[
.]
This is an attempt at
a concise, accurate and up-to-date history of the Victoria
Institution for Victorians old and new. It draws on material
from past efforts and from school publications. Various
errors (some glaring) from past historical accounts have been
corrected, omissions righted and new material added to make
this history current as of 2002. I would be grateful for any
comments.
ollowing 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.
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; 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). 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. 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.
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. In
1899, a two-storey building (Block No. 2), consisting of six
classrooms on the ground floor and masters’ quarters above them
was constructed but this was hardly adequate for long. A
gymnasium and another two-storey building (Block No. 3) containing
a laboratory and three classrooms were added in 1903. In 1909,
Block No. 4 was constructed, consisting of three classrooms on
the ground floor and a large hall on the first floor. In 1921, a
temporary building with three classrooms was erected to relieve
the pressure for space.
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. Another of his legacies was the inauguration of the
House system in 1921, under which the School was divided into
five Houses for competitive sports. With three masters in charge
of each House, they were known as the Red, the Yellow, the Brown,
the Green and the Orange Houses.
In 1900, one of the earliest products of a VI
education, Chan Sze Pong, became the first winner of the newly
instituted Queen's Scholarship for an undergraduate degree course
at a British University. He had also been the School's first
Treacher Scholar and the second Rodger Medallist. Three years
later, his younger brother, Sze Jin, also from the VI, won a
similar scholarship to read law in England. His youngest brother,
Sze Onn, was Rodger Scholar twice and was recruited by Mr Shaw.
Sze Onn was trained with three others - Ayadurai, Syed Jan and M.
H. Foenander - in the first batch of local teachers at the VI
in 1904 and they were subsequently appointed Pupil Teachers.
Indeed, Mr Shaw's policy of recruiting his
Old Boys - the best Old Boys - to return as VI teachers paid off
handsomely. Dozens of such Old Boy teachers, who made up the
majority of the staff, worked diligently beyond the call of duty
for the love and glory of the School. Many made teaching their
life career and gave twenty-five to thirty years of their
professional lives to the VI, churning out a second and even
a third generation of VI teachers. Others went on to be
headmasters of their own schools throughout Malaya, seeding
them with Mr Shaw's ideals and vision.
With the outbreak of the First World War
in 1914, several VI masters enlisted, namely, Goodman Ambler,
James Carr, C G Coleman, William Dainton and George Barber.
Fighting for the Royal Fusiliers, the latter was killed in
action in the epic Battle of the Somme in France in 1916. The
other teachers survived the war and returned to their duties.
VI Old Boys also fought in the war; two who gave their lives
were J H V Thornley and William C Curtis. Sergeant Robert Chan
Hong Seong, of the Mesopotamia Transport Corps is believed to
be one of several other Asian Victorians in the Great War. He
was awarded the Iraq Medal.
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). (Incidentally, the second VIOBA President, who
served from 1926 to 1934, was none other than K T Ganapathy
Pillay, the son of one of the School's founders, Mr Thamboosamy
Pillay.)
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. He
reorganised the school into ten Houses, named after either
founders of the school, old teachers or supporters of the
school, namely, Nugent Walsh, Thamboosamy, Rodger, Hepponstall,
Yap Kwan Seng, Treacher, Loke Yew, Steve Harper, Shaw and
Davidson. Mr 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.
The first school magazine, The Victoria
Institution Echo, was published in April 1923; it was
renamed The Victorian after two issues and continues
to be published to this day. Mr Sidney introduced an annual
Conversazione, which was essentially an open day when
parents would be invited to the school to view school work and
watch various activities like pageants, dancing and massed
displays. 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. Debating
was also a popular activity and VI boys arranged many debates
among themselves and with other schools. An outspoken person,
Mr. Sidney agitated for a new site for the VI and urged that
the VI concentrate on secondary education only. While his
vision was not achieved during his time as Headmaster, it was
realized within three years of his departure.
The Klang River which then meandered
through Kuala Lumpur in those days proved to be a bane to the
school. There was the odd crocodile which lurked on the river
banks next to the school to contend with but, of far greater
inconvenience, were the occasions when the river burst its banks
during the rainy season. Kuala Lumpur was flooded in November
1902, and again in December 1911. As the floods occurred
during holidays, the work of the school was not interrupted.
However, on March 8th, 1917, and October 27th, 1918, the river
reached the ground floor classrooms and the school had to be
closed for several days. The threat of more flooding and the
noise from engineering workshops just across the river prompted
the School’s trustees to look for a more suitable site. In 1919,
the Government had offered a valuable piece of land of about
25 acres in Batu Road and plans for a school to accommodate
1,000 boys had been drawn up. The contract for the building
was ready for signature when the town-planning expert prohibited
the erection of the school building on that site. The rubber
slump then prevented further action for several years. The
overcrowding in the school and the extensive floods of 1926
which caused the school to be closed again for a few days
led to a final decision on an alternate new site on Petaling
Hill which was then a former Chinese cemetery converted to
a golf course.
But the winds of change were blowing even
before that. 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.
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. Because
of the sharp reduction in its number of pupils, the School’s ten
Houses were halved to five – Thamboosamy, Hepponstall, Yap
Kwan Seng, Treacher and Shaw were the ones that survived. 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. In 1932, a
great VI teacher and Old Boy, Mr R. Thampipillay, retired
after over 34 years service with the school. He was presented
with the Imperial Service medal at a ceremony in the School
Hall. The following year, the School Football Eleven won,
for the second time since 1926, the Thomson Cup for inter-school
football supremacy. Boys entering the VI were now selected
from Maxwell English School as well as BRS and PRS. The 1933
enrolment stood at 530.
Equipped with its own laboratories and
using course material developed for tropical schools by its
own Senior Science Master, Mr F. Daniel, the VI began in 1930
to offer science as a subject to all Standard Six and Standard
Seven boys, and to certain classes in Standard Seven and the
Senior Cambridge. A biological garden was maintained on the School
premises with many representative species of flora planted for
teaching purposes; rabbits and guinea pigs were reared for
biological dissections. Such was the demand that pupils from
other schools went to the VI for science lessons in the
afternoons; in the evenings, classes were taught for teachers,
European officials and technical officers of various government
departments. Latin, too, was taught, but only to select classes.
There was also a matriculation class to prepare pupils for
admission to first year courses in the University of London.
Colours were granted every year to outstanding boys in football,
cricket and hockey and half-colours for badminton and athletics.
There were screenings of documentary and feature films on Friday
evenings in the School Hall. 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.
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. (A human skull, overlooked during the
exhumation of the former Chinese cemetery was unearthed
during the construction of the pool.) 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. 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).
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
1939, every V.I. boy was grouped into one of three classes
according to an individual athletic coefficient calculated for
him. This enabled the boy to compete in a range of track and
field events that contributed points to his House. 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! From its well-stocked cadet store
the School gave the LDC service rifles, 0.22 rifles, rifle
slings, webbing belts and other equipment. Teacher Gorbex
Singh helped organise the Air Observer Corps and the Southern
Section of the A.R.P. And then it all ended suddenly, just
after the Cambridge examinations, as the Japanese Army poured
rapidly down the Malay Peninsula towards Kuala Lumpur at the
start of the Pacific War in December. The science laboratory
assistants, Basir and Ahmad, hastily buried some of the
equipment and chemicals in the school grounds. 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. The Talalla brothers, Henry and Cyril, had joined the
Royal Air Force much earlier and flew fighter planes against
the Germans in the European theatre. Cyril was credited with
several kills and was awarded a D.F.C. (with a bar). Henry
Talalla was killed in action when his Typhoon was shot down over
Normandy in 1944. Old Boy Peter Barraclough flew for RAF
Bomber Command while Pilot Officer S.I.S. Kanwar flew for
the Indian Air Force. Captains Gurbax Singh and Tharam Singh
and Lieutenant H I S Kanwar fought in the Indian Army, while
Sulong bin Hamzah and Salleh bin Hassan served in the Malay
Regiment. Yaacob bin Abdul Latiff (later Mayor of Kuala Lumpur),
Bun Tsan Chuan and Captain Syed Shaidali saw service in the
Malayan Campaign. (After the war, Tsan Chuan was awarded the
Military Medal while Shaidali took part in the Victory Parade
in London and even met Mr Winston Churchill.) Ng Kum Heong fought
the Japanese in the FMSVF Armoured Car Regiment, while Old Boys
Leong Hong Teck, Bun Pak San, Wong Ah Yam and Tan Sim Hong
fought in the Burma Campaign as Chinese Army soldiers. Chang
Sow Khong was an artillery sergeant in the Australian Army,
fighting in New Guinea and the Philippines and was later
attached to General MacArthur's Headquarters as an intelligence
officer. Rajion and Harry Lau served in the Red Cross until
the surrender of Singapore. 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. Another Old
Boy, Charles Stratton Brown, served in the Royal Navy and
narrowly survived an attack on his ship, HMS Barham,
when it was torpedoed by a German submarine in the Eastern
Mediterranean in 1941. For sheltering, feeding and helping
British Servicemen during the Occupation, Old Boy E.L.
Schubert, a civilian, was awarded the Supremo’s Certificate.
Gorbex Singh was detained by the Kempeitai
for 70 days and eventually released. He went on to hide the
Malayan resistance leader, "Singa" or the "Lion of Malaya" in
his house and arranged his escape. (Gorbex was awarded the M.B.E.
in 1949.) 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.
The VI’s commanding location on Petaling
Hill made it an ideal choice as a Japanese headquarters.
According to Old Boy Harry Lau who had been given employment
by the Japanese and who had actually visited the VI to collect
his uniform, the VI was not a military but an administrative
establishment of some sort. During the Japanese occupation
of the VI premises, however, the school’s library books,
trophies, equipment, laboratory apparatus (including the
secretly buried hoard) were either stolen or destroyed. 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. (Incidentally, with peace now restored, the long-awaited
results of the 1941 Cambridge examinations were finally released!)
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.
Three Houses, extinct since the nineteen twenties - Loke Yew,
Rodger and Davidson - were resurrected in June 1947 to
bring the number of houses to the present eight. This 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. School activities were reorganised and
new periods were allocated for educational radio broadcasts,
swimming, concerts and vernacular languages. Metal school
badges were issued to the boys for the first time.
Clubs and societies were formed or revived
as the School slowly picked itself up – the Science and Maths
Society and the Photographic Society were brand new Societies
born in the Daniel era. In 1948, the very exclusive 1939 Literary
Circle founded by Mr N S Buck was revived and merged with the
prewar Debating Society and the Historical and Civic Society
to form the Literary, Debating and Historical Society. Two
years later, it split into the Historical Association and the
Literary and Debating Society. With the school enrolment
ballooning to 800, the Annual Athletic sports were finally
revived in 1947, with the Sultan of Selangor and his consort
gracing the occasion. As all the prewar challenge trophies had
been stolen, borrowed trophies stood in for them during the
prize-giving! When the replacements were eventually acquired
through donations, the most poignant was the Victor Ludorum
trophy, donated by the widows in memory of the six VI teachers
who had died during the war.
In 1947, the HMS Malaya, a warship
built in 1915, had completed its service and was to be
decommissioned. As the VI was the premier school in Malaya,
it was decided that the watch bell of this ship which was
built from donations by the people of Malaya during the
First World War be presented to the school. The original bell
was allotted to Perak and hung in the Perak Council Chamber.
On 12th September 1947, the second watch bell of HMS Malaya
was presented to the VI by Rear Admiral H.J. Egerton. The
ceremony was broadcast live on the radio and witnessed by
many dignitaries including the Governor, Sir Edward Gent,
and the Sultan of Selangor. This gift replaced the original
school bell which had disappeared during the war and, for a
year or two, it was rung every morning by the School Captain
to signal the start of school. It was also used by Mr Daniel
to summon the School to special assemblies.
The Laxamana Cup was presented in 1949 by
the Tengku Laxamana of Selangor for an annual football match
between the Victoria Institution and his old school, the Malay
College, Kuala Kangsar. The first match was played on 12th
March, 1949, at the VI field and ended in a 1-1 draw. A few
days later, on 17th March 1949, Mr Anthony Eden (who was the
wartime Foreign Secretary and who would become British Prime
Minister in 1955) visited the school and officially opened
the new VI library at its new premises in the science wing.
The library, which had lost all its books during the war,
had been restocked through many generous contributions from
Old Boys. It had seating accommodation for 80 boys and
room for 10,000 books. Honour Boards inscribed with the
names of various games captains and scholars were affixed
to the walls of the new library. Mr Eden also unveiled the
school war memorial in the library to enshrine the memory
of those teachers and Old Boys who had given their lives in
both world wars. Eleven yellow flame trees were also planted
by parents, the School Captain and the Headmaster, in the
following order, in the memory of: G Barber, G Burgess, H D
Grundy, E W Reeve, A C Strahan, T L White, M Daniel (wife of
the Headmaster), E R de Jong, Henry Talalla, R C Seimund,
Harold Leembruggen. Many of these trees are still flourishing
today.
Mr Daniel was regarded as a strict man
who believed in discipline, cleanliness and the dignity of
work. Without fail he would walk around the school premises
every morning to inspect the grounds. Mr Daniel re-introduced
the prewar tradition of daily classroom cleaning. The brass
hinges and knobs of the classroom doors had to be polished by
the VI boys every day before lessons, and marks were awarded
every day by prefects who inspected each classroom. A challenge
shield would then be presented at the school assembly to the
cleanest classroom of each week which then earned the privilege
of hanging that shield in the front of the class for one whole
week. Mr Daniel loved the school so much that he spurned the
comforts of the nearby Headmaster’s house and chose, instead,
to live a spartan existence in a small corner room in the School
building itself.
There is one legacy, however, that Mr
Daniel will certainly be remembered for. There had been at
least two failed attempts by the School in the past to have
a distinctive School Song of its own. Mr Daniel commissioned
Mr G F Jackson, an English literature teacher, to compose
those three immortal verses of the School Song that are known
today by all Victorians and sung to the tune of the medieval
students’ song, Gaudeamus. Mr Daniel also inaugurated,
on November 21, 1948, the annual series of games between
Present Boys and Old Boys for the prize that is named after
him – the Daniel Trophy.
Mr. E.M.F. Payne succeeded Mr. Daniel
as Headmaster in May 1949. During his tenure, the Detention
Class (more popularly known as D C) was introduced
for the punishment of errant boys. Post Certificate Classes
were introduced to prepare pupils for university (the
University of Malaya had just been established in Singapore
in 1949). A veritable social revolution occurred in 1950
with the admission to the School of its first girl, Miss
Yoong Yan Yoong, from the Methodist Girls' School. Miss
Yoong, who had two brothers in the VI, later read medicine
at the university and is now retired as a doctor in Johor
Baru. In 1951, the Science and Mathematics Society organised
a Science Exhibition, initiating an annual tradition that
spanned more than two decades. The same year, King Scout K.
Yogarajah was the sole Selangor representative at the World
Jamboree held in Austria.
The VIMADS of the nineteen twenties was
revived as the VI Drama Society that same year. Its first
play, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, was
publicly performed the following year to critical acclaim.
This set another tradition in motion with the school
thereafter producing a major play annually for a good
twenty years. During Mr Payne's tenure, basketball and
volleyball were introduced to the school for the first time
and rugby, last played in the early 1930s, was reintroduced.
In November 1951, the School was presented with a gilt-framed
oil portrait of Queen Victoria painted by Mohammed Hoessein
Enas, an artist from Java noted for his portraiture of
Malay royalty. This was an enlargement of a smaller engraving
that had been presented two years earlier by the High
Commissioner, Sir Henry Gurney, who had planned to personally
hand over his latest gift but had been assassinated a month
earlier. The Queen Victoria portrait hung at the back of
the stage until the early sixties when it was removed to
the school library where it still hangs over the entrance.
The first Pure Science class was set up in 1952 in Standard
Eight (now Form 4) offering physics, chemistry and biology
as subjects for the School Certificate examination.
Mr Payne left the VI in May 1952.
Between 1953 and 1955, there were three Headmasters - Mr
G.P. Dartford, Mr A. Atkinson and Mr P. Roberts - in rapid
succession. 1953 witnessed the birth and rebirth of
several school icons. The first VI monthly newspaper,
The V.I. Voice, was launched in June, 1953. It was
renamed The Seladang in October, 1953, after the
animal in the school crest symbolizing the state of
Selangor. Making its debut in The Seladang's masthead,
was its motto - Be Yet Wiser - the final part of a
popular proverb. This was expropriated after a few years
and foisted as the motto of the School. The Seladang
continues to be published to this day. The VI Cadet Corps,
which had lain dormant since the Pacific War, was finally
revived. The school celebrated the coronation of Queen
Elizabeth II in June with concerts and ice cream treats for
the boys. The VI building was one of many in Kuala Lumpur
to be floodlit for the coronation revelry. 1953 also saw
the birth of a specialist science journal, The Scientific
Victorian, published exclusively by the members of the
VI Science and Maths Society. A proper school uniform - all
white - was introduced and all boys began wearing metal school
badges, a practice that had lapsed since Mr Daniel's time.
The School prefects started the tradition of wearing light
blue shirts in place of white ones. Twelve years after its
sudden demise, the VI Cadet Corps - minus its band - was
revived with 80 recruits, more than double the expected
number. Two years later, a separate band platoon of eighteen
boys was formed equipped with instruments donated by the
Education Department.
In 1954, under the Headmastership of Mr
A. Atkinson, the VI celebrated the Diamond Jubilee of its
opening. 30th July 1954 was commemorated as Founders Day
with a revival of the prewar Prize-giving ceremony. On that
same day the Sultan of Selangor laid the foundation stone
of the VI Old Boys Association Club House, the building of
which the present VI boys had spent many months soliciting
donations for. The School had 38 staff teaching 28 classes
totalling just over a thousand pupils, including 17 girls,
in 1954. The Post School Certificate, now renamed Form Six,
had five classes. A V.I. Flight of 25 boys, was formed as
the No. 1 Squadron of the Federation of Malaya Air Training
Corps.
When Dr. G.E.D. Lewis took over as
Headmaster of the VI from late 1955 he initiated a
golden age for the V.I. in terms of innovation, and in
superlative results in sports and academic endeavour.
He air-conditioned the library and restocked it with more
reading materials. He also uncovered evidence of secret
society members in the School and dealt with them forcefully,
rooting out gangsterism in the VI. As a counter to such
nefarious activities, Dr Lewis established Club 21, an
exclusive group - limited to 21 students at any one time
- of those who were meritorious achievers either in
extra-mural activities or studies or both.
In 1956, Dr Lewis initiated the first
of many far reaching changes for the VI – he introduced a
new Speech Day format which combined exhibitions of school
and society work with a prize-giving ceremony and a school
concert, a format which lasted well into the 1970s. Like
so many of his predecessors, he was a strict disciplinarian
and believed in all-round education for the VI pupils –
working hard and playing hard. He regrouped the boys into
three age classes – fewer than the cumbersome postwar five
classes – so that each House could then have enough
players per age class for competition in the various sports.
He reintroduced compulsory cross-country running and
refined the prewar points system whereby every boy who ran
within a certain time, or jumped over a certain height or
threw a javelin, shot or discus over a certain distance
scored a point for himself and his House. The annual
athletics sports did not escape change either. Inspired by
the Olympic Games, it now began with an impressive march
past with an athletes contingent leading the eight house
contingents. Houses were required to erect their own tents
from which their members watched the proceedings and there
was a formal closing ceremony, with bugles sounding the
Last Post, after the prize-giving.
In another innovation, VI girls now
wore their own distinctive uniforms - light blue blouses
and dark blue skirts. In addition, a Senior Girl, with
the rank of prefect, was appointed to represent the
burgeoning number of girls in the school. Miss Teh Paik
Lian became the first Senior Girl in the VI in 1956. She
later returned as Mrs Ee Thian Hong to teach mathematics
at the school. To cope with the increasing demand for
post-secondary education, a Form Six Block consisting of
four classrooms, a lecture hall, three well-equipped
laboratories, and an adjacent animal house were built in
1957. Erected at the same time was the VI Hostel to
accommodate increasing numbers of out-of-town boys, some
coming from as far away as Kelantan and Trengganu. That
same year, The Analekta made its debut as the arts
students' counterpart to The Scientific Victorian.
Under the terms of the Education Ordinance of 1957 all
Malayan schools were to be administered by Boards of
Governors. Two thirds of the VI's first Board of Governors
in 1958 were Old Boys and the Chairman was prominent Old
Boy Yaacob bin Abdul Latiff. That year the School had
1,030 pupils of which 162 were in Form Five and 140 boys
and 31 girls were in the Sixth Form. Dr Lewis built a new
school canteen in 1960 on the site of the School carpenter’s
workshop. The library was simultaneously extended into
the boys' lavatory next to it and a new replacement lavatory
was built next to the canteen. Many societies and clubs
sprouted during the Lewis era, catering to diverse interests
ranging from aeromodelling to swimming to philosophy.
In academic prowess, Victorians were
second to none. In 1956, Ooi Boon Seng aced his Senior
Cambridge examinations with eight A1 distinctions and
was the toast of the school. Year after year, Victorians
were winning more than their share of scholarships,
including the prestigious Colombo Plan Scholarships.
Complementing the Treacher and Rodger Scholarships, the
Lewis Prize was founded and awarded to the best student
in the Higher School Certificate examination; the first
winner was Khoo Choong Keow in 1958. Unafraid to commit
the VI boys to any challenge, Dr Lewis initiated many
annual bilateral meets with other schools in various
sports, the most famous being the annual VI-Federation
Military College athletics meet which pitted VI’s best
athletes against those of the country’s military school.
Dr Lewis will also be remembered as the Headmaster who
promoted rugby tirelessly and made the VI a school rugby
power. In the early sixties, the crown prince of Brunei
joined the VI, a testimony to the high standing of the
School. He, of course, is Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah
today. One of Dr. Lewis' more lasting legacies for the
school was to commission Old Boy R. Suntharalingam, then
a VI history teacher and later a professor of history,
to write an official history of the school. On the book's
publication in early 1962, every VI pupil had to sit a
written test on the contents of that book.
As new educational policy required that
all schools be self-supporting, another of the legacies of
Dr Lewis before he retired to England later that year was
the establishment of the V.I. Endowment Fund. Within a year,
Old Boys and parents had donated more than $25,000 to that
Fund. Mr. A.D. Baker became Headmaster in September 1962.
Although he would be the last expatriate headmaster of the
School as the process of Malayanisation ground on after
Merdeka, the VI’s stirring record of achievements in
sporting and academic fields was maintained during his short
tenure. In his time, Davidson House was renamed Sultan Abdul
Samad House in 1963 and the sad news was also received of the
death of Mr C.E. Gates, the last prewar Headmaster. Succeeding
Mr Baker, Mr. V. Murugasu, who had been a postwar pupil at
the VI until 1950, took over the reins on 1st June, 1964.
He had been a House football captain and secretary of the
Geographical Society during his VI schooldays. After graduating
with an arts degree in English, he had been Headmaster at two
other schools and at the Day Training College, and a deputy
Chief Education Officer before being posted to his alma mater.
Mr Murugasu was a rigid disciplinarian, in
the mold of his old Headmaster, Mr F. Daniel. He did not spare
the rod and he emphasized the equal importance of studies and
extra-mural activities. He implemented a system that awarded
certain points for each extra-mural activity that a pupil
participated in. The School’s superlative academic and sporting
achievements continued to elicit regular headlines and
flattering coverage in the local papers. Seeking to avoid
stereotyping of lower secondary pupils by the 'A', 'B', 'C'
or 'D' categorisation of their classes, Mr Murugasu replaced
these with 'North', 'South', 'East' and 'West', not
necessarily in the same order. His VI dress code required
pupils to wear canvas shoes instead, and only Sixth Formers
were allowed to wear long pants and leather shoes. Hair
styles and hair lengths were strictly enforced.
The postwar explosion in the number of clubs
and societies that saw the numbers jump from three in 1948 to
24 in 1962 soon resulted in inertia and falling memberships due
to competition and overlapping activities. In 1964, the
Geographical, the Historical, the Economics, and the Senior
Literary and Debating Societies were amalgamated into the VI Arts
Union. In a triumph of planning and organization, the new Union
organized three simultaneous overseas tours at the end of the
year for one hundred pupils and a handful of teachers. One group
sailed to India, another to Hong Kong, Japan and Vietnam, and the
third went overland by train to Thailand. In a similar move, in
1966, the Society of Drama, the Art and Craft Club and the Musical
Society merged into the Cultural Society. Still the thinning of
literary talent and support took its toll on The Analekta
which folded after its eleventh issue in 1967.
Expatriate teachers began returning to
the VI in the early sixties, this time as volunteers from
Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the United States. The
first American Peace Corpsman, Samuel D. Edwards, joined the
V.I. staff in 1965. On January 31st, 1966, the School marked
the news of the death of former Headmaster, Mr Richard Sidney.
He had lived in Malaysia after his retirement from teaching,
publishing Young Malayans, a monthly English magazine
for youths. The VICC Band acquired their first bagpipes and
were commended by US President Lyndon Johnson (a Texan) who
heard them playing The Yellow Rose of Texas when he
was driven past the Band during his visit to Malaysia in 1966.
He got down from his limousine and shook hands with the Drum
Major. A bust of the President was later sent in appreciation
to the school! 1968 marked the 75th anniversary of the
founding of the VI which was celebrated with great pomp and
pageantry, with the Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, in
attendance. Mr R Thampipillay, one of the early pupils of
the VI and a VI teacher for over 34 years was a special
guest of honour. The school had 1392 pupils and 56 teachers
in that historic year.
1969 was a watershed year as the May 13
incident resulted in the unprecedented cancellation of the
school annual athletics meet. The annual school play was also
abandoned just as rehearsals were in full swing. Red Cross
Society members on the other hand offered their services to
the National Red Cross during the crisis. This was also Mr
Murugasu's final year at the VI as he was transferred to
Malacca. The following year, Mr Richard Pavee the school
clerk officially retired. A pupil of the school from 1918 to
1927, he had started employment at the school in 1935 and
had known every VI Headmaster from Mr B.E. Shaw on. He was
literally an institution within an Institution. Mr. Tan Cheng
Or was appointed headmaster in 1970 and, after just over a
year, was succeeded by Mr. V Somasundram in 1971. Old Boy Oh
Kong Lum served as Senior Assistant under him and was the
first of four consecutive Old Boy Senior Assistants. A special
school assembly was called on August 13th, 1971, to pay tribute
to former Headmaster Mr F. Daniel, who had passed away in
England two weeks earlier at the age of 72. The first ever
nationwide Teachers Day was observed on May 16, 1972, with
a special assembly followed by staff-student games and a
lunch reception. In August of that year, the VIOBA celebrated
its Golden Jubilee and a dinner for 320 Old Boys and their
friends was held in the School Hall.
Mr Victor Gopal became Headmaster in 1973
and will be remembered as the Headmaster who commissioned
teacher, Puan Zainab bte Yusop, to write the Bahasa Malaysia
version of the School Song. In that same year the
Parent-Teacher Association of the VI was formed. A fundamental
change occurred in The Victorian when it was decided
that it would solely serve as an annual report without any
literary features in 1973. Its traditional cover design which
had been used every year from 1930 was replaced in 1974 with
a picture of the School clock tower. The cover design has
continued to change yearly according to the whims and
creativity of the editorial board, but the literary features
eventually returned in 1977.
1974 saw many other changes. One was the
renaming of Hepponstall House as Lee Kuan Yew House, honouring
the distinguished Old Boy who had been an outstanding sportsman
in his school days in the 1920s and a VIOBA chairman. More
club and society mergers took place that year with the Arts
Union absorbing the Commerce Society and the Junior Literary
and Debating Society as well, while the Cultural Society
combined with the Persatuan Bahasa Malaysia, the Chinese
Language Society and the Tamil Language Society and renamed
itself the VI Cultural Union. In that historic year, the
Science and Mathematics Society, the Junior Science Group,
the Electronics Society and the Automotive Club similarly
merged into the VI Science Union. With these three giant
Unions the total number of school clubs and societies shrank
to a manageable twelve. The Board of Chairmen, an umbrella
grouping comprising the chairmen of all the School's clubs,
societies and uniformed bodies, was formed around this time to
coordinate the various activities of their own organisations
in order to avoid clashes and duplication. Sadly, in this
period The Scientific Victorian fell victim to lack of
support and ceased publishing.
In 1975, eleven Second KL Scouts went on
the first of many successful expeditions to Gunung Tahan.
On April 1st of that year, a roller skating rink, built from
donations by the PTA and other well-wishers, was declared open
by Old Boy Mr Lee Kuan Yew. Measuring some 30 metres across
at its widest, the oval-shaped track was located near the
site of the present day surau and gave the VI boys an
alternative sport to enjoy. But badminton, not skating, was
the VI's watchword, for by the late 1970s, the VI had become
a badminton power. Because of its hostel and excellent
facilities many of the country's best badminton talents
were being transferred to school. The VI under-18 and
under-15 badminton teams were earning fame and glory. In
April 1977, the VI retained the King's Cup in the Malaysian
under-18 badminton championship after crushing the
Anglo-Chinese School Ipoh 5-0 in the boys' final. With
this win, the VI gained the distinction of being the
first school in the country to win the coveted trophy
three times in succession. Mohd. Misbun bin Haji Sidek
was declared VI Sportsman of the Year for 1978. He and his
brothers and other ex-Victorian shuttlers would eventually
constitute the bulk of the 1992 national team that would
bring the Thomas Cup back to Malaysia.
In 1976, under the headmastership
of Encik Abdul Rahim bin Che Teh, a new scout den, costing
over RM10,000 and designed by Old Victorian Fong Ying Hong,
was built from funds raised by the School. Another Old Boy
was Senior Assistant at this time - Vong Choong Choy - who
served until 1979 when Encik Baharum bin Othman became
Headmaster. Because of large numbers of pupils from the rural
areas who comprised 40 percent of the school population,
afternoon sessions had to be conducted which had a detrimental
effect on extra-mural activities. Nevertheless, the VI won
the Interschool Sixth Form Science quiz for the fourth time
and also became Malaysian schools cricket champion.
In 1980, Encik Baharom was succeeded
by Encik Abdul Shukor bin Haji Abdullah, a Harvard Master
of Education graduate. With the completion of the Form 1
and 2 Block in 1981, the VI could now revert to being a
single session school, with extra-curricular activities
held in the afternoon. Encik Abdul Rahim bin Abdul Majid
was the next Headmaster, serving six years from 1982. Two
more Old Boys served as Senior Assistants during the eighties
- Daniel Chan from 1980 to 1982, and Dharam Prakash who
succeeded him and served until 1986. Two new martial arts
associations were formed in Encik Abdul Rahim's first year.
They catered for students interested in judo, wrestling,
self-defense and the traditional Malay martial art of
silat. Inspired by the emergence of information
technology, the VI Computer Society was inaugurated in
February 1983, and was presented with a computer by
distinguished Old Boy Tun Ismail bin Mohd Ali, the Governor
of Bank Negara. In April 1983, the VI Red Crescent Society,
which had started as the VI Junior Red Cross Link of the
Federation of Malaya Red Cross Society, celebrated its
silver anniversary. The School's ninetieth birthday was
also celebrated that year. The anniversary cake was cut
by Old Victorian Tan Sri Dr Tan Chee Khoon who also
donated $20,000 to a scholarship fund. The VI Cadet Corps
celebrated the anniversary of its founding with a tattoo
that became a biennial event thereon.
In the late seventies and the eighties,
the clubs and societies started fragmenting and splintering,
creating a record number of clubs and uniformed groups in
the school - 32 by 1986. In 1979, the Science Union called
itself the Science and Mathematics Society again, the
Junior Science Group having split off years earlier. The
Economics Society had, in 1985, a brief existence, while
the Historical Society peeled away permanently in 1986
from the Arts Union which itself finally became defunct
in 1990. It was reborn in 1991 as the Literary and
Debating Society. The Geographical Society was revived
in 1994 and then merged with the Historical Society to
become the Historical and Geographical Society in 1996.
As the Cultural Union gradually changed its focus and became
the Persatuan Persuratan dan Kebudayaan in 1986 and then
the Persatuan Seni dan Budaya in 1990, special interest
groups emerged - the Hindu Club in 1985, the Classical
Music Club in 1992, the Chinese Language Society in 1993,
and Kelab Seni Pentas dan Teater in 1996.
A new school canteen was built in 1985.
The School's swimming supremacy was maintained that year
when its swimmers bagged a total of 27 golds, 18 silvers
and 3 bronzes at the MSSMWP Meet. Five VI water polo
players represented Kuala Lumpur in an inter-city
tournament at Perth, Australia. At year's end, the VI
cricket team which was Federal Territory school champion
for five consecutive years went on a tour of Peninsular
Malaya, winning five matches out of six.
In early 1987, there was a proposal by
the educational authorities to replace 'Victoria' in the School's
name. A petition initiated by the prefects and vigorous protests
by the V.I. pupils as well as prominent Old Boys like Tan Sri
Hashim Mohd Ali, Tan Sri Zain Azraai and Justice M. Shankar
resulted in the withdrawal of that proposal. The School was
renamed Sekolah Menengah Victoria instead. The 1987 World
Jamboree in Sydney was attended by representatives of the First
and Second KL Troops.
Under Headmaster Encik Shuib bin
Dahaban, who assumed his duties in 1988, there were 79
staff. By now there was recognition of the need to
preserve the School’s past for future generations of
Victorians. A large room was acquired that year for
a museum to display all manner of interesting Victoriana
accumulated over almost 100 years. Interhouse competition
in all sports except athletics ended. In athletics, the
various Houses continued to vie for the championship
through "standard sports" (previously known as qualifying
rounds in track and field events)and through events on
Sports Day itself. In other sports, the School maintained
teams for Inter-School competition and, indeed, as the
nineties began, the V.I. was a sports powerhouse. It
could lay claim to winning all the state water-polo
championships since 1970, except for a loss in the early
eighties. Between 1985 and 1994, the VI lost the state
football championships only three times and the School
cricketers were invariably state cricket champions each
year. The VI Literary and Debating Society (VILADS) - a
vibrant society of the fifties and early sixties - was
resurrected in December 1990 with the aim of upgrading
English language proficiency in the school. It also
participated in an inter-school drama competition,
recapturing as well the spirit of the defunct Dramatic
Society of yesteryear. In 1991, on the occasion of the
Asian Track and Field Championships held at the Merdeka
Stadium, a $400,000 115-metre synthetic track was
built in the school field for use by the competitors as a
warm-up track. It is the only school track in Malaysia that
is recognised by the Asian Track and Field Federation.
16th July 1992 was the day the VI
welcomed its first lady principal, Puan Robeahtun binte
Haji Ahmad Damanhuri, who had been a member of the
staff in 1973 to 1974. She became fully involved in
the upcoming VI centenary events as chairperson of the
school committees planning for those events. The centenary
athletics event was held on Saturday, 20th February 1993.
The guest-of-honour was Dr. Mani Jegathesan, an Old Boy
of the VI and semi-finalist in the 200 metre sprint event
in the 1964 and 1968 Olympics. The centenary tattoo was
held on the night of 10th April with the Assunta School
and the Tunku Kurshiah College bands participating as
well. On 8th May, the VI held its centenary concert in
the Kuala Lumpur City Hall auditorium as a tribute to
the School’s founders and to the people of Kuala Lumpur.
On August 7, a Speech Day was held with the Minister of
Education as Guest of Honour who declared open the
newly-built four-storey twelve-classroom Sixth Form
block and launched a two-day Exhibition as well. The
exhibits, of science, arts and extra-curricular interest,
harked back to two decades or more ago when such events
were annual affairs at the VI. The in-house celebrations
climaxed at the VI Open House on 13th August at the
quadrangle with a countdown to twelve midnight to mark the
hundredth birthday of the VI the next day.
A grand banquet was held at the
Shangrila Hotel on 14th August itself where Old Boys and
Girls, their spouses and well-wishers dined with the
likes of the Prime Minister, the Sultan of Brunei, two
cabinet ministers, five ex-Headmasters including
81-year-old Dr G E D Lewis who had travelled from London,
several Tan Sris and two of the oldest Old Boys, aged 82
and 83, who could be traced. The last event was on 19th
August when a permanent VI Museum was officially opened by
Mr. Gnanalingam, a parent, who had very generously financed
the construction of the Museum which occupies two adjoining
classrooms on the ground floor of the main building.
In 1995, the library was again
upgraded to cope with the increasing numbers of students.
The VI was provided with four computers, making it one
of the first schools to have Jaring Internet facilities.
Puan Robeahtun was succeeded in December 1995 by Encik
Othman b. Husin, who held the post for less than a year.
Puan Salha bt. Othman became the second lady principal
in 1996. On 27th July 1996, the VI Mosque (Surau Abdul
Kadir Mat) was officially opened. It had been designed
by Hajeedar Majid, an Old Boy, and financed by the
Sultan of Brunei. Dato Seri Najib b. Tun Haji Abdul
Razak, the Education Minister, paid an official visit to
the VI in September 1996 and attended a School assembly.
After a lapse of fifteen years, the Laxamana Cup was
revived in August 1997 and renamed the Piala Sultan Azlan
Shah. In 1998 the VI Prefects Board celebrated its 75th
year of existence with a dinner attended by ex-Prefects
from past years. The guest of honour was the 1949 School
Captain, Dr R.S. McCoy.
The 1998 Commonwealth Games had rich
VI connections. The chairman of the organising committee
was none other than Old Victorian General Tan Sri Hashim
Mohamed Ali. The VI field was designated as one of the
venues for the international cricket matches and a
second sports pavilion, a permanent addition to the
School's frontage, was built for that purpose. The VI
Cadet Band performed in the opening and closing
ceremonies of the Games. Indeed, throughout the 1990s
the VI Cadet Band had been the most visible standard
bearer for the school. It had won the gold many times
in National Day parades and in National School Band
Competitions. It had also participated in marching band
festivals in Sydney, Australia, in 1996, and in Yokohama,
Japan, in 1998. In 2000, in Calgary, Canada, the band
boys brought back a gold medal from the World
Championship for Marching Show Bands.
A new Headmaster, Tuan Haji Baharom
b. Haji Kamari, assumed charge in January 1999. The
first VI Heritage Night was held on 17th July, 1999,
to pay homage to the School’s founders, and to celebrate
the School’s successes and achievements. In 1999, Ho
Sui Jim scored an amazing 10 A1s in the SPM examination,
topping the exam and deservedly winning the Rodger
Scholarship. (This feat was repeated in 2001 by Emmanuel
Anandraj Selvaraj.) In April of that year came the sad news
that former Headmaster Dr G E D Lewis had passed away in
London. The school roof was re-tiled for the first time
in 70 years and new water pipes laid. Incidentally, the act
of laying the latter resulted in the accidental unearthing
of an old Chinese burial urn near the swimming pool, a
reminder of the original purpose of the school grounds.
This attracted media coverage and an archaeological team
from Muzium Negara Antiquities Department removed the urn
for further study.
The aging parts of the four clocks in
the school tower had broken down many times over the
decades. A long campaign to replace the clocks finally
came to fuition when, under the efforts of Old Boy Dato’
Jaffar Indot, Chairman of the VI Foundation, four new
electric clocks were installed and officially launched
on the night of 12th August, 2000. That year, too, the
talented actors of the VILADS publicly staged a selection
of dramatic pieces entitled Mad Cows Dancing Free
at the Actor’s Studio in Dataran Merdeka. Three of the
four pieces were written by the boys themselves. The VILADS
repeated its success the following year with Would
You like a Cigarette?, written and directed by
seventeen-year-old Avinash Pradhan, son of a former
School Captain. On 22nd April 2001, the VI held a carnival
in conjunction with the Daniel Shield games. At the Wilayah
Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur Schools Marching Band competition
at the Titiwangsa Lake Gardens, the VI took top spot and
also won the Best Drum Major title.
In mid-2002, Tuan Baharom was transferred
from the VI and Tuan Haji Taslim Sarbini took over the helm
of the School. He had been Headmaster of two previous schools
and had worked with student associations overseas before that.
The Headmaster's bungalow, dating from the 1930s, was
demolished in August and construction begun for two new hostel
blocks to accommodate a total School hostel population of
400. The VI story is definitely far from over.
The school’s philosophy of a balanced
education of mind and body as envisioned by its first
Headmaster was embraced by generations of Shaw’s
successors. That it worked can be seen from the products
that walked through the portals of the school that is
better known as the Victoria Institution - educationists,
lawyers, doctors, engineers, civil servants, captains of
business, scientists of all disciplines, judges, cabinet
ministers, politicians, chief ministers, sultans, generals,
think tankers, writers, poets, dramatists, artists. Many
studied in the best universities in the world and have
reached the commanding heights of Malaysian society and
owe their very success to the unique all-round education
they had received at the V.I., an education that gave
them countless opportunities to organize and lead and to
develop mind and body in tandem.
The Victoria Institution, 2000
The V.I. Web Page