Shaer Kampong Gelam Terbakar. . Skinner
C. Skinner’s 1972 article in the Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society presents a critical edition, with extensive annotations, of Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir’s Shaer Kampong Gelam Terbakar, a Malay ballad composed in March 1847 describing the devastating fire that swept through Singapore’s Kampong Gelam district on 12 February 1847. Skinner situates the poem within the administrative and social context of mid-century colonial Singapore, using contemporary newspaper reports, government correspondence, and almanac entries to identify the numerous European, Chinese, Malay, and Indian figures Abdullah names in his verse.
Summary
The article opens with a detailed reconstruction of Singapore’s urban landscape and fire-fighting infrastructure in 1847. Skinner demonstrates that the colony possessed no dedicated fire brigade, relying instead on a police force of under 200 men, parties of Indian convicts, and the garrison of the 21st Madras Native Infantry, with the actual labour of pumping engines and demolishing buildings falling largely on European merchants, seamen, and civil servants. The fire of 12 February 1847 exposed the inadequacy of these arrangements: of the available fire engines, most were out of repair, the wells were dry, and the convicts proved more prone to looting than to firefighting. The disaster prompted the Governor to establish a Fire Committee, whose recommendations (sent 9 March 1847) called for a more orderly system of command at fires.
Skinner then turns to the textual history of the shaer itself, correcting a persistent scholarly confusion between this poem and Abdullah’s earlier Shaer Singapura Terbakar (1830). He identifies three manuscripts—two in Leiden and one in Jakarta—and selects the Leiden Codex Kl. 182 (copied by Klinkert in 1880 from the original lithographed edition) as his base text. The poem’s composition date is fixed to March 1847, since Abdullah states he was still writing it when news arrived of a second fire in Kampong Tengah on 8 March. The shaer is notable for its vivid, first-person account of the chaos, its naming of specific individuals (Governor Butterworth, Superintendent Dunman, various merchants and officers), and its closing moral reflections on the lack of wells and the absence of coordinated command.
The bulk of the article consists of the full Malay text with a running English synopsis and a dense apparatus of footnotes that identify nearly every person and place mentioned, drawing on the Straits Times Almanack, Land Office Records, Straits Settlements Records, and the Singapore Free Press. Skinner’s annotations transform the poem from a literary curiosity into a valuable prosopographical source for the European and Asian communities of 1840s Singapore.
Key Findings
- The fire of 12 February 1847 destroyed over 250 houses, with losses estimated at nearly $100,000; it was not fully under control until approximately 5:30 p.m., though Kampong Bali continued to burn until midnight (pp. 25–26).
- Singapore’s fire-fighting resources in early 1847 comprised three police fire engines (only two in working order), two old and “virtually useless” engines held by the Superintendent of Convicts, and one serviceable engine at the military barracks; seven new “Fire Wells” had been constructed in 1846 at a cost of Rs. 1,692 (approximately $750) (pp. 24, 54 n. 31).
- The town’s permanent population in 1847 numbered approximately 24,163 (15,337 Chinese, 4,169 Kelings, 4,099 Malays, 288 Europeans, 270 Indo-Britons), with an additional transient population of 5,074 including 1,500 convicts (p. 21).
- A Fire Committee was established by the Governor’s instruction on 13 February 1847 and submitted its recommendations on 9 March 1847; the Resident Councillor separately proposed that “the general superintendence at Fires will be undertaken by the Sitting Magistrate, Superintendent of Police and Superintendent of Convicts” (pp. 25–26, 52 n. 47a).
- Abdullah lost his personal library in a separate fire at Kampong Melaka on 2 September 1849; Governor Butterworth described the loss as “irreparable” (p. 26).
- The base text (Leiden Codex Kl. 182) was copied by H.C. Klinkert on 20 June 1880 from the original lithographed edition; the Jakarta manuscript (Codex 270 W) was copied in November 1860 but contains twice as many copyist errors as the two Leiden manuscripts combined (p. 28).
Conclusion
Skinner’s definitive contribution is the demonstration that the Shaer Kampong Gelam Terbakar is a distinct and previously misidentified work, and the provision of a reliable critical text accompanied by annotations that recover the identities of the poem’s numerous named characters. The article establishes the shaer as both a literary document of early modern Malay poetry and a prosopographical source of considerable value for the social history of colonial Singapore.
Context
- Primary archival sources include the Straits Settlements Records (National Library, Singapore), the Singapore Free Press (1845–1849), the Straits Times Almanack (1846–1848), Land Office Records, and three Malay manuscripts in Leiden and Jakarta.
- The study corrects a historiographical error perpetuated by van Ronkel, Winstedt, and Burton Raffel, who had conflated this shaer with the Shaer Singapura Terbakar of 1830.