Patricia Hului

Sir Frank Swettenham (1850-1946), who was responsible for bringing Selangor, Perak, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang together under the Federated Malay states, once called Malaya the ‘land of pirates and the amok’.

This is because the amok syndrome is believed to have derived from Malaya, eventually leading to the English phrase of ‘running amok’.

Even the word ‘amok’ came from the Malay word ‘mengamuk’, meaning ‘to make a furious charge’.

It is basically an aggressive dissociative behavioral pattern which was once considered as a culture-bound syndrome.

Here at KajoMag, we take a look on some of the amok cases that happened in the olden days of Sarawak:

1.When a policeman went amok in Sibu

Here is an undated case recorded by John Beville Archer in his memoir Glimpses of Sarawak between 1912 and 1946:

“The amok was unpleasant. A policeman suddenly went wild in Sibu bazaar and before we could stop him he killed five persons and wounded twenty-five. As it all took place in semi-darkness there was a certain amount of panic among the inhabitants of the packed bazaar. All I know is that I tumbled over a corpse in the dark and found myself entangled up in yards of intestines. There is a bit of humour in everything; hearing someone running towards me through the darkness I had to think quickly. I did so and brought crashing down one of my own policemen. However, we got our man at last and spent all night helping the doctor to patch up the wounded. It was here I saw a miracle – or thought I did – a severed ear just clapped on again and it stuck.”

2.Kuching Police in 1889: No ammunition to stop an amok? It is okay, use some spears instead.

On Aug 30, 1889, The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser reported a terrible amok that took place in Sarawak.

What intrigued us is how the police handled it.

“The S.S Normanby arrived from Sarawak yesterday and we have been enabled to obtain particulars of a very tragic occurrence which took place there on Sunday last 25th, at about half-past six. When the Normanby left here about a week ago for Sarawak she took over four Dyaks who were returning to their country. One of these men on Sunday morning ran amok and dashed along the whole length of the bazaar cutting and slashing at each person he met with a huge parang.

“The amok went into several shops and cut at the occupiers. The Chinamen seemed perfectly paralyzed and did not try to arrest the murderer. At the corner of Rock Road the Dyak met an old Chinaman; he made a cut at him and inflicted a terrible wound, drawing his knife across the man’s stomach disemboweling and killing him instantly. He went along in his mad career and passed the Police Station where although the constables had rifles they had no ammunition.

“They however took up spears and after a hot chase of about one mile captured the amok who was nearly exhausted and had been wounded by a brick flung at him by some one trying to arrest him. When quiet was restored and the Dyak was safely lodged in jail enquiry was made and it was found that fifteen men had been wounded, four of them so dangerously that their life is despaired of and that one man had been killed outright. Through the courtesy of Mr Daubeny, Inspector of Prisons, our informant was enabled, with several other gentlemen, to see the amok in jail. He seemed quite sensible and only complained of pain from a cut over his eye caused by the brick thrown at him.”

3.When a policeman went amok in Kuching bazaar in 1925

According to this news report by The Singapore Free Press on Oct 14, 1925, an amok was a rare case and even considered ‘almost unprecedented’ if it was committed by a Dayak back then.

“An unusually tragic and disturbing incident occurred in Kuching on Sept 17, about 1.45pm, when Panggi, a Dyak policeman, who had been queer in his behaviour for some days, suddenly seized his parang, in the bachelors’ barracks, slashed at two fellow constables and then ran amok into the most densely crowded thoroughfare of the bazaar, Carpenter street. An immediate pandemonium ensued while Panggi rushed hither and thither, in and out of shops, hacking at anyone within reach, killing outright one man and two children, and seriously wounding twenty-eight others including three women, mostly Chinese. Another victim succumbed in hospital.

“An amok is not common even amongst Malays in Sarawak, and almost unprecedented for a Dyak, and we tender our deep sympathy to the relatives of the unfortunate victims, and to those now in hospital.”

4.A cured leper went amok in Simanggang in 1935.

On Oct 1, 1935, the Sarawak Gazette reported an amok case which took place in Simanggang bazaar.

A man confronted the perpetrator in order to stop him attacking more people. The courageous man was later deservedly rewarded by the government with a medal and a monetary reward for his bravery.

Here is how the report goes,

“On August 20th an amok occurred in Simangang Bazaar. The man responsible was a Dayak named Tingkay, a discharged leper who had apparently been brooding over the fact that his relatives refused to consider him cured of his disease in spite of ample proof too the contrary. He attacked and severely wounded a Dayak and a Chinese, and then chased a Malay woman, who took refuge in a shop. The owner of the shop, a Chinese Named Ong Kee Poh, was having his midday meal with his family when he heard someone shouting – ‘Dayak bunoh China!’ He immediately sent his family into the back premises and arming himself with a carrying pole, waited behind the door. The Malay woman rushed in screaming, closely followed by a Tingkau, who had parang in his head. The woman fell down, and Ong Kee Poh hit the Dayak on the head with the pole. The Dayak then turned on him but Ong Kee Poh hit him on the hand and disarmed him, after which he struck the man until he collapsed. He then called the police, who took him into custody.”

5.A prisoner went amok in a gaol and attacked fellow inmates in Saratok.

The then Acting District Officer of Kalaka, H. E. Cutfield reported on the Sarawak Gazette about an amok that happened on May 3, 1927.

The man responsible for the case was an Iban named Ubam who was sentenced to a term of three years in prison for stealing $553.

On his first night in the prison, Ubam went amok.

“The gaol was only inhabited by two female prisoners and one other man who was lame. Ubam had evidently thought out his actions and after braking his way on his own cell, bolted the main doors from the inside, to prevent interruption, and first wounded the other male prisoner very seriously with a 6-inch wound in the stomach and then broke into the female cell and attacked the women. One was seriously wounded with eight stabs with a knife and the other woman I regret to say died soon after my arrival.”

If courtroom battles were all boring, there would be no legal dramas like Suits or The Practice.

The truth is, anything can happen during a legal proceeding or else no one will make movies or television series out of it.

In Sarawak, our courtroom dramas are even more colourful due to our multi-ethnic communities and various cultural practices.

Here are some Sarawak courtroom stories from the past which you might find intriguing today:

1.A court interpreter delivered the most straightforward translation ever.

“There is the story of the Justice in Kuching who delivered a death sentence of unusual length upon a Chinese. He had no knowledge of anything but English and at the end said to the interpreter, ‘Tell the prisoner what the learned judge has said’. The interpreter turned to the unfortunate man and said in a loud voice, “Lu mati!” (which translates to ‘You gonna die!’)

This story was shared John Beville Archer in his book, Glimpses of Sarawak between 1912 and 1946.

2.A magistrate who ran around the court fleeing an attacker

In the same book, Archer talked about a norm no longer practiced in the Sarawak courtroom and how the practice came about.

“The people rather liked coming to Court. It was held with very little pomp and much friendliness. One thing which is missing nowadays are the Policemen sitting in a row behind the principals – these were always armed with native swords, with colourful corded belts and the senior N.C.O, similarly armed sat behind the magistrate. This, they say, became the practice after an attempt many years before to attack the magistrate who was run around the Bench by an aggrieved suitor.”

3. The difference between ‘Butang’ versus ‘Butang Rangkai’

Kenelm Hubert Digby was a district officer, judge and eventually the Attorney General in Sarawak.

Around 1934 in Limbang, he tried his first case under the native customary law.

“Clad in sarong I sat on a mat on the ruai, the long communal verandah, with the Native Officer and the penghulu on either side of me, and the hundred or so inhabitants of the longhouse gathered around us. The case was concerned with a complaint of a married woman that a man had committed butang rangkai (literally ‘dry adultery’) with her. Her story was that, during the absence of her husband, the accused had entered her mosquito net, but had been virtuously and successfully repulsed by her before any damage had been done.

“The accused hotly denied this allegation. He admitted that he had formed the intention of having intercourse with the complainant and that he had entered her mosquito net in pursuance of his enterprise. On the contrary he said, the woman had welcomed him and he had entirely achieved his purpose. This case had been brought only because the woman’s husband had come to hear the incident.

“The Sea Dayak fine for butang (adultery) was fifteen dollars, while butang rangkai the fine was only twelve dollars. Gathering together all the shreds of my English legal training I informed the accused that since his defence amounted to a confession of the completed offence and since every willful act must include an attempt to commit the act, he could have no reasonable objection to being convicted in accordance with the complainant’s allegations, and required to pay twelve dollars instead of the fifteen for which according to his own story, he was really liable. I was surprised at the fuss which he made.

“I turned for enlightenment to the Native Officer, who explained to me that the accused did not mind paying the extra three dollars but he did object very strongly to the suggestion that, having made advances to the woman, he had been rejected by her. If this allegation received the stamp of truth from the court it might be a considerable time before the accused managed to live it down.”

4.Using a cane to summon a Dayak to court

Have you ever wondered how court summons were delivered?

Arthur Bartlett Ward who once a Sarawak Resident and member of Council Negri in his memoir, Rajah’s Servant (1966) explained,

“The method of summoning Dyaks to Court was peculiar. Paper documents would have been useless, so a ‘tongkat’ or a Malacca cane walking stick with a brass head and a government mark, was sent abroad from village to village with a verbal message, until it reached the person named who forthwith hurried to Simanggang. The system was effective and I never heard of a ‘tongkat’ going astray or being abused.”

5.The two historical Singaporean politicians who had appeared as lawyers in Sarawak courtroom.

Peter Mooney was Sarawak Crown Counsel in Sarawak in the 1950s. In his memoir A Servant of Sarawak (2011), Mooney named two formidable opponents he had encountered in Sarawak courtroom.

The first one was the former Chief Minister of Singapore, David Marshall.

About Marshall, Mooney narrated, “I encountered him in many criminal trials and appeals in Sarawak. He fully deserved his reputation. He prepared his cases meticulously. Every fact was at his fingertips and he had thoroughly mastered the relevant law. He was flamboyant in nature and given to rhetoric. I remember him saying in an appear, ‘…and suspicion settles, like a cloud of atomic dust, over the prosecution witness!’ He could have made a name as an actor.”

Beside Marshall, Mooney also had faced Lee Kuan Yew in Sarawak courtroom battles.

“Like David Marshall, as counsel he was always thoroughly prepared. Unlike David he was never histrionic but presented his client’s case most persuasively with cool and inexorable logic. Had he not abandoned the Bar for politics he would undoubtedly have made a great name for himself as an advocate. He had brilliant intellect and his presentation was quite flawless.”

During the Chinese Insurrection against James Brooke in 1857, the insurgents proposed making Ludvig Verner Helms the next Rajah.

In the end, however, Helms played a huge role in helping Brooke to fight the insurgents.

So how important was Helms that the Chinese insurgents wanted him to replace Brooke as Rajah?

Ludvig Verner Helms and his life before Sarawak

Born in Varde, Denmark in 1825, Helms was a son of a pharmacist and the 13th of 16 children.

He was basically a merchant and a trader. Helms was influenced by his fellow countryman, Mads Lange who made his fortune in Bali, Indonesia.

Although he had never met or corresponded with Lange, he had letters of introduction from others.

Armed with those letters, Helms arrived in Bali sometimes in 1847.

With no knowledge of the local language, Helms continuously repeated Lange’s name to the locals until one of them showed him where Lange lived.

Lange welcomed him and Helms worked in Bali for the next two years.

In 1849, Helms left Bali to find work in Singapore and eventually arrived in Sarawak in 1852.

Ludvig Verner Helms and the Borneo Company

When Helms first lived in Sarawak, he worked mainly in trading antimony. Then when the Borneo Company was formed in 1856, Helms became its local manager.

The company was given the mandate to ‘take over and work Mines, Ores, Veins or Seams of all descriptions of Minerals in the island of Borneo, and to barter or sell the produce of such workings; at the cost of royalty payments to the Sarawak government treasury in a 1857 agreement’.

According to Steven Runciman in his book The White Rajah: A History of Sarawak from 1841 to 1946, the Board of Company wanted a trained businessman as its local director and Helms fitted the role perfectly.

The first White Rajah of Sarawak, James Brooke however had his own thought.

“Helms was a capable if somewhat complacent man; the Rajah could never bring himself to like him, largely because he had had no say in the appointment. But any annoyance that he felt began to be dissipated when the Company bought a steamer to ply regularly between Kuching and Singapore and named her Sir James Brooke,” Runciman wrote.

Ludvig Verner Helms during the Chinese Insurrection

On Feb 18, 1857, a group of 600 Chinese made their way to the Sarawak River to attack Brooke.

At that time, Brooke managed to flee from his home and look for safety.

That did not stop the rebels from attacking Kuching causing the deaths of five Europeans and the fire that consumed several buildings, including Brooke’s house.

After the attack, the Chinese insurgents however did not want to take over the Sarawak government, offering the seat to Helms instead.

Even though Helms found himself unwillingly caught in the middle of the chaos, he refused to tell his side of the story in his book Pioneering in the Far East and Journeys to California in 1849 and the White Sea in 1878 (1882).

He wrote, “I gave thought it better, instead of giving my own account of the Chinese Insurrection, to insert the diary my friend, who was in its midst, and who made notes of the incidents as they occurred. His account is so vivid, and as I can attest, so truthful, that I feel no apology is need for presenting it to the reader.”

From the diary, we know that Helms was missing for awhile during the insurrection with many assuming that he had died, only to reappear two days later at a meeting held at the Old Courthouse.

The diary narrated, “The whole of the Court was filled with scowling Chinese faces, who thoroughly enjoyed their short triumph. The Kungsi then stated their grievances, said that they did not wish to interfere with the Europeans in Sarawak, claimed immunity from taxes and concluded by electing Helms Rajah. He was the popular man, and stood a fair chance of being made a monarch; but he continued respectfully to decline the honour.”

The Borneo Company helps in retaking Kuching town

After the meeting, Helms returned to Brooke’s side. In retaliation, the Rajah enlisted the help of the Malays and the Ibans from Lingga to take over Kuching from the rebels.

The Borneo Company also provided a steamer to help in the attack.

On Feb 23, the diary owner gave a glimpse on what went down on that day.

“Once on board, we started all with our intelligence. Helms who was now Rajah nolens volens decided on going up to the town at once, and the ladies were brought on board. Now came an exciting scene-the guns were got out, the rifles, cutlasses, all piled, and the decks cleared, but while this was being done we saw a large boat making for the river, which turned out to carry the Rajah, who had seen the smoke of the steamer far out at sea. The gloom and depression had passed away from the Rajah now, and everyone was in tearing spirits.

“The moment we opened the town, we were exposed to the fort, and the guns from the old fort opened on us with grape of original composition – balls, nails, scraps of rusty iron, came whizzing round, many of which were picked up afterwards as souvenirs; two of the boats were struck, and the keel of the one above me was splintered in all directions.

“The next instant our long eighteen-pounder forward spoke his mind. Firing almost simultaneously with another gun of same caliber the roar was a good one, and then came the sharper notes of the swivels and rifles. The shot from the gun forward, which was manned by the mate, went slap into the fort and create a scare. Out scoured the Chinese like wild hares in March, some dashing up the road leading to the Channons, while many ran through the bazaar, affording practice for the riflemen on board. The new fort was quickly cleared, and two or three more rounds completed the action. We steamed slowly up the river, on the sides of which the Malay kampong was still burning and then coming back again anchored off the bazaar. And thus the Company’s steamer retook the town of Sarawak.”

Ludvig Verner Helms on the dispute between James Brooke and Captain Brooke

As we dig deeper into Sarawak history under the White Rajahs, we know that Captain John Brooke Johnson Brooke was James Brooke’s first choice to inherit his position in Sarawak. He was Charles Brooke, the second Rajah’s older brother.

He preferred to be known as Brooke and after he left the British Army as a Captain in 1848, he adopted the surname of Brooke.

Captain Brooke first joined his uncle in Labuan when James was the first governor there then later to Sarawak.

A fallout with his uncle James Brooke caused Captain Brooke to lose his title as the Rajah Muda.

Since then, he was practically wiped out from Sarawak history despite his contribution to the country including during the Battle off Mukah in 1862.

Touching on the family conflict which later influenced Sarawak history, Helms explained on the preface his book, “The references to the dispute between two men, both of whom I knew and admired – Rajah Brooke and his nephew, Captain Brooke – will be uninteresting to many and displeasing to some, but there are also those who will remember and who were interested in their careers and who will see that I have attempted, though somewhat late, to do an act of justice.”

True to his words, Helms’ book Pioneering in the Far East and Journeys to California in 1849 and the White Sea in 1878 (1882) is highly recommendable for those who are looking for an unbiased account of what happened between the uncle and the nephew.

Ludvig Verner Helms, the Rajah nolens volens of Sarawak

Going back to the diary, Helms was referred to as the Rajah nolens volens. It is a Latin phrase for ‘like it or not’.

As to why the Chinese chose Helms to be the next Rajah, we are not entirely sure, perhaps due to the trust he built as the manager of The Borneo Company with the Chinese who were mainly miners from Bau.

Regardless, Helms in the end picked a side and went against those who chose him to be a monarch.

Helms lived and started his family here with his wife Anne Amelia Bruce whom he married in London in 1859.

They stayed in Sarawak until 1872 when a lawsuit terminated employment with the Borneo Company.

He reportedly returned to Sarawak around 1890 to prospect various ores but did not stay long. Helms spent the rest of his life in London and passed away on July 26, 1918.

Helms’ book is available for online reading here.