - except for E Roberts, Bertie Pedley, Caunter and the two Pykett siblings - and all 28 of them couldn't possibly have travelled together to Singapore just to have this picture taken. It was such a large and extraordinary group of uniformed people that the newspapers of the day in Singapore would surely have caught whiff of their arrival and wrote something about them, but there was none I could find. No, I believe Goh Guan Ho's attestation before the Justice of the Peace to be the definitive word. Unless other evidence surfaces, the Scouting movement in this part of the world would appear to have started in Penang, albeit on an experimental basis, and then spread to other parts of the peninsula, including Singapore, within the next two years. 

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NOTE: I don't normally mention the sources of my information in my blog stories but somehow, I feel it is pertinent in this case should anyone want to verify them. They are all from the National Archives of Singapore's e-newspaper section. 

(1) Straits Echo, 10 February 1908
(2) Straits Echo, 3 July 1907
(3) Biographical Dictionary of the Chinese in Malaysia, published by Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Malaya
(4) The Straits Times, 23 December 1904
(5) Straits Echo, 28 February 1908
(6) Berita Harian, 18 November 1969
(7) Straits Echo, 24 February 1908
(8) Straits Echo, 27 November 1908