A Concise History of the Victoria Institution, 1893-2002

Extracted from:
"A Concise History of
the Victoria Institution 1893-2002 by Chung Chee Min.~
edited and made precise by me (M.I.Ariffin)


1. Following the establishment of the British Protectorate in the Malay Peninsula in 1874, economic development in Selangor accelerated with the growth of the rubber and tin industries and the laying of a rail link from Kuala Lumpur to Klang in 1890. With demand rising for an English-educated work force to fill the ranks of the government service and the mercantile sector, the Capitan China of Kuala Lumpur, Yap Kwan Seng, together with Towkay Loke Yew and Thamboosamy Pillay were three prominent Kuala Lumpur residents who convened a public meeting calling for the establishment of an English school. They promised to give $1,000 each.

Sir William Hood Treacher, the British Resident in Selangor, was very supportive. However, the chief obstacle in the way of realising their aim was a lack of funds. As it happened, in March 1893, Sir William discovered a sum of $3,188 of unspent money in the Treasury which had been raised six years earlier by public subscription for the erection of a permanent memorial to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. He then suggested to the donors that the sum could be used to build a school. With their agreement, this amount became the nucleus of a building fund for a memorial school that would be named "The Victoria Institution". The Sultan of Selangor, Sultan Abdul Samad, donated a sum of $1,100 and became one of the two patrons of the school – the other being Sir Cecil Clementi Smith, the Governor of the Straits Settlements. Soon, further public donations and the Selangor government’s contribution of $7,000 brought the total money available to $21,291, sufficient to begin building a government-aided institution "to be maintained primarily for the purpose of providing instruction in the English language to day scholars of all nationalities and classes resident in the State and for other educational purposes." [The various races were at that time referred to as "nationalities" and, until 1972, Kuala Lumpur was part of Selangor.

The First Board of Trustees of the Victoria Institution in 1893 consisted of Sir William Treacher (President), Raja Sulaiman (a grandson of Sultan Abdul Samad, he would later ascend the throne as Sultan Ala-iddin Sulaiman Shah), Capitan China Yap Kwan Seng, Loke Yew, Rev F W Haines (the Inspector of Schools), A R Venning, Dr E A O Travers, F G West, K Thamboosamy Pillay, Ong Chi Siu, Koh Mah Lek and Tambi Abdullah. On the 14th of August, 1893, Lady Treacher laid the foundation stone for the School in High Street. (The original foundation plate is today affixed to the front façade of the present VI building.) The first block of the Victoria Institution was completed in 1894 and Mr. G. W. Hepponstall was the acting Headmaster pending the arrival of Mr. Bennett Eyre Shaw from the Grammar School at Bishop's Stortford in England. Situated on an eight acre site in a loop of the Klang River, the School - with four staff - was officially opened by Mr Shaw on 30th July, 1894. Mr Hepponstall had originally been the Headmaster of one of the earlier English schools in Kuala Lumpur, a plank and attap building located at the junction of High Street and Foch Avenue (now Jalan Cheng Lock). His 96 pupils formed the nucleus of the initial enrolment at the V.I. which started with 115 boys from Primary One upwards. Mr Shaw was paid $2,400 a year and the assistant masters $780, $600 and $360. The government gave the school an annual grant of $3,000 and total expenditure was estimated at $7,425.

2. The growth and development of the VI was rapid. A total of 201 boys were registered in its second year of operations, including nine local Malay boys and a Sumatran Malay. By 1900 there were 423 pupils; two years later, the VI had 532 pupils and, by 1924, the number had ballooned to 950.

As the first Headmaster, Mr. Shaw initiated traditions and practices that would be emulated by other schools. He envisioned an education not merely for examinations but for life; his main aim was to produce good citizens. Without neglecting academic standards, Mr Shaw introduced and developed a variety of school activities designed to give a balanced education. He made drill and gymnastics an integral part of the education. He gave out prizes to those pupils with good attendance records and introduced a report card system to monitor the boys' progress and conduct. The first Prize Day was held on 21st December, 1894.

1894; this was also the year the Treacher Scholarship was founded in honour of Sir William Treacher to given to the best boy in Standard Eight (now Form Four) Junior Cambridge Examination. The Rodger Medal, awarded to the boy who had the best School Certificate results, was founded in 1895 in honour of Mr J P Rodger (later Sir John Pickersgill Rodger, the British Resident in Selangor and President of the VI Board of Trustees from 1896 to 1901).Another scholarship, the Nugent-Walsh Scholarship, was founded in 1909 as a memorial to a prominent Kuala Lumpur citizen to be awarded annually to the boy who stood second in the Junior Cambridge Examination. The first recipient in 1910 was Yong Shook Lin, who later became a noted lawyer and legislator.

Three years later another practice was initiated with the holding of the first VI Sports Day. In 1906, musical drill displays became part of Sports Day.

The VI Cadet Corps dates from 1900, when the St. Mary's Boys' Brigade was founded by a VI teacher, Mr. A.C.J. Towers. It became the VI Cadet Corps in 1901 and was the first of its kind in the country. The Corps had its first camp in Port Dickson in 1902 and, in 1909, its drum and fife band was formed. Mr. B.E. Shaw also founded the School Scout Troop - the First Selangor Troop - in 1910, the very first Scout Troop in the country.

3. After 28 dedicated years, Mr. B.E. Shaw finally retired as the longest serving Headmaster in February, 1922. Before he left, there was a meeting of Old Victorians in the School Hall in Block 4 which unanimously approved the formation of the V.I. Old Boys Association. Mr Shaw was elected as the Patron and the first President was Chan Sze Kiong, brother of Queen's Scholars Sze Pong and Sze Jin. Through the generosity of Towkay Yap Fatt Yew, the Old Boys were given a spacious club house at 17, Rodger Street (now Jalan Hang Kasturi).

Mr Shaw’s successor, Richard Sidney, had enlisted in the army in 1914, trained troops behind the front but had not seen action himself. His relatively short period as Headmaster from 1923 to 1926 was marked by the highly innovative and far-reaching changes he introduced.

M. Sidney also introduced the first Speech Day in 1923 and changed the school hours from morning and afternoon sessions to the present system of one long morning session. A great and lasting institution was also created on April 6, 1923, when the first School Prefects were installed in a short but impressive ceremony. The first School Captain of the VI was Othman bin Mohamed who later became, variously, a Mentri Besar of Selangor, the High Commissioner for Malaya and Singapore in Britain and the Acting Deputy Chairman of the Public Services Commission.

4. It was during Mr Sidney’s reign as Headmaster that drama became prominent in the School's extra-mural activities. A Malay play, Chitra Raja Besi, written by teacher and Old Boy, M A Akbar, was staged at the Kuala Lumpur Town Hall and the money earned was set aside for the formation of a School Orchestra. During Mr Sidney's tenure the VI Musical and Dramatic Society (VIMADS) staged public performances of Shakespeare plays - Twelfth Night and Henry IV (Part One) - which carried the School’s name far and wide. One year the VI boys took their play on tour to Ipoh, Penang and Singapore.

On September 1st, 1925, the VI ceased to be a semi-private school and was taken over completely by the Government. From then on, future Headmasters would no longer recruited by the trustees of the School; instead, they would be officers from the Malayan Educational Service. Equally significant, the staff would no longer be personally recruited by the VI Headmaster but by the Education Service.

The School's first civil servant Headmaster was Mr G C Davies who helmed the School from 1926 to 1930. He had been in the armed forces during the First World War and was a strict disciplinarian who never allowed the scholastic activities of the school to play a subordinate part to extra-curricular activities.

Mr Davies oversaw the historic move from the High Street premises to the brand new building on Petaling Hill. On September 21st, 1927, the foundation stone for the new VI was laid by Sultan Ala'idin Sulaiman Shah, witnessed by the Director of Education, Dr R O Winstedt, and other dignitaries. After eighteen months of construction (the contractor was Low Yat), the building was ready and on March 26, 1929, in front of a large crowd of Kuala Lumpur dignitaries which included many Old Boys, Sir Hugh Clifford - the President of the VI Board of Trustees in 1901 and now the High Commissioner of Malaya - opened the new VI. The ceremony was also witnessed by the first VI Headmaster, Mr. B.E. Shaw, who had been invited back to Malaya by the many Old Boys who had been taught by him.

5. The new VI became a secondary school with 500 boys from Standards Six (Form Two today) to Senior Cambridge. Its old primary pupils in Standards Five and below remained in the High Street premises under the headmastership of A.W. Frisby and they later transferred to the newly-built Batu Road School in June, 1930. BRS and Pasar Road School, which was built in 1925, then became feeder schools to the VI.With brand new science labs, the VI was now able to introduce science as a subject, the first school in Malaya to do so.

In 1930, when Mr Edgar de la M. Stowell was the acting Headmaster in Mr Davies’ absence, the VI finally acquired a crest of its own, one that would serve as an instantly recognised identity over the years. It was designed by Mr G. Burgess, the Art Superintendent of Selangor, who incorporated in it elements of the Selangor flag. In his short stay of six months, Mr Stowell also introduced cross country running to the VI boys.

Mr Davies’ successor was another Mr Shaw - Frederick Lloyd Shaw - who guided the school from 1931 to 1936. Mr Shaw revised the Prefects Charter, particularly in respect of the specific duties of prefects. Boys entering the VI were now selected from Maxwell English School as well as BRS and PRS. The 1933 enrolment stood at 530.

The thirties were a particularly busy and typically successful period for the VICC which projected, through ceremonial parades on Empire Day and the King's Birthday, its very favourable reputation. In May 1935, for instance, the entire Corps and Band, 150 strong, took a leading part in the King George V Silver Jubilee Parade at the Selangor Club Padang.

When Mr B.E. Shaw retired in 1922, the V.I. Old Boys’ Association had made repeated appeals to the government to recognise his contributions. Finally, in 1938, Gaol Road, the stretch in front of the VI, was renamed Shaw Road in honour of the longest-serving VI Headmaster. (Shaw Road was renamed Jalan Hang Tuah after Merdeka).

6. Mr. Shaw was succeeded by Major J.B. Neilson, who was Headmaster for nearly a year. Mr. C.E. Gates assumed the headmastership of the VI in June 1937. During his tenure, an up-to-date swimming pool with springboards, steps for high diving, shower baths and circulating chlorinated water was opened in June 1938.From then on, VI pupils could now receive swimming instruction as part of the school curriculum. It was also used by most schools in Selangor which had weekly periods of swimming allocated to them.




During his reign, Mr Gates could point with justifiable pride to his three VI pupils who won Queen's Scholarships for degree courses in England – Ismail Mohd Ali (later Tun Ismail Mohd Ali), Yap Pow Meng and Rodney Lam.

In July of that year, the founder of the VICC, Mr. A. C. J. Towers, visited the VI on the occasion of the fortieth birthday of the V.I.C.C. and presented the band with a silver-mounted drum major's staff. The VICC had grown during the thirties: in 1930, the strength of the Corps was 145 Cadets (45 of whom were recruits); by 1941, there were over 300 V.I. Cadets organised as a battalion of three companies. In this final year of the Gates era, the school had 19 staff and 510 boys; there were 15 classes including one matriculation class.

With war clouds gathering, the School Hall was requisitioned by the War Taxation Department, military barracks sprouted around the school and many of the European VI masters were called for military training. Thirty Malay ex-Cadets volunteered to form an all-Malay platoon in the F.M.S. Volunteer Force and when the Selangor Local Defence Corps was formed and an appeal was made for Asian volunteers, the first forty men to be enrolled were ex-cadets of the VICC!

Mr Gates remained steadfastly at the School until the enemy was almost at the gates. With the British in full retreat and chaos and looting everywhere, the loyal School clerk, Mr Richard Pavee, bravely stood guard over the school premises with his cadet rifle to ward off looters before Kuala Lumpur finally fell and three and a half years of Japanese Occupation began

Many Old Boys contributed to the war effort serving in Europe, India, Burma, New Guinea, the Phillipines, Singapore and Malaysa. Amongst them were The Talalla brothers, Henry and Cyril, Peter Barraclough, Captains Gurbax Singh, Tharam Singh and Lieutenant H I S Kanwar, Sulong bin Hamzah and Salleh bin Hassan of the Malay Regiment, Yaacob bin Abdul Latiff (later Mayor of Kuala Lumpur), Bun Tsan Chuan and Captain Syed Shaidali, Ng Kum Heong ,Leong Hong Teck, Bun Pak San, Wong Ah Yam and Tan Sim Hong ,Chang Sow Khong ,Rajion and Harry Lau . Victorians even fought as guerillas - Mohamed Yakim bin Long was part of the Malayan Guerilla Force while Leong Chai Mun and G N Frank were in the famous Force 136 that harassed Japanese forces behind lines.

However, most of the expatriate VI teachers who took up arms were incarcerated as internees or prisoners of war. Those who survived the ordeal included F C Barraclough, E A H Ellis, C Forster, L I Lewis, W H W. Little, G G L McLeod, and D K Swan. Four former VI headmasters were also interned - the loyal C E Gates, H R Carey, J B Neilson, R J H Sidney - as were future Headmasters F Daniel, E M F Payne and G E D Lewis. (Of course, the venerable Mr B E Shaw was already retired by then in England but, despite his old age, he served as an air raid warden in London during the German blitz.)

The VI teachers who died in captivity were G C Tacchi, H D Grundy, E W Reeve, G Burgess, A C Strahan and T L White. The siege of Singapore in February 1942 claimed the lives of at least two Old Victorians; a former VI teacher and Member of the Singapore Legislative Assembly, Mr Tay Lian Teck, was killed when his ship was bombed by Japanese planes and the 1938 Cricket Captain Hera Singh (brother of Gorbex Singh) died in a Japanese bombardment at the Medical College where he was a student. The 1930 School Captain E R de Jong, R Seimund, Lee Pet Seong, Lim Siew Weng, Wong Tin Leong and H A Leembruggen were reported missing or died as prisoners of war.

7.

The VI’s commanding location on Petaling Hill made it an ideal choice as a Japanese headquarters.The VI was not a military but an administrative establishment of some sort.

The climax of the Pacific War came with the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6th and 9th August 1945, respectively, after which Japan surrendered unconditionally. For Malaya, Wednesday, 12th September 1945, was Victory Day and an impressive ceremony was held in Singapore with Lord Louis Mountbatten accepting the formal, unconditional surrender of all Japanese forces in Southeast Asia.

A separate surrender ceremony took place in Kuala Lumpur the following day, 13th September, 1945 at 2 p.m. at the Victoria Institution Hall. In a twenty-minute ceremony, Lieutenant-General Teizo Ishiguro signed the surrender on behalf of the Japanese forces while Lieutenant-General O.L. Roberts was among Allied signatories. The VI was then commandeered by the British Military Administration which would run the country until late 1946. On 22nd February, 1946, another surrender ceremony was held in front of the VI porch when General Frank Messervy of Malaya Command, then headquartered at the VI, accepted the surrender of residual Japanese units holding out in scattered parts of Southeast Asia. Deprived of its premises, the VI resurrected itself through afternoon sessions at Batu Road School beginning 22nd October, 1945 and then moved to the defunct Maxwell Road School premises after five months. While there, the School's scouts and cadets were represented at the Victory Parade to celebrate the end of the war at the Selangor Padang. The VI finally returned to its proper home in September 1946.

Mr M. Vallipuram, an Old Boy and former Senior Master on the prewar staff, was appointed VI Headmaster – its first Asian Headmaster - during those nomadic days. Mr. Vallipuram retired just as the school moved back to its own building and Mr Ng Seo Buck, another Old Boy and master, was appointed Acting Headmaster. At a special assembly he broke to the School the belated news - delayed because of the war - that the VI's first Headmaster, Mr Shaw, had died two years earlier in 1944.

Mr Ng performed his duties for about three weeks until the new VI Headmaster could arrive from recuperation leave in the United Kingdom..
He was none other than Mr. Frederick Daniel, the Senior Science Master of the thirties, who had pioneered the teaching of science in the VI. Apart from being a brand new Headmaster with the daunting responsibility of rebuilding the VI from an empty shell, Mr. Daniel shouldered another big responsibility - the duties of Science Supervisor for the whole country.

An official reopening of the School by the Governor of the Malayan Union, Sir Edward Gent, was held on Friday, 11th October, 1946, as a morale-booster to put the famous VI spirit back to work. In addition, the School's Golden Jubilee was belatedly celebrated that evening with rousing speeches by dignitaries and sketches interleaved with musical pieces by the resurrected School Orchestra. The actual event in 1943, of course, could not be marked because of the war.

Entry to the VI was now lowered to Standard Five (Form One today) instead of the prewar Standard Six.his was to accommodate the huge influx of boys from the feeder schools as well as over-aged VI boys who had missed school during the war years. To clear the huge enrolment bottleneck in the lower forms some boys received double or even triple promotions within one year, such was the disparity in age and ability as a result of the war.

Continue to parts 8-11 following this posting.