Remember Singapore

According to a 1840s map, Sago Street appeared earlier than Sago Lane. Sago Street was located at the westernmost boundary of the Chinatown area, a Chinese precinct created as part of the British’s town planning and ethnic segregation in the early 19th century.

A small hill named Dickinson Hill was situated where Kreta Ayer People’s Theatre is today. It was named after Reverend J.T. Dickenson who ran a missionary school at the nutmeg tree-filled hill. Also known as Bukit Padre, it was later renamed Bukit Pasoh.

In 1826, when the first landed property titles were issued, many leases for land around North and South Bridge Roads were won by the Chinese, who went on to build rows of shophouses along Sago Street, Smith Street, Almeida Street, Pagoda Street, Mosque Street, Upper Cross Street, Upper Chin Chew Street, Upper Nankin Street, Upper Hokien Street and Upper Macao Street.

Many of the shophouses at Sago Street were used as sago factories when they were built in the 1840s. There was a total of 17 sago factories – 15 Chinese sago factories and 2 owned by the Europeans. The abundance of the sago factories gave rise to the names of Sago Street and later Sago Lane.

Chinatown Streets

In 1927, the colonial government approved the Dickinson Hill development scheme, including the building of many tenement houses at the area to improve the housing issue. New roads – Keong Siak Road and Dickenson Hill Road – were built at the vicinity in 1931.

Pre-war Banda Street was notoriously known as Japanese Street due to many Japanese prostitutes soliciting in the area. After the war, it was occupied by the night street hawkers who enjoyed brisk businesses from the mourners and families visiting Sago Lane’s death houses and funeral parlours.

Almeida Street was renamed Temple Street in 1908 to avoid confusion with D’Almeida Street (at Raffles Place) and Almeida Road (Orchard).

Chin Chew Street, Nankin Street, Hokien Street and Macao Street were all named after places in China (Quanzhou, Nanjing, Fujian and Macau today). On 1 January 1925, the Municipal Commission renamed Macao Street (and Upper Macao Street) to Pickering Street (and Upper Pickering Street). Upper Chin Chew Street and Upper Nankin Street were expunged in the mid-seventies to make way for the development of Hong Lim Complex.

Social Issues

In 1849, there were about 28,000 Chinese in Singapore. The influx of Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century led to the dense population at Chinatown. The Chinese immigrants, many of them working as coolies and rickshaw pullers, were packed into the overcrowded shophouses.

Sago Street and Sago Lane were constantly plagued by the several secret societies that fought for territories. At Sago Lane, gang fights frequently broke out around a popular eating house called Wah Tian Lock. Extortions and robberies were rife, with many shophouses used as brothels, gambling houses, opium shops and gangster hideouts.

Infectious Diseases

In 1895, the Municipal Health Officer reported many deaths due to cholera, especially at the overcrowded places such as Sago Lane. Cases of infectious diseases such as beriberi, tuberculosis, dysentery, malaria and smallpox continued to plague Sago Lane and other parts of Chinatown throughout the early 20th century.

Installation of clean water pipes, levelling of drains and metalling of the road were carried out at Sago Lane in the 1910s. However, this did little to improve its sanitation and hygienic conditions.

Fire Disasters 

A large fire broke out in 1925 and destroyed two three-storied shophouses at the junction of Sago Lane and Banda Road. Another fire occurred in 1933, damaging six of South Bridge Road’s shophouses. The flames spread rapidly towards Sago Street and Sago Lane but fortunately the firemen were able to put out the fire in time.

In 1956, a fire blazed through a four-storey building at Sago Lane. Six, including two kids, perished. 47 people were made homeless. Acting Chief Minister Chew Swee Kee (1918-1985) visited and consoled the families of the victims.

The disaster, Singapore’s worse since the war, raised concerns of the fire safety of Chinatown’s shophouses. The overcrowded living conditions, lack of fire escape exits in the buildings, widespread use of oil lamps, and the burning of joss sticks and paper effigies all posed a deadly fire risk to the residents.

Violent Riots

On 26 October 1956, many parts of Singapore were struck by riots and violence after the government shut down the Singapore Chinese Middle Schools Students’ Union (SCMSSU) and dismissed teachers and students involved in suspected communist-related activities.

Later known as the Chinese Middle School Student Riots, hundreds of hysterical mobs, made up of Chinese students and hooligans, attacked the Europeans and policemen, who fired back, resulting in the death of seven rioters. More than 70 rioters, civilians and policemen were injured.

A curfew was enforced in the afternoon but did little to tame the riots. 160 Federation policemen were activated from Johor as reinforcement to support Singapore’s police force. Some of the violence occurred at Paya Lebar Airport, Guillemard Road, Merdeka Bridge, Maxwell Road, Telok Ayer Road, South Bridge Road, Beauty World and Geylang. At Sago Lane, a crowd of 200 mobsters attacked a police radio car.

Sick Houses

A 1892 newspaper article of a Sago Lane shophouse might be one of the earliest mentions of a sick or death house that later became a common phenomenon at Sago Lane. In this shophouse were sick and dying women and their babies abandoned by the nearby brothels. Seven deaths took place in it in just 18 days, including five infants and two young women.

Sick houses were also known as sick receiving houses. But these hospices of the older days, in reality, were not for the sick to recuperate and recover. Those suffering from critical illness and injuries were instead left to die in them.

This was due to a common Chinese belief. If a person was allowed to die in a dwelling house, it would bring bad luck to the co-tenants living in the same house. This persistent superstition often forced the dying person to be removed and sent to the sick houses.

However, most of the sick houses were of poor conditions. Some sick houses were run by the undertakers, and they simply placed the sick or dying person on a bed beside coffins with corpses inside.

In 1928, out of a total 12,000 deaths in Singapore, almost 1,000 happened in the sick houses. The Municipal Commission therefore passed a law to license the sick houses so that the owners would properly maintain the facilities and conditions of their sick houses.

By 1939, there were four sick houses at Sago Lane and a dozen more in other parts of Chinatown. For $10, the sick person could be admitted to any of these sick houses and left alone to his or her fate. The sick houses would not provide any food; this had be provided by the sick person’s relatives or friends.

Death Houses

After the war, sick houses became better known as the death houses or dying houses, as Sago Lane evolved into the centre of the Chinese funeral industry in Singapore. The local Cantonese called it sei yan kai (“street of the dead in Cantonese) or mun chai kai (“undertaker street”).

By 1948, seven death houses were operating in Singapore; two were licensed as “sick receiving houses” and the other five unlicensed. One of the two licensed death houses was Kwok Mun, said to have established at Sago Lane 45 years ago in the early-1900s. It occupied two shophouses where one shophouse served as the admission office whereas the other was the mortuary. The top floors were separated into the male and female wards, each with wooden beds arranged in typical dormitory style.

An average of six deaths occurred daily at Sago Lane’s death houses. The street was constantly filled with frangipani smell due to the rows of wreaths. Death houses never closed their doors – they were manned by their staff day and night.

The Ban

In 1958, the Singapore City Council proposed that the death houses – two at Sago Lane and one at Balestier Road – to be shifted to the rural areas as they were increasingly considered a fire hazard. Those who opposed argued that death houses were a social necessity. The proposal eventually did not get approved.

In the late fifties, the British media screened a documentary film about Singapore’s death houses, leading to many curious tourists flocking to Sago Lane to see the mysterious houses and funeral trade.

Instead of showing fear, the tourists often checked out with great interest the Oriental-style casket shops, coffin makers and the workers that made paper houses, cars, horses, effigies and lanterns.

The Singapore government was disturbed by Sago Lane’s unwanted publicity that the death houses were officially banned in 1961. The owners could still continue their businesses if they converted their premises into funeral parlours, but they were not allowed to accept any living person other than the dead. Sick people had to be taken to the hospitals for treatments, and not to the death houses.

Urban Renewal

Even with the ban, death houses at Sago Lane persisted until the seventies. There was still a demand as many Chinese elderly remained reluctant to go to the hospitals when they were ill, instead preferring to check into a death house.

But the end of Sago Lane’s death houses, and its prosperous businesses of funeral parlours and coffin makers, eventually came to an end due to the government’s urban renewal programme. In the early seventies, a section of Sago Lane was expunged to accommodate the Housing and Development Board’s (HDB) construction of the $18-million Kreta Ayer Complex.

The existing L-shaped shophouses and tenement houses along Sago Lane were torn down in 1971, affecting thousands of residents who had lived there for generations. The street hawkers were also ordered to shift to other places.

12 funeral parlours were left at Sago Lane by 1972. Many were arranged to continue their businesses at Geylang Bahru Industrial Estate. The decades-old Kwok Mun registered its business as a funeral parlour in 1975 and was shifted from Sago Lane to Sin Ming in 1983. The company, however, folded in the 2000s.

At the site of the former shophouses and tenement houses were two new 21-storey HDB flats (Block 4 and 5) completed in 1973.

Next to be affected was Smith Street and its residents. Eventually almost 100,000 people living in Chinatown were impacted by the urban renewal programme and had to be rehoused in HDB estates after their pre-war shophouses were pulled down.

Kreta Ayer Complex, consists of two blocks at 21-storey and 25-storey respectively, was completed in 1981. Its wet market and hawker centre, opened in 1983, housed many of Chinatown’s former street hawkers. Kreta Ayer Complex was renamed Chinatown Complex in 1984.

The death houses and funeral industry of Sago Lane were gone after the mid-seventies; its grim yet legendary past gradually faded away and forgotten over time.

Prominent Landmarks

Several prominent landmarks had emerged near Sago Lane. Built in 1960, the Kreta Ayer Community Centre was originally known as Banda Street Community Centre. It underwent extensive renovations in 1979. In 1993, in another upgrading project, an old coffin containing a skeleton was uncovered underneath the community centre’s basketball court, indicating that the area was near a Chinese burial ground in the past.

The Kreta Ayer People’s Theatre was opened on 24 March 1969 as an open-air stage for traditional Chinese operas and wayangs. It underwent an overhaul in 1979, and became a 940-seat theatre for cultural performances.

The Kreta Ayer Education Centre at Sago Lane was opened by then-Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence Dr Goh Keng Swee on 3 February 1976.

In the late nineties, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) proposed that the vacant site between Sago Lane and Sago Street to be used for the construction of a traditional Buddhist temple, so as to blend into Chinatown landscape. This led to the construction and opening of the grand Buddha Tooth Relic Temple on 30 May 2007.

Published: 26 March 2024