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Ngai Chan Panorama No.17 - Brewster Road, Ipoh During British Military Administration
This photograph by Ngai Chan Photo Studio (Ipoh), shows the view of Brewster Road during the British Military Administration.
Military trucks can be seen at the extreme left of this photograph; while the 'Food Control' office is on the left of the road and the 'Information Centre' is on the right.
The British Military Administration took control of Malaya from September 1945 to April 1946 after the Japanese Occupation. It was meant to restore the faith of the population in the British Empire, but failed.
According to one of our blog readers, Ipoh Remembered:
After the war, the corner lot (75, Brewster Road) was taken over by the BMA and used for a few years as the Information Centre, which is to say that it was used to disseminate government propaganda. This use continued without interruption when the Straits Times moved in. In 1967 Sim Lim, previously on Horley Street, took over the building — and its subsidiary, Sim Lim Finance, opened a branch on the ground floor. The latter firm may have vanished from Ipoh even before it was acquired by Keppel in 1988, but I don’t know when Hong Leong, the current occupant, put up its name.Directly opposite the Public Bank building and also constructed by Chua Cheng Bok in the late ’30s is a massive (eight-lot) structure, 75-89 Brewster. Looking at it now one might not see that it was exquisitely engineered. Originally there were luxurious flats above the ground-floor shops: one of the early and most famous residents in these flats was Ong Ee Lim.
I’ve mentioned Ong Ee Lim before. In 1938 he leased the Lau Ek Ching Building and ran the Ruby Theatre (named after his daughter). He also sold cars out of another building further down Brewster Road — and that building, too, was constructed by Chua Cheng Bok.
Ee Lim’s daughter, Ruby Ong, was only a kid when her father moved to Ipoh. She had a very pretty smile. She eventually married Douglas Lee (better known to some as Dato K. K. Lee). It was not a particularly happy marriage. She died about ten years ago.
Douglas Lee, Ruby’s husband, was the son of Henry Lee Hau Shik — co-founder of the MCA and arch-rival of Tan Cheng Lock and his son Tan Siew Sin
To read more about the book ‘Kinta Valley’, click here.
To find out more about The British Military Administration (BMA), click here.
To go to the next Panorama, click here.