Article

Some old Penang tombstones. C. Bastin and J. Bastin

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Some old Penang tombstones. C. Bastin and J. Bastin

Christopher and John Bastin published this epigraphic survey in 1964, recording the inscriptions of the old tombstones in the Protestant Cemetery, Northam Road, Penang, and the memorial tablets of St. George’s Church. The article serves as a reference catalogue of roughly ninety inscriptions spanning the period from 1789 to the 1890s, documenting the lives of Penang’s early governors, civil servants, military officers, merchants, and missionaries. Its implicit thesis is that these physical monuments constitute a valuable biographical source for the history of the settlement.

Summary

The Bastins conducted their survey during a brief two-day window in late January 1963, when a delayed departure of the S.S. Chusan from Penang afforded them the opportunity to record the cemetery’s inscriptions before leaving Malaya. The Protestant Cemetery in Northam Road is identified as one of the oldest Christian burial grounds in Malaya, and the authors also included the most important tablets from St. George’s Church, which was built in 1817 and consecrated in 1819. The inscriptions are presented in alphabetical order, each accompanied by a photographic plate, and the article closes with a name index giving calculated birth and death dates for every individual commemorated.

The collection spans the full arc of Penang’s colonial development. The earliest entries include H.D. Cuningham (d. 1789) and Captain John Glass (d. 1793), while the latest extend into the 1890s. Among the most historically significant figures recorded are Francis Light, the founder of the settlement (d. 1794); John Alexander Bannerman, Governor and Lieutenant Colonel in the East India Company’s service for forty-three years (d. 1819); and the shared monument of John Hope Oliphant, Second Member of Council (d. 1807), and Philip Dundas, Governor of the Presidency (d. 1807). The cemetery also holds the remains of Dutch East India Company personnel, military officers of the Royal Navy and Bombay Artillery, medical missionaries, and members of the commercial community, reflecting the multi-national character of the early settlement.

The article is essentially a descriptive record rather than an argumentative study. The authors provide no extended historical commentary beyond brief contextual notes; their contribution lies in preserving the text and physical appearance of stones that, by the 1960s, were already weathering and fragmenting. Several stones are noted as broken or set into the graveyard wall, and a number of inscriptions are partially illegible, with the authors marking uncertain readings with question marks.

Key Findings

  • The survey records approximately 90 individual inscriptions from the Protestant Cemetery and St. George’s Church, spanning deaths from 1789 (H.D. Cuningham) to the 1890s (Otto Ruegger, d. 1890; Cornelia Josephine Van Someren, d. 1892).
  • Francis Light’s tombstone, which reads “Who first established this island as a British settlement, died 21st October 1794,” was restored in October 1894 by Brown & Co. of Calcutta; a separate white marble tablet in the canopy of St. George’s Church’s portico commemorates him as Governor.
  • The shared Oliphant–Dundas monument records that Philip Dundas, Governor of the Presidency, died on 8 April 1807 “a few weeks after the decease of his Wife Margaret Wedderburn, a lady of the sweetest Temper and the softest Manners”; both were from the Scottish Borders (Rossie and Armiston, N.B.).
  • The Rodyk monument (No. 74) commemorates John Rodyk, a Dutch East India Company civil servant who participated in the defence and capitulation of Ternate after a 52-day British blockade in 1801, and who subsequently came to Penang as a British pensioner under the Treaty of Amiens; the same monument also records the remains of Alexander Cornabie (former Governor of the Moluccas) and Johannes Dederick and Sarah Elizabeth Van Dockum.
  • At least two inscriptions are in German: Wladislaus Nowinski (born Warsaw 1845, died Penang 1884) and Otto Ruegger (born Aarburg January 1848, died Penang April 1890), both marked “HIER RUHT” (Here rests).
  • The sculptors and stone-cutters named across the monuments include Simpson & Llewelyn, Philip Hunt, Coombs & Co, Brown & Co, John Hall, W. Myers, Lindeman & Co, and Dan. C.P. Perreau, all based in Calcutta, indicating that the cemetery’s monuments were imported from India rather than produced locally.

Conclusion

The Bastins’ definitive contribution is the preservation of a primary epigraphic record that would otherwise have been lost to tropical weathering. By photographing and transcribing the inscriptions before further deterioration, they provide historians with a fixed textual and visual baseline for the biographical data embedded in Penang’s oldest Christian burial ground, covering the settlement’s formative decades from Light’s founding through the late colonial period.

Context

  • The sole primary source is the physical tombstones and church tablets themselves, surveyed in person in January 1963; no archival documents are cited.
  • Historiographically, the article functions as a reference tool for the social and administrative history of Penang’s colonial period, complementing official records by capturing the commemorative language and self-presentation of the European community as expressed in their own funerary monuments.

References