A GERMAN Jewish lawyer who founded the Free-masons lodge, a colonial lawyer and activist fighting for the rights of the locals and a British magistrate who arrived in Penang only to find that he had lost his job, were among those whose legacies live on.

There are at least five roads in Penang that honour colonial lawyers. The most famous has to be the busy Gottlieb Road.

The road is named after Felix Henri Gottlieb, a lawyer in the Straits Settlement between 1846 and 1882.

But his name would probably remain unknown and even inconsequential to most Penangites, who ply the road daily.

Gottlieb Road is the site for Penang Chinese Girls’ High School, the biggest girls’ school in Penang.

The road used to be congested at all times of the day especially during after school hours, when it is packed with school buses.

But Henri is more important than we think. He was one of the most colourful characters of the Straits Settlement.

He was also a true Penangite as he was born on the island. His father was the island’s first harbour master George Felix Gottlieb in the 1830s.

Both father and son were active Freemasons in Penang.

According to local historian and publisher Khoo Salma Nasution in her book, More Than Merchants: A History of German Speaking Community in Penang, Henri set up Freemason lodges in Penang and Taiping, Perak.

The Freemason movement has regarded itself as a global secular fraternity that carries out social and charity work where its members are taught these precepts in ancient forms.

Frowned upon by Muslim and Christian groups, the Freemasons including those in Malaysia, have openly conducted their activities by setting up websites with pictures of their members.

It is to show that the Freemasons are not a shadow group, as portrayed in Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

In fact, those interested in their activities can apply to be members while the press has been invited to observe their work.

In Penang, the Penang Masonic Temple is a historic building that stands out at the Brown Road and Jalan Utama (formerly Western Road) junction.

According to a report, the land to build the Temple was acquired in 1926 and the foundation was laid on Dec 17, 1927.

Designed by architect Howard Leicester, the building was built by contractor Lee Ghee Sok.

Another well-known lawyer of old Penang was James Richardson Logan, who was honoured with the Logan Memorial at the Supreme Court Building in Leith Street.

Logan Road, which runs from Perak Road to Anson Road, is also named after him.

Logan was regarded as a champion of the rights of the non-Europeans in Penang, as he dared to represent the natives.

He came to Penang with his elder brother Abraham and began a law practice.

In an age where the rights of the natives were often suppressed, he skilfully fought in a case of an Indian sireh planter against the East India Company, according to a posting.

Today, the famous landmarks are the Loh Clan Association, the LohGuanLye Specialists Centre, the Penang Specialist Maternity Centre and the Methodists Girls’ School.

Edward William Presgrave was another big name of the legal fraternity during the colonial days of Penang.

Presgrave Street is known in Hokkein as sah tiau lor or third street, and is today part of the city area known as the Seven Streets Precinct.

Presgrave Street is regarded as a working class neighbourhood.

Presgrave & Matthews is one of the oldest legal firms in the Straits Settlement. It was founded on Jan 1, 1879.

The original partners being Arthur Edward Clark, barrister-at-law, and Presgrave, who was a member of the Legislative Council.

Then, there is Dickens Street, which a short one-way street linking Penang Road with Transfer Road.

A plaque in the road has wrongly attributed the name of the street to novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) whose works included Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol and Great Expectations.

In reality, Dickens Street was named after John Dickens, a British magistrate who arrived in George Town in 1801.

According to a report, upon arrival, he found that his services were no longer required as the Straits Settlement had set up a Recorder’s Court instead.

RAD Hogan was another lawyer who has a road named after him.

Hogan Road is a small road off Vermont Road, a minor road off Jalan Residensi.

Vermont Road is named after one of the military officers during the late 19th century.

Both Vermont and Hogan roads house quiet, leafy neighbourhoods.

The legal fraternity in Penang has a long history and its colonial style court complex is surely one of the most beautiful heritage buildings in this country.

CALL it an urban legend but I have heard enough spooky tales about the many unexplained incidents along the Vale of Tempe.

The name of this winding stretch of road is Greek to many Penangites but to the older folks, this is certainly a famous, or more precisely, an infamous road.

Even the origin of the name remains speculative. It must be the only road in Malaysia that is named after a place in Greece.

Located between Olympus to the north and Ossa to the south, the Vale of Tempe is a beautiful gorge nestled in northern Thessaly, Greece.

Quite appropriately, its current Malay name, Jalan Lembah Permai, means peaceful valley.

What is more interesting is that in Greek mythology, the Vale of Tempe was the favourite hunting ground of the god Apollo and the Muses.

The winding 1.7km road cuts across a hill joining two suburbs, Tanjung Bungah and Fettes Park.

A reservoir is built on a hillside in Vale of Tempe, and is named after Sir Laurence Guillemard, who was the Governor of the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements from 1920 to 1927.

As one report rightly described it, Guillemard Reservoir comprises two equal size ponds with two cupolas. Due to it being shaped like a pair of spectacles, the Guillemard Reservoir became known in Hokkein as bak knia tee meaning spectacle pond.

If there is any similarity between Vale of Tempe in Greece and the one in the northern part of Penang island, it must be the ravine.

In this hilly part of Penang, many mysterious accidents have happened. Some were fatal while other victims escaped with injuries after their vehicles skidded off the road and went down the ravine.

As a crime reporter in 1980, I remember getting a call from the police that an accident had taken place at the Vale of Tempe. It was just 7am and was still too early to start work.

I remember asking my police source if it was a serious accident to warrant such an early call but he merely chuckled and say I should head towards the scene if I wanted an interesting story.

When I arrived at the scene of the accident, I could see the damaged car in the ravine but someone had also lighted some candles and burned some offerings, presumably to appease some powerful forces.

There was no one else at the accident scene who could tell me what had taken place. I then decided to head towards the Penang General Hospital, where most accident victims would be sent to.

Remember these were the days before the mobile telephones and there were just one or two other private hospitals.

I finally located the victim after checking with the nurses at the emergency section. Not wanting to put the victim and his relatives at the ward on guard, I did not introduce myself as a reporter but merely a nosy visitor at the hospital.

The victim, a middle-aged man, was narrating to his relatives that he was driving along the Vale of Tempe around 1am when he saw a woman in white in the middle of the road.

He swore in Hokkien that he wasn’t drunk but the sight of the woman frightened him so much that he lost control of his car.

He was sure it was no ordinary human being but a ghost.

It would be the first time that I have heard stories of unexplained “dirty” encounters at the Vale of Tempe but it was the first involving a victim, if that is a right word to use. There are many variations but they all involved a young woman!

One tale guaranteed to give one the goose pimples was about a young factory male worker. He was driving along the road, when a young woman ended up sitting next to him in the car. As in all the tales, the shocked driver swayed his car and ended up in the ravine!

Many Penangites are reluctant to use the road at night and they would probably advise their family members not to do so either. There are practical reasons too, as the road is not well-lit and the curves are tricky to negotiate.

Last week, on a trip to Penang, I decided to re-visit the Vale of Tempe, to update myself on its condition.

My brother’s daughter, Wong Lai Pheng, uses the road as an access route to reach her apartment at Tanjung Bungah from Mount Erskine. She said the main Tanjung Tokong road is often congested and using the Vale of Tempe was so much easier.

My driver, Praba, from the Penang office has been using the road to send colleagues, who had completed the graveyard shift, pardon the pun, to their homes each night. The young man from Seberang Prai does not even know the name of the road he has been using and stories of a woman in white were news to him!

Ignorance is bliss but after sharing my tales of this urban legend, perhaps more known to other Penangites, I am sure Lai Pheng and Praba will not want to look behind when they are driving alone along that road at night!

Tales from the Vale of Tempe have even made it to www.hungzai.com, a Singapore website of horror stories.

But apart from the horror stories, there were also real events that put the area into the spotlight.

One of the most famous real-life events relate to a murder case in November 1980. Joggers came across a badly decomposed body that had been dumped into the ravine along the road.

The body turned out to be that of factory worker Salbiah Yeop Abdul Rahman and police inspector Saderi Abdul Samat was subsequently sent to the gallows for her murder.

Salbiah was Saderi’s lover and pregnant at the time but the inspector never admitted to killing her, but insisted she had committed suicide. He claimed that he had found Salbiah hanging in the bathroom of the officers’ mess where he lived.

He drove around various parts of Penang to get rid of the body until he came to the Vale of Tempe.

Another story from our library archives related to an incident in 2001 when a skull of young girl was found in the undergrowth off the Vale of Tempe main road.

The skull was discovered by a man picking fruits in the area at about 4.30pm.

He called the police who in turn contacted forensic pathologist Dr Bhupinder Singh. The skull, which had been there for about five months, was wrapped in a pillow case and a piece of cloth which was badly torn. Bits of ribs and pelvic bone plus strands of black hair were also found at the scene.

According to then George Town OCPD Senior Asst Comm (II) Mustafa Abdullah, the police had yet to determine why the skull, which was that of a girl aged between five and six, had been placed there.

“Somebody could have been trying to bury the skull after using it for ceremonial purposes — perhaps to obtain lottery numbers.

“We have classified the find as sudden death pending a postmortem by Dr Bhupinder. Foul play has also not been ruled out,” he said.

Back to the roads, if you think Vale of Tempe is an unusual name for a road, so too are the nearby Fettes Park and Mount Erskine. Fettes Park is a residential neighbourhood in Tanjung Tokong and is named after the municipal engineer of George Town JD Fettes, who was instrumental in the building of the Guillemard Reservoir.

Mount Erskine or pek hoon sua in Hokkien, or White Cloud Mountain, is a residential area not far from Pulau Tikus and Gurney Drive.

It is named after John James Erskine, a judge and member of the George Town council around 1810, who was known as the “second king of Penang” because of his influence and clout.

The area is known for the large Chinese cemeteries, some dating back from the early 19th century, and during the All Souls Day or Qing Ming Festival, this place is packed.

Not many Penangites are superstitious of the presence of the graves as human beings jostled for space with the dead in Penang. The top of Mount Erskine has now been flattened to make way for apartments.

Even during the 1970s, many homes have been built at the nearby Pepper Estate and Hong Seng Estate, where one has to drive through tombs to reach these houses. Many of these houses are located next to graveyards and no one has any ghostly stories to tell.

There used to be a pepper estate and the settlement built as a living quarters of the estate workers. A former school mate and close friend, Loy Boon Peow, grew up in Hong Seng Estate.

Certainly, these tales have made the area more interesting but as Penang becomes more crowded, the roads will become busier and congested.

The isolation is gone and so would the mysterious atmosphere.

Readers write

REFERRING to your article on June 15 about Anson Road, specifically on Tai Hin coffeeshop.

It was November 1967, when I was in Form 4, that I went camping with a brother scout in the Methodist Boys’ School grounds for one of our Scout achievement badges towards the award of King Scout certification.

The campsite was behind the dilapidated Suffolk House and by the Ayer Itam riverbank.

We had camped one night when the next day my parents came looking for me to take me home as the Hartal (the general strike in protest against the proposed Federation of Malaya) troubles had started in George Town and were racial in nature.

So we decided to quickly pack up and leave and send my friend back to his house in Anson Road on our way back to our house in Leith Street Ghaut.

We had to get my Chinese friend to lie down on the floor of our car as we had to pass through the kampung area by the bridge, in Ayer Itam Road.

There were already groups of villagers from Langkawi Road gathered on the bridge. Luckily we were not stopped and proceeded very quickly to Anson Road to send my friend to the Tai Hin coffee shop where he lived.

We also did not encounter any trouble in the Anson Road area, which was a Chinese area.

Thank God we arrived safely in our house before the curfew came into force.

— Syed Kamarulzaman Syed Kabeer

EACH time I return home to Penang, I try to eat at the Tai Hin coffeeshop at the junction of Melaka Street and Anson Road.

The corner coffeeshop is operated out of a pre-war house, one of many that dot George Town.

It isn’t the best coffeeshop in town but has its regular patrons. I have been eating at the same wantan mee stall since I was about 10 years old.

Over the years, I have seen some of the stall operators, including a char koay teow seller who was very popular back then, pass on.

The wantan mee seller is probably now in his mid-60s and I reckon he would soon give up the business.

His wantan mee is served mostly in dry form, with thick soya sauce and sesame oil, and topped with char siew or barbecued pork, and boiled vegetables. It comes with two small meat dumplings.

Older Penangites sometimes refer to wantan mee as tok tok mee, so called because in the old days, wantan mee hawkers would signal their arrival by hitting two bamboo sticks together, making the distinctive tok tok sound.

His sister runs another wantan mee stall at the famous Seow Fong Lye coffeeshop at Macalister Lane which is famous for its Penang-style chee cheong fun or rice rolls that come with blackish prawn paste, sweet sauce and chilli.

Each time I am at the Tai Hin coffeeshop sipping the thick coffee with condensed milk, memories of old Penang would come flooding back.

I remember how my classmate, Choong Keng Hooi, now a hairstylist in Penang, used to buy me a packet of fried mee or economy noodles, from the wet market in Anson Road.

As a growing teenager in my secondary school days, I was constantly hungry and it was sometimes impossible to control my urge to eat before recess at 11am.

By around 10am, I would smuggle out my packet of noodles, stealing bites, even as the teacher was still conducting the lesson in the classroom!

I guess with my kind of behaviour, the school already knew that I was not prefect material, nor a class monitor. In fact, the school didn’t think that I should even be a traffic warden!

I suppose the former students who eventually rise to high positions are those who hold such responsible positions in their schooldays.

So, it was with some satisfaction when I returned to my alma mater, St Xavier’s Institution, years later as the guest-of-honour at the school’s Speech Day or prize-giving day.

It was to be the first and last time as the Brother Principal looked on disapprovingly when I advised the students, “Be the best in what you do. If you are a doctor, be the best. If you are a waiter, be the best waiter, and if you end up as a criminal, be remembered like Botak Chin.”

The students applauded loudly but I doubt if the principal and the other Brothers shared the same enthusiasm.

But Anson Road is our main concern here because it is a major road connecting Macalister Road, Burmah Road and Perak Road.

Anson Road is named after Colonel (later Major) Archibald Edward Harbord Anson, the Lieutenant Governor of Penang from 1867 to 1871.

Born in Devonshire, England, he was also Acting Governor of the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements in 1877

A British army commander, he served in England, Ireland, Scotland, Mauritius and Madagascar, according to a report.

It has been reported that he also wrote a memoir, About Others and Myself, 1745-1920, where he described the feeling of depression upon his appointment as Penang’s Resident Councillor.

At the time he was in Penang, he negotiated in the Penang Riots that broke out between the Cantonese-speaking Ghee Hin-White Flag and the Hakka-speaking Hai San-Red Flag gangs.

During the nine days of fierce clashes in 1867, which saw heavy street fighting and bloodshed between the two secret societies, the British had to bring in reinforcements from Singapore while the Europeans who were staying in Penang were roped in to help.

The fiercest fight was near Cannon Street at the Khoo Kongsi building where a cannon was fired, resulting in a big hole on the road, hence its name to this day.

It was essentially a quarrel between the triad leaders over tin mining rights and other lucrative business deals.

As a highly respected figure, Anson has also been honoured with a road that is named after him in Singapore, which is located at its central business district.

Then there is Teluk Intan in Perak — which was formerly known as Teluk Anson or Anson Bay.

In fact, until the British named the town after Anson, the town was originally called Teluk Mak Intan, after a woman Mandailing trader from Sumatra, Indonesia.

It was here the Perak rulers held court from 1528 until Kuala Kangsar became the royal town in 1877.

The British renamed the town after Anson as he was responsible for drawing up the town’s planning.

Teluk Intan is famous for its iconic colonial style structures including the 5m-high Clock Tower, known as the Leaning Tower of Teluk Intan.

Apart from keeping time, the tower is also used to store water for the locals during drought season or in case of fire.

For sure, Sir Archibald Edward Harbord Anson has left his mark not only in Penang but other parts of the Straits Settlement.

Download the PDF version of this story.

STUDYING in St Xavier’s Institution (SXI) in Penang, it is almost impossible not to have a classmate, or at least a schoolmate, from the Eurasian community.

In any case, there were many Eurasian teachers in the Catholic school. The Eurasians were referred to as the Seranis colloquially.

There were plenty of students and teachers with surnames such as Rozells, Boyle, Robless, Nonis, Cornelius, James, Capel, Barbosa, Danker, Foley, Jeremiah, Green, Reutens, Coombs, Andrew, Aeria, Beltram, Moreira, Gomes, Rozario, Mcintyre, Scully, Cardoza and Byrne.

Across the road, there was the Convent Light Street (CLS), which also had a strong Eurasian population, as did Convent Pulau Tikus (CPT) located further away.

As a teenager, I spent a lot of time at Solok Serani or Eurasian Close, which is a minor street off Kelawei Road in Pulau Tikus.

Having many Eurasian friends, it was only natural that I would meet up with my schoolmates there.

Needless to say, that included meeting up with friends from the opposite sex, namely the girls from CPT, whenever we had Boy Scouts-Girl Guides joint activities!

But there was also a more serious side — I had personal tuition in Mathematics from a classmate, Tony Mariadass, who stayed in Kampung Serani, behind the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the area.

I was completely hopeless in maths, excelling better in languages and arts-related subjects, and the late Tony guided me in that tricky subject.

In my time, we had to sit for the Lower Certificate of Education, now known as the Penilaian Menengah Rendah, and failing maths meant getting kicked out of school.

There was no such thing as continuing one’s study until Form Five if one failed the compulsory Bahasa Malaysia or Maths papers in Form Three.

Maths was also an important subject in the Malaysian Certificate of Education exam or the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia.

So, I had to depend a lot on Tony to teach me in the afternoons before I sought divine intervention inside the church sanctuary.

Today, the Penang Eurasian Association building stands proudly at the end of the road.

The first group of Eurasians arrived in Penang from Phuket with founder Captain Francis Light in 1786. The group included his Eurasian wife, Martina Rozells.

These Eurasian settlers had escaped from the Burmese who had targeted the Catholics in their attacks in Phuket.

Settling down in George Town around China Street and Bishop Street, they built a wooden church called the Assumption Church.

According to researcher Eustace Nonis, it was in 1810 that the pioneer group of Portugese Eurasians relocated from Phuket to Penang, where they chose Pulau Tikus to build their settlement.

The focal point, he wrote, was the Church of the Immaculate Conception, which they built.

A school commonly known as the “Noah’s Ark” was built to serve the community with the entire area eventually known as Kampung Serani.

Because of their fluency in English, in later life, many were recruited into the civil service including the then City Council of Penang. Many also became teachers.

The community also played a major role in the development of two premier schools — SXI and CLS — as well as the Church of the Assumption in Farquhar Street.

SXI teacher Jimmy Boyle created history when he composed Putera Puteri and Kemegahan Negara Ku — which were played at midnight in 1963 when Malaysia was born. As a true Xaverian, he returned to teach in his alma mater after graduating from the Raffles College in Singapore.

Another SXI teacher from the community was the late Colin Rozells.

Born and bred in Penang, Rozells taught Math and English at SXI and was best remembered as a discipline master.

Rozells was also remembered by those in the Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, an organisation he was most passionate about.

After he retired from teaching, he worked at the Malaysian Red Crescent Society headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

The school also produced a famous 1980s local band, The Sweet September, which included founding members who were mostly Eurasians.

The late Michel Barbosa taught at SXI and went on to coach the national badminton team.

In The Star newspaper, my predecessor, Michael Aeria, was also from SXI and dedicated his life to being a newspaperman.

A colleague, Ronald Bryne, who wrote a similar column on the street names of Penang in the 1980s, is today based at our headquarters in Petaling Jaya.

Then, there is another long-time colleague, Ian McIntyre, in Penang.

Some of the early Eurasian settlers chose to make Argus Lane their home, which is near the Cathedral of the Assumption.

Interestingly, the island’s first independent newspaper, the Pinang Argus, was published from 1867 to 1873 while the country’s first newspaper Prince of Wales Island Gazette was published in Penang in 1805.

According to Boon Raymond, who writes extensively on Penang history, there were 27 English newspapers published in Penang between 1806 and the 1970s.

The Star, of course, was also founded in Penang by KS Choong with its first office at Weld Quay, before moving to its current office in Pitt Street or Jalan Mesjid Keling.

From education to professional jobs, certainly Penang has a rich history, much of which was contributed by the Eurasian community.

Jalan Sir Hussein

IT IS one of the least known roads in Penang. After all, it is just a minor road, hidden from the busy Jalan Mesjid Negeri and further blocked from public view by several bungalows and government quarters.

But there are plenty of stories behind Jalan Sir Hussein, which is named after Sir Hussein Hasanally Abdoolcader, a prominent Penang lawyer in the early 20th century.

Before I go further, I would like to relate a most recent incident which prompted me to write about this particular road.

I was in Kota Kinabalu last week and stayed at the Sutera Harbour Hotel. I met up with the food and beverage director, who introduced himself as Salim.

When I told him that Penang is my hometown and that I work in The Star, he got very excited.

In his very fluent Hokkien, he told me that he has been following MyStory and I should write about his grandfather’s road.

I looked a bit startled and he reiterated that the small road named Jalan Sir Hussein is named after his grandfather.

“I can really say it is my grandfather’s road,” he said.

We had a good time after that as he shared with me the stories of the Abdoolcaders, giving me personal anecdotes of the legendary family.

Sir Hussein was born in historic town of Surat, India in 1890. He was brought up in Malaya, where he received his early education at both the Raffles Institution in Singapore and the Penang Free School in Penang.

He went on to read law in Cambridge and soon returned to Penang to become a prominent lawyer, a community leader and politician.

Hussein was a member of the Straits Settlements Legislative Council and a member of the Advisory Council to the Governor of the Malayan Union.

He held positions in various organisations, including the Association for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Mohammedan Football Association of Malaya.

Historian Tan Sri Khoo Kay Kim, in an article about the Indian Muslims, wrote that the Abdoolcaders were one of the most prominent families in the state. Others included the Ghulams and the Ghows, while in Singapore, they included the Munshis.

Their strong presence matched that of the Arab clans which included names like Alsagoff in Singapore and Hashim, Merican and Ariff, all prominent Jawi Peranakan families in Penang.

Hussein also made a name for himself in the Straits Settlement as the first Malaya Indian to be knighted by King George VI in 1948.

While the present generation of Malaysians, including those in their 50s and 60s, are unlikely to have met Hussein in real life, many would have come across, or at least, read about his son — the late Tan Sri Eusoffe Abdoolcader.

There is a book written on the legacy of the Abdoolcaders entitled Malaya’s Forgotten Sons: The Abdoolcaders of Hindostan in Malaya.

Like his father, Eusoffe also went to London to read law, graduating with a first class honours, before returning to Malaya to practise for 24 years before he was appointed as a judge. Salim, the Abdoolcader I met in Kota Kinabalu, is a nephew of the judge.

A former president of the Malaysian Bar, Hendon Mohamed, wrote: “The late Tan Sri Eusoff lived up to all that he promised. His years as a Judge brought an added, indeed glorious, dimension to the judicial pronouncements of the Court. His judgments were often hailed as literary works, his mastery of the English language, and of Latin, enhancing his deep but clear, lucid reasoning, no matter how complex the issues litigated before him. His life was one complete and total commitment to the law.”

As a reporter, who occasionally had to attend court hearings, I had the opportunity to follow some of cases presided over by Eusoffe.

Like everyone else, both lawyers and reporters, we were awed by his brilliance and intellectual prowess. But it was the aura behind the man that made him larger than life.

We are talking about an era when lawyers and judges still wore the horse-haired wigs and they all spoke impeccable English.

I can safely say these lawyers and reporters were terrified of Eusoffe as he would openly admonish anyone who failed to perform their duties.

In the case of reporters, anyone who did not report accurately the proceedings of the court would have to face his wrath.

The errant reporters, cringing in embarrassment, would be asked to stand up in open court and given a lecture in front of everyone.

In the case of lawyers, if they did not prepare their cases properly, “we would be chewed up alive by Eusoffe” as one lawyer recalled.

But there was a sad ending to his life and career. He is best-known as one of the five senior judge who were suspended in the 1988 judicial crisis as they crossed swords with then prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

To many, their suspension was seen as an end to Malaysia’s judicial independence although supporters of Dr Mahathir claimed they were not impartial in the first place.

In 2008, in what was seen as a step to heal the wounds, then PM Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi announced an ex-gratia goodwill payment to those judges suspended or sacked during the crisis.

Sadly, Eusoffe was no longer alive. In 1996, he committed suicide, apparently because he was profoundly depressed following the death of his dear Chinese wife, Haseenah in 1993.

Many of us would recall that Eusoffe used to place full-page advertisements in newspapers dedicating love poems, often in Latin, to his beloved wife.

But there is another well-known Abdoolcader — in this case, the infamous Siroj Hussein Abdoolcader, the late judge’s brother.

Like Eusoffe, he was sent to London to read law but Siroj ended up being arrested by the British for spying for the Russians, supposedly providing details of vehicles used by diplomats.

Siroj, who was working as a clerk at the Greater London Council, was accused of leaving messages at a tombstone in Portsmouth, England, for a Russian.

Siroj was jailed for three years and is said to be the first Malaysian to be jailed for espionage.

When Penangites pass by the minor road, they should take a second look at the road sign because Sir Hussein was certainly a major character in the history of Penang and the country.

Readers write

YOUR article on Pulau Jerejak revived memories of my working days there. Allow me to add a few interesting points. Although the inmates were of dubious background, I must stay they were generally a well-disciplined lot and followed the rehabilitative programme with much enthusiasm.

Tan Sri Ong Ka Ting made an official visit to the centre during my tenure there, when he was then the parliamentary secretary with the Home Ministry.

Volunteers from various religious bodies came passionately week after week to ensure inmates receive spiritual guidance. In hindsight, I wish to thank them for their valuable and often unnoticed contribution in this area.

The black dot of its penal history occured on Jan 5 and 6, 1982 when the inmates went on a rampage and burnt several dormitories. But, the riot was successfully quelled with the quick help from the police.

The centre was closed sometime in early 1992 when the inmates were transferred to Batu Gajah and Simpang Renggam Detention Centres to make way for tourism.

It is regretted that in their haste to develop Pulau Jerejak as a tourist resort, they neglected to preserve a portion of the said penal colony for future posterity. Hence, Malaysia has lost an important chapter of its penal history.

Donald Wee May Keun
P. P. A. Pulau Jerejak director
(January 1989 – December 1991)