Article

Lt. Jackson’s plan of Singapore

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Lt. Jackson’s plan of Singapore

H.F. Pearson’s 1953 short note in the Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society challenges the long-standing assumption that the “Plan of the Town of Singapore by Lieut. Jackson,” engraved in 1828 for publication in Crawfurd’s embassy journal, depicts the town as it actually stood in 1827. Pearson argues that the plan was in fact drawn in December 1822 or January 1823 and represents an idealistic layout proposed by Raffles’s Town Committee rather than a survey of existing conditions.

Summary

The article addresses a specific historiographical problem: the conventional identification of Jackson’s plan as the earliest extant street plan of Singapore, showing the town as it existed in 1827. Pearson dismantles this identification by cross-referencing the plan against the documentary record of Raffles’s return to Singapore in October 1822, his appointment of Lieutenant Jackson as Assistant Engineer on October 29, the formation of a Town Committee on November 4, and the subsequent months of planning and construction. The core argument is that the plan’s features align precisely with Raffles’s written instructions of November 4, 1822, while simultaneously contradicting the physical reality of the town by 1827.

Pearson’s method is essentially one of negative proof: he identifies elements on the plan that could not have existed in 1827 (built-up areas that were still marshland, road alignments that were not yet made, buildings not yet constructed) and elements that should have appeared if the plan had been drawn after early 1823 (Raffles’s bungalow, the allotted land for Raffles Institution). The primary sources are East India Company records (EIC Rec. L.6, L.9, L.17), which document the Town Committee’s correspondence and the progressive development of the plan between December 1822 and February 1823.

Key Findings

  • The plan was engraved by Henry Colburn & Company in June 1828 and published in Crawfurd’s Journal of an Embassy to the Courts of Siam and Cochin-China (1828, opp. p. 529; reprinted 1830, two-vol. ed., opp. p. 345, Vol. 2) (p. 201).
  • Raffles appointed Lt. Jackson as Assistant Engineer on October 29, 1822, and formed a Town Committee on November 4, 1822 (p. 201).
  • The Town Committee began lining out streets by December 6, 1822, and by February 1823 the reconstruction programme was in full swing with Jackson maintaining the plan (pp. 201–202).
  • The area west of South Bridge Road is shown as built-up on the plan but was still marshland in Colman’s survey of 1836, proving it could not have been developed by 1827 (p. 203).
  • The Sultan’s compound frontage is shown as approximately 500 yards on the plan, whereas the actual frontage allotted by Raffles was 731 feet (approximately 244 yards), as stated in an advertisement of March 14, 1823 (pp. 203–204).
  • Raffles’s bungalow, built by January 21, 1823, is absent from the plan, while the flagstaff on Government Hill is shown—indicating the plan predates the bungalow’s completion (p. 204).

Conclusion

Pearson concludes that the plan engraved for Crawfurd’s book “cannot have been based on an actual survey” and was “almost certainly taken from a plan drawn up by Lt. Jackson to illustrate the lay-out proposed by Raffles’s Town Committee of 1822–23” (p. 204). The document is thus reclassified from a record of existing conditions to a record of intention—a planner’s projection that only partially materialised.

Context

  • The article draws primarily on East India Company records (EIC Rec. L.6, L.9, L.17) held in Singapore, supplemented by Buckley’s Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore (1902) and Colman’s 1836 survey (p. 201, n. 5; p. 203).
  • The study corrects a persistent misattribution in Singapore’s urban historiography, repositioning the plan from a documentary record of 1827 to a planning document of late 1822/early 1823.

References