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**We have another feature article this week! This week's feature article is no less than an investigative, historical effort by our Mr Chung Chee Min, a Victorian and teacher in VI as well. You will find most of his articles and historical insights into our school at the web site, viweb.freehosting.net. He has generously agreed to write an article on the Proudlock murder case, and the insights, historical background to this incident, facts and myths he has debunked surrounding this case is simply astounding! Thank you, Mr Chung for this and readers, it is best you read in his words the whole story below, which I am sure you will enjoy immensely. If you have any questions, comments, etc please do email Mr Chung or myself.

**Our Sze Loon makes the news again! CONGRATS, Sze Loon, on your hole-in-one which you have achieved recently! It is noteworthy that our Nesaretnam has also achieved this golfer's dream some time back. Any one else who have done this or know of any other Victorian who has, please do let us know......so they can buy us drinks! haha.

I refer to the 9th issue of your Victorian Times where there was mention of that famous (or infamous) trial of Ethel Proudlock in the book Murder on the Verandah by Eric Lawlor (HarperCollins, 1999). This book that the Sunday Star of October 8th reviewed is available in MPH Bookstores. Lawlor uses that murder and subsequent trial to weave a narrative of British life in colonial Malaya. It quotes liberally from Malay Land by a former V.I. Headmaster, Major Richard Sidney and other sources.

The Proudlock case is also mentioned briefly in Out in the Midday Sun, The British in Malaya 1880-1960 by Margaret Shennan, (John Murray, 2000).

I should also refer Victorians to the Memoirs of Dr G. E. D. Lewis in the VI web page www.freehosting.net/vir_Lewis.htm which I extracted with the permission of the late Headmaster from his book Out East in the Malay Peninsula. Lewis discusses that as well and mentions an alternate theory.

Ethel Proudlock was the 21-year-old wife of the acting headmaster of William Proudlock. Lawlor suspects that she might have been Eurasian but has no definite proof and no photo of her has ever been found. The Proudlocks were living in Brickfields when the V. I. Headmaster, Mr Bennet Shaw, returned to England on leave in 1910. They then moved with their three-year-old daughter Dorothy into the Headmaster's Bungalow of the old V.I. in High Street.

On the night of Sunday, 23 April 1911, William Proudlock was then dining at the Brickfields house of another V.I. teacher, Mr. R. F. Stainer, when Ethel had a visitor at the Bungalow. He was William Steward, a 34-year-old bachelor and mining consultant and formerly manager of the Salak South Tin Mine. He had arrived outside the Bungalow by rickshaw and had bade the boy to wait beyond the hedge of the Headmaster's Bungalow while he went up the steps of the Bungalow. A few minutes later the rickshaw boy heard shots fired and saw Steward stumble down the steps and collapse dead onto the driveway, the lower part of the body on the driveway, the upper part on the grass.

Ethel Proudlock, the subsequent 10-day trial in June was told, had powder burns on her fingers. She claimed that Steward had tried to rape her and as she backed away she came onto her husband's revolver and had shot Steward with it. She was found guilty and incarcerated in Pudu Gaol (now spelt Jail) for six months before a petition by V.I. boys and masters to the Sultan was successful in securing her release. She then sailed off to England with her daughter. William Proudlock stayed behind temporarily because

he was facing a libel case arising from police treatment of his wife, in the course of which it was revealed that he had lived with a Chinese woman before marrying Ethel. After losing his law suit and his job at V.I., William Proudlock sailed back to England.

In 1913, William and Ethel Proudlock and their daughter sailed to Canada and settled in Manitoba. In 1916, Ethel moved alone to the United States and was joined in Miami later by Dorthy. Ethel died in 1974. As for William Proudlock, he moved on to South America and ended up as a joint Headmaster of a school in Argentina, passing away in 1957 at the age of seventy-seven.

Interest in the Proudlock case continued into the 1920s. Somerset Maugham the writer visited Malaya, heard the story from Ethel's lawyer and wrote a fictional version of it, called The Letter, which was included in his Short Stories. In this story, the names are changed, the accused is not the wife of an acting Headmaster and location is not even the V.I. bungalow but in some unidentified rubber estate in an unnamed town. The story was adapted into a play and a film. Even Hollywood got into the act in 1941 and made second movie of it, starring Bette Davis. I remember seeing that movie twenty years ago on TV but had not suspected the link to the V.I. then. The movie was obviously filmed in a Hollywood back lot as the scenery looked fake.

And as late as 1926, when Major Sidney was staying in the Bungalow, people were still asking to see the bullet holes.

Dr G. E. D. Lewis mentioned in his memoirs that, when he was VI Headmaster in the fifties, he had heard an alternate theory from some V.I. Old Boys who were around in 1911.

was this the verandah where the murder took place? this photo shows guests waiting for the start of the annual prefects dinner (a tradition started by richard sidney)Verandahs surrounded the HM's bungalow on all sides but it is most likely the guests were received on the front verandah (it looks elaborate in the pic) and that's across which a fatally wounded William Steward would have staggered to escape Ethel. (photo from richard sidney's 'tanah melayu'.)

This postulated that Ethel had a second lover in the Bungalow and it was he who had shot Steward, with Ethel taking the blame. This man then swam across the Klang River to the other side to avoid detection. It must have been quite a hazard to do that considering that it was night time and the Klang River then was full of crocodiles.

Lawlor actually came to Malaysia to research his book and this is what he wrote: "I visited the V.I in 1996, hoping to learn something about the Proudlocks, but the Principal, a pleasant Malay woman, became agitated when I mentioned Steward's murder. Her assistant asked nervously if I were a policeman."

The Principal would have been Puan Salha Othman. Poor Eric Lawlor. I sympathise with him. Nobody in the present day V.I. could have heard of the murder in 1911. It took place at the old V.I. in High Street which, except for the ruins of Block One (the original block built in 1893), doesn't exist any more.

But that wasn't the end of the interest in the Proudlock case. In March this year (2000) I was at the V.I Museum for some research and, as luck would have it, half an hour after I had left the V.I., a European couple arrived looking for information about the

Proudlocks. The headmaster, Tuan Haji Baharom, was also in the dark about this matter and sent them to the V.I. museum. The Museum boys could tell this couple nothing

more than what they already knew. The boys took down their telephone number and gave mine to them and later told me about that visit.

Unfortunately, this couple - the man was one Mac Forbes - never ever called me and when I tried calling them the number was a wrong one. So I missed a chance to find out what their mission was. That is, until a month ago� I met the V.I. headmaster at the V.I. and Tuan Baharom asked me, "Was there a murder in my office long ago?" He then revealed that a British couple were doing a TV documentary about the Proudlock case and had, like Lawlor, come to the V.I. in March looking for information. Naturally Tuan Baharom thought that the murder was fairly recent and had taken place in the present day V.I.!

At least now I know that some British documentary is or was being made about the Proudlock case. It is amazing that 89 years after the event interest is still high. I can only wish I can get a chance to catch that documentary in the future. And it all happened at the V.I.!

editor's note:diagram historically reconstructed and drawn by mr chung chee min (now part of records at the malaysian national archives)

None of the people who wrote about the Proudlock case, Lawler, Shennan nor these TV producers could have visualized what the infamous Bungalow and its environments looked like in 1911 because as far as I can tell, no photograph exists of the location. So I am using my 1999 old V.I. visualization posted in the VI web page at www.freehosting.net/viOldVI.htm to help imagine what it was like. Zooming in to the portion of the HM's Bungalow you can see that it is quite remote from the rest of the school and some distance from the main street (which was High Street). As the School gates at High Street would probably be locked, and as there was no direct access by road from High Street to the Bungalow anyway, I think the only access to the Bungalow was via Jalan Sekolah which, from its junction with Jalan Sultan, skirted the Klang River.

According to the trial report which I researched in the National Archives, the rickshaw boy was asked to wait for Steward outside the five-foot high hedge which fenced in the Bungalow save for a gap. There were servants who worked for the HM but they all lived in quarters behind the Bungalow and probably never saw what happened that fateful night. The visualization clearly shows the places where the second lover, if the theory was indeed true, could have swum across the Klang River. Once across this man was in the European section of K.L. and there would have been few people around to notice him in the dark. But it is all conjecture and we shall never ever know the truth. But still it's nice to be able to visualize the whole incident in greater detail through this picture which Lawlor, Shennan and those two TV producers never got to see!

Two morons were working on a house. The one who was nailing down siding would reach into his nail pouch, pull out a nail and either toss it over his shoulder or nail it in. The other nut, figuring this was worth looking into, asked, "Why are you throwing those nails away?"

The first explained, "If I pull a nail out of my pouch and it's pointed toward me, I throw it away 'cause it's defective. If it's pointed toward the house, then I nail it in!" The second moron got completely upset and yelled, "You moron! The nails pointed toward you aren't defective! They're for the other side of the house!"

petplanet.com - Have a pet? A dog? A cat? A tiger? Check this site out for tips, etc.

In last week's poll, readers were asked what was the maximum number of people known to have been squeezed into the VI field, for a known reported event. The answer is 12,000.

Twelve thousand! That's twelve times the number of students the school holds!

Can you imagine how this crowd can be spread out in the field? I can't.

Anyway, this crowd was reported at the 1948 football final between Negri Sembilan and Selangor. For the record, Negri Sembilan won 2-1 and never won again since. The NS scorer then was reported to have remarked that it will be another 50 years before NS will win again, leading to speculation that NS will win the final against Perak held recently, ie after 52 years. However, the fairy tale was not to be and Perak won. Oh well.