Out in the Midday Sun

by Margaret Shennan

  The new arrivals included former British soldiers, for any European who had fought in the Great War was given a grant of 100 acres. ‘The usual practice for the Ex-Service men had been to go into “kongsi” partnership with each other – four or more together – with their plots adjoining,’ a planter recalled. ‘It was from this type of grant that Corsican, Prang Besar (Great War), Lima Tuan etc. Estates grew up.’6 However, the majority of new recruits were hand-picked young employees, potentially good ‘company men’ aged from nineteen to twenty-four – like Joe Allgrove, who went out to Johore in 1920, or Guy Hutchinson, who arrived in Selangor in 1928. They were selected in London as Assistants to the Managers employed to run large company estates. Unlike the Edwardian generation, fewer had a private income or family money to cushion their lifestyle. (There were, nonetheless, some independent planters – such as the Vowlers, whose property straddled the boundaries of Malacca and Negri Sembilan.) The main credentials for young planters were a respectable background, physical prowess and personal skills – although personal introductions could be decisive, J. S. Potter found:

  When I first expressed a desire to go East at the age of seventeen, my father sent me to the only relation we had who was connected with the East … a director at Harrison & Crosfield in London and their Chief Accountant. [He] sent me back to school for a year; but a year later introduced me to Guthrie & Co … in response to my father’s stipulation of an old established Scottish firm with a young Managing Director … Prior to sailing for Malaya in April 1934, I had served a four and a half years’ apprenticeship in Guthrie’s London Office …7

  Guy Hutchinson confirmed that

  It was usually through a friend of a friend of a Director that one heard of a job, and the selection was pretty severe, as there were, then, more applicants than jobs … If [the Directors] were Scots then they plumped for an educated lad, of poor but honest parents (the gamekeeper’s sons, the village shopkeeper’s son, occasionally a son of the Manse) … If the Directors were predominantly English they went for what is now called ‘the old school tie type’, the Public School or Senior Grammar School boy.8

  Hutchinson was in a sense a hybrid of the two types. The son of a former army officer, he went to New Beacon and Wellington and thence to Glasgow, where he studied engineering. His first job in the early 1920s was in the mining industry at Bo’ness, Lothian, where James Watt had developed his steam engine in 1765. Like many of his generation, he faced economic insecurity (‘coal mining had no financial future in it for me’), but he also had a vital Malayan connection. His younger brother, Mike, had been working as an Assistant at the Batu Caves Estate near Kuala Lumpur since 1925. In 1927 Guy was offered a five-year contract with the same firm, which he took without hesitation. ‘First and foremost it was “an open-air job” – in a short time you became, as near as possible, “your own boss”. There were no exams to pass … You got paid from “the word go”, and on paper the pay looked good.’ Besides, he reflected later, ‘I think I would have done anything rather than become what is now called a “Commuter”, going up and down to an office in London – What a terrible thought!’9

  ‘If one kept free from malaria, life seemed full of interest,’ Joe Allgrove discovered. ‘For relaxation there was sometimes a gramophone … books, for a good many, booze, and on a number of estates, a tennis court.’ This was probably all one could expect upcountry in the 1920s, but ‘I suppose what one has not had is not missed.’10 Guy and Mike Hutchinson were keen sportsmen, sharing their passion for biking with others in the area:

  there was a planter, Duggie Ainger, mad keen on motor bicycles … and his assistant, Rex Duncan, had ridden in the amateur

  T. T. … Their estate was hilly, and Ainger had a ‘Scramble’ course round it. He also had a swimming pool, and on Sundays held ‘open house’ for kindred spirits. There used to be about a dozen of us, talking motorbikes, then having a swim, then a Curry Tiffin. A great godsend to the young was D. Ainger.11

  The Hutchinson brothers made the most of their leisure. Finishing work at noon on a Saturday, they were off on motorbikes to ‘the Dog’ in Kuala Lumpur. If a rugger match was in progress on the padang, they usually watched before browsing through the magazines and papers, waiting for the tea dance to begin. Since there was scarcely an unattached woman and ‘not being of the “shark” type, we did not do any dancing but hung around “Cads Corner”, making comments on the dancers’ on the floor. Around 9 p.m. it was off to the Coliseum Hotel, where ‘you could get a very good steak or fried fish eats for a reasonable price’, or to ‘one of the Japanese hotels in High Street or Petaling Street that specialised in Fried Prawns, omelettes etc.’ But Kuala Lumpur also had other attractions for virile young men:

  Down the Batu Road was ‘the Malay kip-shop’ – here you could get cold beer or a Malay girl if you wanted one. Nearby was the ‘Siamese house’ … where they had a gramophone and you could dance with the Siamese girls … by far the most beautiful of all the Eastern races … further out near the Princes Cinema were the more superior Japanese Hotels, where you could get Beer and almost any race of girl.12

  The lack of single European women was an unspoken problem. British attitudes had changed since the pioneer years, and companies imposed constraints on Assistants which ruled out marriage before their second or third contract. ‘The outcome was that to have anything to do with a woman, the bachelor had to either seduce his neighbour’s wife or resort to prostitutes and so VD was very rife.’ Guy Hutchinson was quite frank about his first foray into sex.

  I was a ‘virgin’ when I came out. After some months and a lot of drink I had a most unsatisfactory initiation with a Chinese pro. I was still very worried about learning Tamil, and against all advice I decided to try and get a ‘sleeping dictionary’. So I asked a ‘mary’ and a young Tamil girl was produced, and a trial weekend was arranged. I felt a bit of a cad, as at sixteen Rasamah looked very young. Young or not, a weekend was enough for her to give me a ‘packet’ and that ended ‘romance’, ‘sex’ and ‘sleeping dictionaries’ for me for many years. The ‘packet’ was ‘cleared up’ at ‘the Sultan Street Club’ in a few months, and I returned to Stengahs and Motor Bikes, as being cheaper and healthier.13

  Meanwhile Hutchinson had discovered other disadvantages of being a young, single rubber planter. His hard-earned savings – ‘my all’, roughly $150’ – were spent in his first three days while sightseeing on Penang with his penniless brother. (Mike had run up debts of $450 and was constantly in need of salary advances.)14 Joe Allgrove similarly found that the cost of enforced stops at Rangoon and Penang on the outward voyage meant ‘a young man arrived at Singapore 61/2 weeks “out” with empty pockets’.15 Hutchinson had to admit that his assumptions about both money and exams had been quite wrong. A European planter needed communication skills such as basic Tamil, and ‘when you got out there you found that the wise took the Incorporated Society of Planters’ exams – the language exams were compulsory with many Estate Managers’. At first he despaired of ever succeeding, but thanks to Well’sCoolie Tamil, the Assistant’s bible, he knew enough to do his work after three months. In addition,

  Pay … wasn’t nearly as good as it looked. In fact it was hard for a First Agreement Assistant to keep out of debt and have a bit saved up for his leave. One found that food and servants took $150 a month. It cost not less than $20 for a Saturday night, drinks, dinner and cinema. Then there was running a motor bike – hardly one in a hundred had a car … And last but not least there are clothes. Shirts, shorts, vest and pants and shoes for estate work were cheap – the Chinese tailor ran up what you wanted in 24 hours … But a Palm beach suit, European type shirts, shoes etc. were very expensive. And then you had to have everything for your house – kitchen utensils, cutlery, china, bed linen etc. And unless you came out with about £300 earmarked for this and your first ‘outfit’ of estate clothes, you ran into debt – so easy to do – from the very start.16

  Hutchinson’s starting
salary in 1928 was the average rate of $250 a month, rising to $350 – an improvement on the junior’s salary of $225 which had been the norm when Joe Allgrove started in 1920. At that time ‘there was no holiday pay, no provident funds, in fact no extras of any sort’.17 Allgrove’s generation was particularly unfortunate because by 1922 the mini-boom had given way to a slump, as the world economy failed to pull out of the economic dislocation of the Great War. The numbers of estate staff had to be suddenly reduced, or juniors found their salaries cut to $175. By the mid-1930s, when J. S. Potter was posted to Guthrie’s Kuala Lumpur office and joined a mess with other bachelors, rates had returned to 1920 levels. ‘My starting salary was $250 per month with no allowances. Not much! But it is amazing to look back and see how far it went. Mess Bill (all in living expenses) $130 per month. Club bills $40, transport expenses $30, left one with $50 a month for clothes and savings etc. We were well fed and lived very comfortably sharing three Chinese servants.’18

  Although the standard of living for Europeans improved in the interwar period, life on an outstation was far less comfortable than in the towns. The jungle was never far away – ‘a world of unending colonnades of gigantic trees’, one planter recalled – while the rubber imposed its own kind of tyranny.19 ‘There is nothing beautiful about a rubber estate – only a monotony of regularity which corrodes one’s outlook on life,’ observed Bruce Lockhart.20 ‘The rubber groves are melancholy. As far as you can see are the black arches of the rubber, and the white day beyond is blinding in contrast. There are thousands of acres of rubber trees … and each grove is as black as the last. There is a depressing tidiness about them.’21 Joe Allgrove recalled that in the pre-car era of the early 1920s country roads and tracks were interminably winding, there was no telephone, and malaria was still a hazard.

  Twice weekly everyone had a dose of liquid quinine. It was nothing to have 50-60 genuine fever cases at the sick muster … Few active planters of today have ever tasted liquid quinine. It is horrible and the horror lasts some time. Many labourers would try to miss their dose by hiding in the rubber … Many, having had their dose, would squat in the roadside drain and retch violently! ‘Master’ often took a dose pour encourager les autres!’22

  Hutchinson developed malaria in the mid-1930s. After a long course of quinine, he too decided that ‘the cure was worse than the disease and made you deaf and bad tempered’.23

  Living conditions on most estates were primitive. ‘To talk of living in an attap-roofed shack, eight feet off the ground with the bathhouse below, no running water, no electric light, no fans, no sanitation and little or no “Cold Storage” or refrigerators, is almost beyond credence.’24 And if there was no attap available, shacks were roofed in tin, which could be very hot and very noisy in rain. The Manager’s bungalow was generally more spacious and comfortable. ‘I remember well … a large, typical colonial house and garden,’ wrote Susan Malet, and the Barretts’ home in Sungei Patani was ‘airy with wide verandahs’.25 But in many houses bedroom walls were unplastered: there was ‘only the [external] weather boarding, which overlaps and allows curious creatures to wander in from the jungle’.26 ‘Assam Java’, the family bungalow of an independent planter in Selangor, tended to shake and rattle in the wind. The palm thatch housed a multitude of snakes and insects; ‘rats and squirrels peered down at us … Miniature owls raised several families on top of the wardrobe of the nursery.’27 Wooden structures had to be steeped in creosote: the same family had cousins in Kedah whose home collapsed after being attacked by termites. If the bungalow floor was not sufficiently raised, ‘all you got were fleas’ from ‘the scrawny chickens that everyone’s cook kept under[neath] … in the heat of the day’.28

  Most planters’ houses were built on similar lines. The living quarters, which included some sort of mosquito-proofed area, would be separated from the kitchen and the servants’ quarters at the rear by a covered walkway. Water supplies were a matter of chance. ‘Our drinking water is sent down to us once a week by launch. It is kept in a large tub,’ wrote one housewife, ‘and when it is wanted it is put through a drip stone filter, then boiled, and filtered again.’ At ‘Assam Java’ there was a ‘stinking, muddy pond in the garden, full of rotting rubber leaves, the only source of water apart from the monsoon rain’.29 The result was thick tea-coloured baths and drinking water sterilized and tinctured with permanganate of potash. Laundering was primeval: clothes were whacked on a wet stone. It was much the same for company planters:

  There was no ‘Mod. San.’ … Running water was not common but each bungalow had a well. Each bathroom had a ‘shanghai jar’, a large earthenware tub, … and a tin bath, the ordinary galvanized tin wash tub of pre-war days … There was also the ‘jam-pan’ or ‘night commode’ and a jerry. These latter were usually emptied but once a day – it all depended how near one lived to the coolie lines … We also kept our ‘beer and soda in a bucket down the well, where it kept fairly cool.

  All kinds of expedient were necessary:

  We put the legs of tables, beds etc. in the china cups used to collect the rubber latex from the trees, and these were filled with water topped by kerosene. This kept the ants at bay … Now the furniture … by and large it was a disgrace. We had two old iron single beds, with sagging springs … The mattresses were ‘aged’, pillows ditto. Mosquito nets, a new one every three years if lucky. Each bedroom had one or more almirahs [wardrobe/cupboard] and a strange assortment of dressing tables … The dining room furniture was almost always the same … black P.W.D. teak of early vintage … Then the sitting room – almost universally these had ‘rattan’ or cane type armchairs [and] settees … In 5 years I only had one new set of cheap rattan chairs. What was the reason for this? It was simply that not much cash was allowed by the directors for furniture – the ex-crofter type of director seemed to rule this department.30

  The only compensation was the sense of space that went with a large garden; and, though the grass was often poor, the soil of Malaya somehow sustained a profusion of flowers. ‘Assam Java’ had trellis on three sides and a bounty of moonflowers, orchids and firecracker vines, marred only by a hidden subculture of insects. But, whatever the conditions, there were always planters who managed to make their homes cosy and contrived to be happy, even house proud, against the odds.

  Rubber planting was a physically demanding pursuit, the daily routine much longer and more exhausting than any office job in the East. A French planter’s daughter remembered how ‘Papa walked everywhere … On and on he trudged with only a stick to ward off cobras.’ He would be away seven or eight hours, checking, examining, inspecting.31 According to Guy Hutchinson, ‘Managers differed greatly. Some worked day and night; others did not appear to do very much outside their office and factory’, content to leave the rest to their Assistants. Hutchinson was fortunate in his superiors. ‘Plum’ Warner, a dynamic little man, was ‘a very good planter’ who made sure Hutchinson had a ‘very thorough training’. Herbert, Manager of Batu Caves Estate, was ‘a decent … inoffensive-looking type’ who gave a young man his head, and Hedley Bragg, the Manager of Tenang Estate in Johore, like ‘Plum’, became a close friend. ‘H.B. was the type who would discuss everything with you, walk everywhere with you and then leave you to get on with it: just the sort of Manager that I could work well with.’32 Hutchinson was luckier than some. Joe Allgrove’s Manager, for instance, accompanied him on fieldwork twice in four years: ‘One learnt – or failed to learn – by trial and error.’33

  Estate work also varied enormously. Virgin land had to be felled, burned and cleared before planting; where the rubber was mature (after seven years’ growth) tapping and processing were the main tasks. But maintenance and improvement work went on constantly. ‘We were terracing, weeding, [doing] pest and disease work and path making with the Tamils,’ wrote Hutchinson after his transfer to the Sepang division of Lothian Estate, Selangor. The eradication of invasive lalang grass, though a thankless job, was a necessity. But the new challenge suit
ed him. It was ‘a real [rubber] planting district. I had about 20 Chinese budding and tending the Nurseries. Then a mile or more away was Bute Division where the jungle had just been felled, and Chinese, having burnt it were clearing it, ready for the hole digging and planting. It was the very essence of Planting. I loved it.’ ‘Budding’ rubber, it should be said, was a new production method which appealed to the enterprising. An alternative to using seed, it was a technique ‘to bud graft common stock from the branch wood of proved high yielders’; it ‘was just coming into general use in Malaya when I went out in 1927’, stated Hutchinson.34

  On his second agreement, in 1934, Hutchinson was in charge of a division of 3,300 acres in north Johore, part of an estate of 7,000 acres, which involved more responsibility. As Leopold Ainsworth had already discovered, a planter was ‘called on to supervise the construction of buildings, roads and bridges and see that his factory is well and economically run. He is expected to know about cattle, and also to keep an intelligent watch over his small hospital or dressing station and the general provision store.’35 Hutchinson’s original training as an engineer now stood him in good stead. He was involved in replacing the wooden bridges over the swampland (or tenang) to the railway. Re-draining the swamp ‘was a major opus … most interesting work’; but ‘as soon as the road and bridges had been done we did another job at the A.B. [division water supply] building yet another reservoir and putting in a bigger and better pump and also an electric light supply’.36

  The planter’s other major task was overseeing all the workers on the estate, his little kingdom. He was responsible for ‘the human relationship – the very close contact between Assistant (the S.D. or Sina Dorai or Small Master) and his “Narlakies” (headmen) that made everything worthwhile’. As a young Assistant, Hutchinson sympathized with his Indian workers, especially his store clerk, Game-leg Pillay (‘as opposed to his “Cousin-brother”, Pox-eye Pillay, the field conductor’):