History of Penang, part four

From the Straits Echo of 27 August 1903, here is the fourth instalment of the newspaper's History of Penang. The first three parts of this story are available here: Part One | Part Two | Part Three.

HISTORY OF PENANG.
(Specially written for the Straits Echo.)

CONTINUED FROM LAST TUESDAY)

Arabs, and descendants of Arabs, form another part of the community. There are but few families; they have a great number of dependents, they are strict Mahomedans, proud and unwilling to yield to any au­thority, they trade with all countries, and among the Malays with particular privileges. They are good friends and dangerous enemies.

The Buggesses, though few, inhabit here at present, yet as they come annually to trade and remain two or three months on shore to the number of one or two thousand, they are, during their residence, a part of our society. They are Mahomedans, a proud, warlike, independent people, easily irritated, and prone to revenge. Their vessels are always well provided with arms, which they use with dexterity and vigor. They are the best merchants among the Eastern Islands. They are better governed by patient and mild exhortation than by force. If they commit a trespass they are easily made sensible, and may be persuaded to render satisfaction; but they reluctantly yield to stern authority. They require to be carefully watched, and cautiously ruled. The great value of their cargoes, either in bullion or goods, with quantities of opium and piece goods they export, make their arrival much wished for by all mercantile people.

The Malays, comprehending a great variety of people from Queda, through the Malay Peninsula, the Islands, Sumatra and Java, form another considerable part of our inhabitants. They are for the most part indigent, ignorant of arts, manufactures, or trade: they are employed in cutting down woods, at which they are both expert and laborious, and in cultivating paddy. They may be divided into two orders, the one of husbandmen, who are quiet and inoffensive, and easily ruled. They are capable of no great exertions, but content themselves with planting paddy, sugarcane and a few fruit trees, the cultivation of which does not require much labour. The other order is employed in navigating prows. They are, in general, almost without exception, a bad description of people, addicted to smoking opium, gaming, and other vices; to rob and assassinate is only shameful when they fail of success. Ten or fifteen men will live in a small prow (to all appearance not large enough for six men). For months they will skulk in bays and rivers, where there are no inhabitants, watching for the unwary traders; they spend their whole time in sloth, and indolence, subsisting upon roots, wild yams and fish, and are only roused by the appearance of plunder, which, when they have obtained it, they return home, or to some other port, to spend it. Here they are obliged to part with a share of their plunder to some chief, under whose protection they squander the remainder, and again proceed in quest of new adventure. The feudal government of the Malays encourage these pirates. Every chief is desirous of procuring many desperate fellows to bring him in plunder and execute his revengeful purposes.

The remainder of our people are composed of the Honorable Company's Servants, and their servants, with a few European settlers, which, with the people from the shipping, constitutes an assembly of about twenty-five thousand souls who are always here. 

To keep these several tribes in peace, settle their disputes, and prevent their destroying each other, it is necessary that a person should attend daily to receive and adjust their several complaints, which, if of a serious nature, or such as will admit of immediate relief, may be referred as follows:--

If of mercantile disputers, to a Court of Arbitration, composed of one of the Honorable Company's servants and four inhabi­tants.

If of territorial controversies, to the Board of Plantations. 

If of wilful trespass, breach of peace, or personal injury, to the General Court.

Where the parties are strangers, and on the point of leaving the island, a General Court, of any three of the officers, may be summoned to decide upon the complaint.

A regular form of administering Justice, is necessary, for the peace and welfare of the Society, and for the honour of the nation who granted them protection. It is likewise improper that the Superintendent should have it in his power to exercise an arbitrary judgment upon persons and things; whether this judgment is iniquitous or not the mode is still arbitrary and disagreeable to Society.

Begging that the subject of this letter may be taken into early consideration,

I have etc.,

(Sd.) Francis Light.

Fort Cornwallis, 25th January, 1794. 

The above is the last document in the records bearing the honoured signature of Francis Light. 

In response to this letter the Governor-General, Sir John Shore, (afterwards Lord Teignmouth) transmitted certain regulations some years later. 

When the settlement was founded, the Colonists were surprised at the general absence of fever, but in the year following the superintendent was struck down with a malarial attack, which never appears to have left him, for his correspondence shows that he was subject to these attacks, the last of which terminated fatally at one o'clock in the morning of the 21st October 1794, to the great grief of the whole Island. There is no record of the event to be found, nor do the records, as they now exist, offer any testimony to the energy and ability with which he grappled with all the difficulties attendant on the formation of a settlement on an almost uninhabited Island, overrun with thick jungly vegetation. 

In the middle of the Protestant Cemetery, Northam Road, may be seen a plain plastered brick tomb, into the top of which is let a cracked marble slab on which is the following weather-worn and almost illegible inscription:—

The word "British” appears to have been put in place of another, probably “English," which is the word used in the tablet in the memorial tablet let into the wall of the canopy in St. George's Church-yard erected many years later by Robert Grieve Scott, descendant of the first settler.

His loss was keenly felt by the native population, whom his well-known name and great popularity had attracted round him; and how well he knew the native character is shown in the foregoing letter wherein he describes that of each class of native soil the Island. It may have been that when writing this letter Capt. Light was sensible that his life was drawing to a close, as he was urgent for the  appointment of some individual qualified to succeed him by a knowledge of the people, their language, and their customs, and insists on the necessity of training up a few officers to the local duties of the island, and it cannot be doubted that had his suggestions been carried out his successors would not have had trouble in governing the island.

There were simplicity, efficiency, and economy in the plan briefly yet ably sketched by him in his memorable letter, but neither simplicity nor economy were much studied in subsequent years either by the ruling powers in India or by the local authorities, and the simple Superintendent and his two or three assistants became a Governor-in-Council, with a large Civil Establishment and a Recorder with a costly Judicial Establishment.

Captain Light left two sons and three daughters and a wife to mourn his loss. His will is interesting as showing the care he took to arrange his affairs. To his relict, Martina Rozells, he left in life-rent "the paddy fields situated in Nibbon plain and  containing one hundred orlongs of land or thereabouts, together with the houses, plantations, implements of husbandry and forty buffaloes ***** the pepper gardens with my garden house, plantations, and all the land by me cleared in that part of the  island called Suffolk, as also the pepper garden and plantation forming by Chee Hong in Orange valley **** I give and bequeath unto the said Martina Rozells my Bungalow in George Town, with remainder to the children." His Malay bonds he willed to be delivered to his executors “to be by them recovered, and the money given to Martina, but I request the debtors may not be distressed for payment if their circumstances below." He gave his Batta slaves the choice of freedom, on payment of fifty dollars: gave liberty to several, but “not Esan she remains with Martina,” and remembered his English friends and executors, William Fairlie, of Calcutta, the "Prince of Indian Merchants," who acted as guardian to his children at Calcutta: James Scott and Thomas Pegou, with a “gold gurglet and bason." a "silver gurglet and bason" and a "watch, "respectively.

His eldest son, William Light, was sent to England at an early age, to the care of George Doughty Esq., High Sheriff of Suffolk, and became afterwards Colonel Light, having distinguished himself greatly in the Peninsular War, where he was present in forty-three actions of the Campaign and ending in becoming Aide-de-Camp to Lord Wellington “the Great Duke." He was the first Surveyor-General of South Australia and founder of the City of Adelaide where a monument of freestone, at a cost of £466, was erected over his tomb by his grateful fellow-pioneer colo­nists. and in 1876 the following inscription was placed on it:

His memory, however, is not forgotten, for a picturesque ceremony takes place on the election of each Mayor of Adelaide when the "Memory of Colonel Light” is solemnly pledged in Colonial wine in a silver cup.

His second son Francis Lanoon Light afterwards became Resident of Muntok in Banka when the British held that Island, with Java and Sumatra. He married a Javanese lady Charlotte Arboni, and had two sons (1) William Light, and (2) Robert Rollo Light— a godson of Sir Robert Rollo Gillespie, one of the conquerors of Java.

The latter was father of Francis Light, now of Ayer Kuning, Perak, and of several daughters. Lanoon Light died at Penang October 5th 1823, and had a daughter, Sarah Martinah, who married at Penang June 29th 1835, to George Matthew Koenitz of Ceylon, with issue. 

Captain Light’s eldest daughter Sarah Light married at Calcutta December 28th 1794 General James Welsh of the Madras Army, a distinguished officer who died on January 24th 1861, having published his “Military Reminiscences” (2 vols.) 1830. She died at Waltair July 24th 1839, being described as “still lovely to the end.” They had one son (who died unmarried) and six daughters.

Mary Light, the second daughter of Francis Light, married at Calcutta, March the 9th 1805, George Boyd Esq., of Katulee and Pulma, Bengal, at one timea very wealthy indigo-planter, who died on May 15th, 1856, leaving issue (with two sons who died unmarried) and six daughters.

Anne (Lukey) Light, married on October, 1809, Charles Hunter, Esq., M.D., Hon. East India Co.’s service, who died, a member of the Calcutta Medical Board May 6th, 1831. He was a son of David Hunter, of Burnside N.B.

(To be continued)