The non-missionary English free schools

I have always been interested in the early history of the three old English schools in the former Straits Settlements, namely, Penang Free School, Malacca Free School which later became Malacca High School and the Singapore Free School which eventually became Raffles Institution.

They were established at different times in the 19th Century but there is an interesting connection between them. All three came into being at a time when education was not yet really the responsibility of the colonial government. They depended on a mixture of public subscriptions, private benefactors, government assistance and people connected with the Christian missions.

So were these actually mission schools? Penang Free School is probably the easiest place to start. It was founded in 1816 through the efforts of Revd Robert Sparke Hutchings, the Anglican chaplain in Penang. That gives it a Christian connection, but the school was not set up as an Anglican mission school. In fact, the early proposal was quite deliberate about making the school open to children regardless of their religion and about not offending parents who might object to Christian teaching.

The 1817 school report called it a Public Free School, with the school being entrusted to a committee on behalf of the public. The word “free” also did not quite mean what we might assume today. Children who could afford to pay fees did so, while poorer children could be maintained by the school. So while there was a Christian chaplain behind its establishment, the institution itself was intended to be much broader than a church school. 

The Malacca Free School, established in 1826, has a somewhat similar story. Its origins can be traced to a proposal in 1825 by trustees of various charitable funds in Malacca to establish a good English school which would be free for poor children. James Humphrey, the superintendent of the London Missionary Society, was among those involved, while Thomas H Moore who became its first master had also been connected with the missionary educational world.

The school eventually opened in the Parsonage House (building on the left in the above picture. On the right is Christ Church) with 18 pupils. Interestingly, it was not simply an English school. There were Portuguese, Chinese and Malay classes as well, with children initially being taught in their own languages before progressing in English. Again, there was a missionary connection, but the school was run by trustees and supported from several sources rather than being simply a missionary institution. It remained the Malacca Free School until the trustees eventually handed it over to the government, which took over in 1878 and renamed it Malacca High School.

In Singapore, the story gets a little more complicated. Stamford Raffles had the idea for an educational institution almost from the beginning of the British settlement. In 1823 he worked with the Presbyterian missionary Robert Morrison who was already running the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca. There was even a proposal to transfer the Anglo-Chinese College from Malacca to Singapore and incorporate it into Raffles' new institution. But that never happened.

The original Singapore Institution building was started in 1823 but the project more or less went no-where for several years. It was only when the Singapore Free School moved into the completed building in December 1837 that things began to take shape. The school then became the Singapore Institution Free School in 1838 and eventually evolved into Raffles Institution.

But if these three schools were not really mission schools in the strict sense, it doesn't mean that there weren't any. Certainly, there were proper mission schools in all three settlements.

In Malacca, for example, there was the Anglo-Chinese College, founded in 1818 by the Protestant missionaries Robert Morrison and William Milne. That was very much a missionary institution. Morrison had envisaged it as a place where Chinese and European learning could be brought together and the college became an important centre of Protestant missionary education in the region. It remained in Malacca until 1843, when it was moved to Hong Kong.

Malacca later acquired its Catholic mission schools. St Mary's School was established in 1872 and in 1880 moved to larger premises and became St Francis School. The La Salle Brothers eventually took it over and it became St Francis Institution. It was once even described as a French mission school.

Penang likewise had its proper mission schools. The best-known is St Xavier's Institution which began in 1852 when the La Salle Brothers arrived in Penang. Unlike Penang Free School, this school was established by a religious order and part of the Brothers' missionary educational work.

Meanwhile in Singapore, there was St Margaret's School, founded in 1842 by Maria Dyer of the London Missionary Society to provide a home and education for girls who were at risk of being sold as bonded domestic servants. It began in a small shophouse and was very much a missionary undertaking.

Then came the Catholic schools. In 1852 the De La Salle Brothers established St John's School, which became St Joseph's Institution, while the Sisters of the Holy Infant Jesus established their first convent school in Singapore in 1854. And, of course, Anglo-Chinese School came along in 1886, founded by Methodist missionary William Fitzjames Oldham with just 13 boys in a shophouse. 

So, looking at the three settlements side by side, I think there is a useful distinction to be made. Penang Free School, Malacca Free School and Singapore Institution/Raffles Institution were among the earliest attempts to provide a broader form of English education in the Straits Settlements. They had Christian and missionary connections in their early years but they were not quite the same thing as schools purposefully established and run by a church or religious order.

Alongside them, a proper network of mission schools gradually developed: Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca, St Xavier's in Penang, St Margaret's, St Joseph's and later Anglo-Chinese School in Singapore, together with the various convent schools.

Modern writers with a particular leaning towards the mission-school tradition still tend to put all the old English schools into the same basket and call them “mission schools”. But back in the 19th century, there was a difference between a Free School with missionary involvement and a mission school actually established by missionaries. And when the three settlements are looked at together, I think that difference becomes fairly clear.

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