Malayan Odyessey

When Robert Young, a young engineer from Leeds and a grandson of Timothy Hackworth, the early railway pioneer, embarked on a steamer to India in about 1885, he could scarcely have known that he would start a family tradition linking his descendants to the Malay Peninsula for over 150 years. He undertook his apprenticeship with the Airedale Foundry and brought with him a glowing reference from the Edinburgh Street Tramways Company. He later joined Kitsons in Leeds. Although his family was from Tyneside, the peripatetic work of his father, a Methodist minister, led his mother and siblings from one posting to another all over the country.

Around 1890 Robert moved from India to Penang which at that time seemed to rival Singapore as a commercial centre (see F.A. Swettenham, British Malaya, 1906 p330.) He rapidly involved himself in the island’s life. Although he was not particularly wealthy and certainly not part of the most privileged part of the colonial élite, like most young English professionals he lived a good life and was one of the first people to drive a car on the island. He founded his own company R Young & Co and through being a freemason made many commercial contacts no doubt.;

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The problem for many young men in the Empire was the absence of eligible young European women. It is unsurprising therefore that Robert remained unmarried until he was forty-five. His wife to be, Edith was the sister of a colleague of his in Malaya, Edward Lees. Edith was the youngest child and only daughter of a onetime Staffordshire farmer, but when the latter remarried she was as, it were on the shelf, and was 30 - a relatively late age - for those days. She sailed to Malaya on a P & O liner at Christmas 1904 and married Robert at St George’s Church, Penang. It must have been a challenging experience, marrying someone she did not know and suddenly becoming the mistress of a colonial household with servants and the expectation of entertaining as a hostess. According to her son-in-law James Loring, she never regretted her marriage. The Youngs lived in a Black and White house in Scotland Road called England House. When I visited Penang a few years ago it still existed and was then the headquarters of a political party!

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Still life for Edith may have been claustrophobic and not very exciting. Robert and Edith had six children, all daughters. The first two, Rhoda and Joan, died as babies in Malaya, and when Edith became pregnant with her third child she returned to England to give birth to Margaret. However, while Edith was concerned with domestic life, Robert was busy with business and public life. He was appointed to the Straits Settlements Legislative Council, chairman of the Penang Harbour Board, and editor of the Penang Gazette. That was apart from his business activities, for example designing the first concrete bridge in Kedah in 1909 and pioneering the Georgetown tramway system. He was in tune with public affairs and spoke out prophetically about increasing Japanese influence in the region. He also had a business interest in the Sungei Batu rubber plantation.

The First World War did not affect the expatriate community to the same degree as people at home, but it must have been a shock when a German cruiser, The Emden, shelled Penang and a piece of shrapnel, still in the family, landed in the grounds of England House. The Indian Army mutiny in Singapore in February 1915 also had repercussions and Robert was commended for enrolling as a private in a local defence force which was set up in Penang.

Robert retired in 1916 and returned to England with his family now including four daughters. They lived in Haywards Heath to begin with before settling in St Leonard’s-on-Sea. He returned to Penang at least once after his retirement when he attended a Masonic dinner in 1924. He still had many connections there and it must have been because of this that members of his family took posts in Malaya.

His eldest surviving daughter Margaret taught music at Tanglin School in the Cameron Highlands from the mid 1930s under the headship of Anne Griffith-Jones (‘’Griff.’’) At the time of the Japanese invasion those still who at the school (a number of children were ill at the time and had gone home) were sent down to Singapore to be evacuated.

Margaret’s cousins Kay and Judith Fletcher, living in Penang, had already left soon after the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse and safely reached Australia. Margaret could have taken a berth and but she chose to stay behind because she thought she should set an example to local people. It is said that the ship she was supposed to have joined was sunk and so maybe she had a lucky escape.

Like many civilians Margaret was interred in Changi which was a regular prison that had been built by the British. Here she lived in a cell which she shared with a nurse, Mary Thomas, who wrote a memoir In the shadow of the Rising Sun (Singapore 1983.) Margaret remembered singing ‘’There will always be an England ‘’ during the march to prison. She was sparse in her comments about camp life though she referred once to the infamous Double Tenth when the prison was searched for any signs of collusion between internees and the recent commando attack on Singapore harbour. Some internees was taken away and tortured. She was a devout Anglican and she was charitable about Japanese soldiers of whom she said ‘’had a hard time too.’’ (See for example Fergal Keane, Road of Bones (2011,) and the novels of Shusaku Endo.) Civilian internees were transferred to Sime Road camp in May 1944. She commented on internees being able to grow their own vegetables there. She also played the piano at concerts. However, she made no reference to the hardships experienced towards the end of the War as described by Sheila Allen in Diary of a girl in Changi (Pymble NSW, 1994.)

At the end of the war she was, as her sister, Roberta Loring, put it ‘’fattened up’’ before being allowed home. Her return was the cause of great rejoicing and her granddaughter Georgiana de Lussy remembered the preparations for the home coming. Two other relatives were caught up in Japanese invasion. Cyril Hackworth Young made a dramatic escape from the Japanese and reached South Africa. Bill Fletcher was interned, and met up with Margaret in Sime Road camp where men and women were allowed to fraternise on occasions. Margaret received no compensation for her hardships from the British government. She stayed in contact with other internees like Mary Thomas. She never revisited Malaya and died in 1989.

In 2003 I had the opportunity to visit Singapore and Penang. As in the early morning the plane dipped over the sea and down towards Penang I felt a huge sense of emotion as we headed down towards the island which I had heard so much about in my childhood. Amazingly in the English cemetery I found the graves of my baby aunts, Rhoda and Joan. Thegraves were in remarkably good condition. Later my friend Zygmunt and I were driven up into the Cameron Highlands by a Chinese priest, Father Charles Chan of the Diocese of Penang. Margaret Shennan the author of Out in the Midday Sun (London 2000) enabled me to obtain an introduction from the High Commission in Kuala Lumpur to the site of Tanglin School now a Malaysian Commando camp. At the gate the guard tried to read the letter upside down! Inside I found it remarkably unchanged since my aunt’s time. In 2006 I returned once more and donated artefacts of my aunt’s to Tanglin School (now in Singapore,) the Penang Heritage Trust and to Changi Museum. In Singapore I was also able to attend the annual ceremony marking civilian sacrifices during the occupation.