 |
| SOURCE: Getty Images. |
For years in my early teens, I dined out on the fact that I had seen Elvis – the Elvis. It was when he was working at a US army base in Germany as a truck driver when our family was stationed at a Canadian Air Force base in France. One of a small clutch of giddy girls, I had skipped classes because we had heard that Elvis was due to make a delivery at the back of the ice rink at a certain time. 1:30 seems to stick in my mind. It was a sunny day, and we didn’t have long to wait. I don’t recall if he waved or even if he looked at us. What I do remember is the sizzle of having been there, and the thrill of talking about it afterwards.
In the mid to late
1800s, there was a similar kind of sizzle connected to stories of being related
to Sir Walter Scott, the famed poet and novelist. I suspect that owld Mother Jackson might have have enjoyed the Ulster-Scotts-Presbyterian equivalent of a swoon
when she discovered that the brother-in-law of her son Thomas was actually a 2nd
cousin to the famed man, although framing it that way would have been gilding
the lily a bit. He was really only a 2nd cousin once removed, but in
those days he would have been referred to in casual conversation and letters as
a cousin.
You can see their
relationship either on my Silver
Bowl Family Tree or else on the Scott family
snapshot on my website. The latter is probably the easiest to see at a
glance, but the former gives more detail. In short, William Ramsay Scott
(1838-1908) was the husband of Blanche Dare, sister of Amelia Dare who in turn
was Thomas Jackson’s wife.
William Ramsay Scott’s
ancestors were Scottish landowners whose frequent brushes with insolvency resulted
in their children being sent out to the further reaches of the British Empire.
James Scott (1746-1808) was one of those children. He joined the navy at age
seven, and unlike several of those who survived, he neither returned to his native
land as a wealthy man, nor did he end his life with significant assets. He had lived on the edge, died
on the edge, and often played fast and loose with the rules – even though there
were few rules to heed in that time and place.
In Oct 1774, he had arrived in Calcutta at
the age of 18 as a steward serving on a ship hired by the East India Company. This
was a useful foundational experience for a future merchant. A decade later, he
got into trouble with the Dutch authorities when he was arrested on charges of
gun running. For that infraction, he was he was briefly imprisoned in
the guard room at Malacca. A decade
later, in 1786, his friend and business partner, Francis Light, hoisted the
British flag over Penang, renamed it Prince
of Wales Island and declared it open for British trade. Light and Scott had
first met when the two of them were young midshipmen on the H.M.S. Arrogant – a name with a nice bit of
foreshadowing – and now in the mid 1780s they themselves had become forces to contend with.
The skills they had learned at sea turned out
to serve the two of them well. Light tended to handle more of the legislative
side of their affairs, while Scott handled more of the mercantile side of
things. Cartographic skills were part of their shared tool-kit, and the map of
Penang drawn by Scott is acknowledged as the most accurate map of its time. As
an old navy hand, he knew the importance of detailing the boundaries of safe
harbours, and as a trader he knew how essential such harbours were for trading
opium, spices, and other goods.
Not only was he one
of the first British settlers of Penang, and one of those who laid the groundwork for its future
as a mercantile port, but he was also a key leader of the country traders, a
group who were described as a most
contumacious body. Clearly, they were adamant and effective in their
opposition to anything that might block or slow down their access to profits. It
was James Scott’s tenacity in avoiding taxation, that helped precipitate
the resignation of Superintendent MacDonald. Clearly, Scott was not a man to be
messed with.
As is so often
the case in such matters, the kerfuffle over taxation ignored the fact
that much of Prince of Wales Island was
already owned and controlled, lock, stock and barrel, by friends and associates
of James Scott. He had secured the best
sites in Georgetown for his plantations where he grew pepper, cloves, nutmeg
and cinnamon. Not only that, but his business offices sat on prime real estate,
immediately south of the customs house, a government office where the surname
of Scott appeared over the years with
remarkable frequency in the lists of its officials.
He may have made a fortune in the 1790s and
early 1800s, but it is also clear that his ways of acquiring much of it were
decidedly unethical. For example, when Francis Light died, Scott quickly
expropriated most of Light’s property in spite of the fact that there was a
will leaving those assets to Light’s common-law wife, Martina Rozell. As one
might expect, British colonial law was not on the side of local, common-law
wives. Morality should have been.
In spite of his
wealth, Scott chose to live in a small Malay bungalow, and was sometimes criticized
for dressing in the native style. He shared this home with at least two wives
who lived with him simultaneously, and bore him several children. More than one
researcher has suggested that he may have fathered more than a dozen children
with as many as four or five women. This would certainly be a fit with other aspects
of his character.
In the version of
the Scott
family tree on my web site, I have entered the names of his known children as if Anne Julhe, a member of the Portuguese Eurasian community, was the mother of all of them rather than merely some of them. This might
change, but for now, she is the only “wife” for whom I have a name.
As the saying has
it - what goes around, comes around. The children of Anne
Juhle ended up being treated no better than the way that James Scott had
treated the widowed Martina Rozell. Scott died shortly after gambling on a
business outcome that hadn’t panned out, and was seriously over mortgaged at
the time of his death. David Brown, a junior partner in Scott’s firm and a
merchant who hailed from Scott’s birthplace, took over all the assets and didn’t
look back. Scott’s son William was one of those who groused about this outcome,
and fair enough.
Captain William
George Scott (1780-1861), the much loved uncle of William Ramsay Scott, was the
only one of James’ children who left much of a trace in the historical records
of Penang. Like his father, he had also gone to sea, and done well for himself.
By 1836, at the age of 56, he was the Harbour Master Attendant and Post Master
of Singapore, handy positions to have when one owned a plantation and dealt in
exports. Scott’s Road was named after him, in part because his Claymore plantation
included land that started at the corner of Orchard Road and continued up to the
present day Tanglin Club. The house that he lived in, Hurricane Cottage, was no more than an attap house, but it was home
to him. We do know that his nickname was Hurricane Billy,
but I do not know whether the house was named after him, or if he was nicknamed
after his house.
 |
| This is not
Hurricane House – rather it is a similar styled attap house. SOURCE:Creative Commons from Tropenmuseum. It would be wonderful to find a photo of Hurricane House. |
Winnifred Maud
Allen (1872-1961) was born at Hurricane House, and I suspect that her older brother
George Edward Allen may also have been born there as well. Their mother, Anna Maria Dare, was a sister of
Blanche Emily Dare, hence a sister-in-law of William Ramsay Scott. The children
were born a decade after the death of Hurricane
Billy, and although I have no evidence, it would not be unreasonable to
suspect that the house had been willed to William Ramsay Scott from his uncle Hurricane Billy, and then leased to his
brother-in-law Whitworth Allen, husband of Anna Maria Dare.
In the early
1870s, Whitworth Allen was a successful East India merchant. In 1874 he was
appointed by the Queen to the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements, a
post that his brother-in-law William Ramsay Scott had already served in since
at least 1869. This was just one of many such inter-generational and
inter-family appointments that knitted together the political and business interests
of families such as the SCOTTS, ALLENS, and DARES of Singapore. Once the networks are made visible, their collective successes are more readily understood.
Unfortunately, I
don’t know exactly how all of the Scotts in Penang linked up with each other family-wise,
but I do know that a number of SCOTTs relations had been active in trade in the
region long before young James washed up on shore. This leaves me curious about anyone with the surname of SCOTT in that time
and place. The complete picture will help me to better understand the business
connections of James’ grandson, William Ramsay Scott.
As always, I am
driven by curiousity as I write my various pieces for this blog, and also by my fervent hope
of learning from those who find and read these scribbles. In that light, I am also
curious about who the family in the following photo might be – just in case they
are a fit with this story.
 |
| Mystery family - there may be no connection to this story. This photo was found, unlabeled, in a cabinet at Gilford Castle along with several other photos associated with family members in Singapore, Yokohama and Hong Kong. |
NOTE: Much of what I
know about James Scott comes from an excellent paper: James
Scott Country Trader - Presented at the Asian Studies Association of Australia
(ASAA) 19th Biennial Conference, 11-13 July 2012more
by
