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A Letter From A. E. Wootton
This letter was addressed to the Lodge Kinta. The sender - A. E. Wootton - accepted the office of Junior Warden, and would later attend the Installation Meeting at Lodge Kinta on 5th April 1952. We thank Ipoh Remembered for the following details of Albert E. Wootton:
While he is mostly remembered for his social set in Taiping — the Turf Club, the Rotary Club, and the New Club all occupied him as much as Freemasonry did — in fact the first few of his years in Malaya were spent in Ipoh, where he came in the late '20s to join the newly opened offices of the Perak River Hydro-Electric Power Company, from which initial post he was sent to Chenderoh, where the company's primary dam was being built.
Alas, Albert's time in Ipoh was insufficient to endear the town to him and when his job was done he did not return, moving instead to Taiping, where he helped manage the New Club, and, as I say, became prominent in the social life of the town.
In the mid-to-late '30s when there was talk again of making Ipoh the state capital (thereby relieving Taiping of its status), Albert was not amused. Particularly irate that the leading newspaper in the state — the Times of Malaya — had long been a strong proponent of the move, he helped found a rival newspaper to propound the opposite view (which would have been fine except that he made the mistake of uttering a tasteless remark or two when Jack Jennings, the editor of the Times, died). Anyway, like the Greeks at Thermopylae, Albert stood firm against the move — that is, he stood firm until the Japanese invaded and then he was AWOL and did not watch them make the move official.
This letter was written on stationery from New Club, Taiping (P. O. Box 42; telephone number - 277). This 'New Club' refers to the second White Man's Club in Taiping (The first club, known as the Perak Club was destroyed by fire).
Ipoh Remembered explains that: The New Club was founded in the early 1890s, It did not immediately replace the Perak Club (which was established in the early 1880s). The two clubs co-existed for decades, although by the time of the First World War the Perak Club — the older and less exclusive of the two — was obviously fading. He also offers the following clarification:
"While the Perak Club had its lair on the south side of Taiping's Esplanade, the New Club, founded a few years later, was based on the north side.
The two clubs were distinct and the two memberships had a distinct dislike for each other.
I forget now precisely what the original casus belli was — but no doubt it was silly.
Henry Aylesbury led the insurrection. I think perhaps it was because the old club was felt to be insufficiently exclusive — too many planters, or maybe too many military types, or maybe too many Eurasians.
Possibly all three complaints were levelled."
See pictures of the first Perak Club and the New Club here.