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Walter Makepeace

Walter Makepeace (b. 22 January 1859, Coventry, England - d. 1941, England) was a journalist and editor of the Singapore Free Press. He was also active in numerous local organisations and is best remembered for co-editing One Hundred Years of Singapore, the official history of the colony commemorating its centenary in 1919.

Early life
Makepeace was educated at the Birmingham and Midland Institute and Saltley College in Birmingham. In 1884 he came to Malaya to join the Straits Settlements Education Department and became a schoolmaster in Malacca. As a skilled shorthand writer he also worked as a court reporter.

Journalism and publishing
Singapore Free Press
Makepeace left government service in 1887 after he was asked to go to Singapore as the Legislative Council's reporter for no extra pay. He joined the Singapore Free Press as assistant editor but the paper also appointed him legislative correspondent, thus giving him the task he had earlier declined. In the absence of formal transcripts his reports served as the official record for fifteen years. While council proceedings were often tedious - he said that the public galleries had no repeat visitors - Makepeace acquired a great knowledge of colonial affairs and personalities.

In 1895 he and William St. Clair succeeded Charles Burton Buckley, who had revived the paper in 1886, as joint proprietors and Makepeace was named business chief; eleven years later he became joint proprietor and editor with Reginald Davies. Makepeace earned his staff's loyalty as an encouraging and sympathetic employer. He also obtained for the Press Malaya's first linotype type-setting machines, installed in the paper's premises above Robinson's in Raffles Place, and performed minor repairs himself. For many years Makepeace had an international readership as a correspondent for Reuters and the Paris edition of the New York Herald, and he represented Malaya at the 1920 Imperial Press Conference in Ottawa. After his retirement in 1926 a street off of Bukit Timah Road was named in his honour.

One Hundred Years of Singapore
In 1918 the Singapore Centenary Committee commissioned an official history of the colony and tapped Makepeace, who combined literary skill with a vast knowledge of Singapore affairs and history, as senior editor. He was assisted by Gilbert Brooke, Roland Braddell (former attorney-general of the Straits Settlements) and a committee of former Singapore residents in London. Their efforts produced One Hundred Years of Singapore, which was published in 1921, two years after the actual centenary.

The book relied heavily on newspaper sources and personal reminiscence. To the modern reader the two-volume work is narrowly Eurocentric, a shortcoming partly rectified by the editors' commissioning of a separate companion volume on the Chinese, Song Ong Siang's One hundred years history of the Chinese in Singapore (1923). It also treated scandals among the European population with more delicacy than those within the Asian communities. Nonetheless, the book's wealth of stories about Singapore's history made it a classic and it was reprinted seventy years later.

Community activities
In 1888 he enlisted in the new Singapore Volunteer Artillery (later the Singapore Volunteer Corps), of which he famously quipped, "Whereas Singapore is a small piece of land surrounded entirely by water, the Singapore Volunteer Artillery is a small body of men surrounded entirely by officers." He joined the reserve list as a captain and honorary major in 1914 but was recalled the following year to command two hundred special constables during the Sepoy Mutiny. Makepeace received the long service medal and finally retired in 1920. In World War One he served as a propaganda officer for the region and despatched thousands of documents across the Far East.

Makepeace participated in a large number and wide variety of local organisations. In terms of civic affairs, he sat on the municipal commission for a time as well as the Education Board - unsurprising for a former schoolmaster. He was a Freemason and became Master of Singapore's oldest lodge, Zetland in the East, in 1894 and 1919, and district Grand Master. He was long active in the Straits Settlements Association, which sought to safeguard the interests of Singapore's business community both domestically and in London, and was elected vice president in 1919. He also helped defend the interests of mercantile officers. For well over twenty years, between 1890 and the 1920s, he was secretary, then treasurer, of the Masters and Mates' Association and its successor the Singapore Merchant Guild Association, only taking a break during the hiatus between the two organisations.

Makepeace supported local scholarship as a member of the Raffles Library and Museum Committee and as librarian, vice president and honorary secretary of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. He was also involved in recreational activities such as the short-lived Singapore Cycling Club, the Chess Club and the Swimming Club, of which he was captain and later president. With such experience he wrote the chapters on the volunteer corps and community organisations in One Hundred Years of Singapore with expert authority.

Return to England and death
By 1936 he had been in Malaya longer than most European expatriates and returned to England to settle in Bristol. There he took an active interest in the city's Docklands Settlement Scheme. Walter Makepeace died in 1941.

Publications
Reith, G. M. (1907). Handbook to Singapore with map. Singapore: Fraser and Neave. (Original work published in 1892; revised by Makepeace in 1907).

Makepeace, W., Brooke, G., & Braddell, R. St. J. (Eds.). (1921). One hundred years of Singapore. London: J. Murray.

Family
Makepeace married Miss Pitt (d.1934) in 1901 and had two daughters and a son.



Author
Duncan Sutherland



References
Brown, E. A. (2007). Indiscreet memories (p.119). Singapore: Monsoon Books. (First published in 1935).
(Call no.: RSING 959.5703 BRO)

Fisher, J. S. (Ed.). (1925). Who's who in Malaya 1925 (p.124) [Microfilm: NL 6705] Singapore: J.S. Fisher.

History of the Free Press. (1935, 8 October). [Microfilm: NL 3615]. The Singapore Free Press, p.4, sec.1.

Koh, T., et al. (Eds.). (2006). Singapore: The encyclopedia (p.320). Singapore: Editions Didier Millet.
(Call no.: RSING 959.57003 SIN)

Makepeace, W., Brooke, G. E., & Braddell, R. St. J. . (Eds.). (1991). One hundred years of Singapore (Vol. I pp. v-viii, 155, 399; Vol. II pp. 316-17). Singapore: Oxford University Press. (First published in 1921).
(Call no.: RSING 959.57 ONE)

Romney, P. H. (1935, October 8). Makepeace and Davies as I knew them [Microfilm: NL 3615]. The Singapore Free Press, pp. 6, 14, sec.1.

Savage, V. R., & Yeoh, B. (2004). Toponymics: A study of Singapore street names (p.255). Singapore: Eastern Universities Press.
(Call no.: RSING 915.9570014 SAV (TRA))

Song, O. S. (1984). The history of the Straits Chinese (p. vii-viii). Singapore: Oxford University Press. (First published in 1923).
(Call no.: RSING 959.57 SON)

Turnbull, C. M. (1995). Dateline Singapore: 150 years of the Straits Times (p.52). Singapore: Times Editions.
(Call no.: RSING 079.5957 TUR)

[Untitled notice]. (1901, 14 October). [Microfilm: NL 286]. The Straits Times, p.2.

Urcan, O. G. (2007). Surviving Changi: E. E. Colman, a chess biography (p.9). Singapore: Singapore Heritage Society.
(Call no.: RSING 794.1092 URC)


List of Images
Koh, T., et al. (Eds.) (2006). Singapore: The encyclopedia (p.320). Singapore: Editions Didier Millet.
(Call no.: RSING 959.57003 SIN)

Makepeace, W., Brooke, G. E., & Braddell, R. St. J. . (Eds.). (1991). One hundred years of Singapore (Vol. I, p. 388). Singapore: Oxford University Press. (First published in 1921).
(Call no.: RSING 959.57 ONE)



The information in this article is valid as at 2009 and correct as far as we are able to ascertain from our sources. It is not intended to be an exhaustive or complete history of the subject. Please contact the Library for further reading materials on the topic.

Subject
Personalities>>Biographies
Makepeace, Walter, 1859-1941
Journalists--Singapore--Biography
People and communities>>Social groups and communities

Librarian Recommendations
>> The Singapore Free Press
>> Roland St. John Braddell, 1880-1966


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