MURDER ON THE VERANDAH by Eric Lawlor

The full title is Murder on the Verandah (Love and Betrayal in British Malaya).

I read this book a couple of months ago but did not have the time to write the review, but i jotted down lots of notes from it (don't know why I did that, but I'm glad I did). I found this book in Manchester Public Library after I searched in their online catalogue with the keyword 'Malaysia'. The reason why I read this book is because it is about our country but it was written by a British.

The author did a research on a true story of a murder that occurred in 1911 in Malaya. An English woman, Ethel Proudlock, the wife of Will Proudlock (who was the acting headmaster of Victoria Institution, Kuala Lumpur at that time) shot her secret lover, Will Steward (funny that both men has the same first name) because of uncontrollable rage when he told her that he was ending their affair. The murder took place on the grounds of the school, at the verandah of the headmaster's house which is no longer there now.

But I'm not going to go into the life of the Proudlocks or the murder or the trial itself.

What I want to share is Malaya in 1911, as described in the book.

Malay Mail and Ideal Condensed Milk already existed.

Ambulance is horse-drawn cart with a very tiny stretcher-so tiny that if a tall person is carried, his feet would dangle at the end.

Indians with a buffalo in town were a common sight in KL, if you needed milk, you simply took a jug and went looking for one.

Singapore had a famous red light district that included Austrian and Japanese girls (as well as locals).

A typical British household had as many as 8 servants- a head boy (like a PA), a cook, a driver, a water carrier (from the wells I supposed), a gardener, a dhoby, a nanny and a cleaner.

In KL, every morning prisoners with chained feet and guarded by a policeman swept the streets and semi-nude Indian labourers did all the road repairs.

The British planters thought that the sound of people speaking Malay language reminded them of nuts being cracked.

The British tried to change us, and did not think very highly of the people of Malaya..

When King Edward VII died on 7 May 1910 all shops and offices at KL were closed and people wore black arm bands. At Victoria Institution (VI) the students marched and saluted the King's portrait.

Schools were changed to English public school system starting with VI, in which VI was divided into houses, prefects were created and school anthems were introduced (very much like our schools today.

They REALLY tried to change us. Reading classes included tales of foxes and robins, arithmetic dealt with pounds, shillings and pence instead of Malayan dollars and cents.

And pupils who lived in palm-thatched huts and bathed in rivers were asked to estimate the yards of paper needed for the walls of Victorian drawing rooms and the gallons of water required to fill a bath that they never seen and of course could not imagine.

An Englishman in Ipoh had been fined $75 for having killed a Chinese man and another European was fined $50 for attempted murder after firing 3 times into a crowd of Malays (such was the value of our lives to them).

Aren't we glad that we are now independent?