Francis Light School and The Dawn of Merdeka
By Eugene Quah
February 2025 FEATURE
AT THE EASTERN end of Northam Road (now Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah), within the weathered walls of the Old Protestant Cemetery, rests Captain Francis Light, who in 1786 established Britain’s first settlement in the Strait of Malacca on the jungle-clad island of Pulo Pinang. Although Thomas Stamford Raffles’ name is memorialised in many places and institutions in the younger sister settlement of Singapore, Francis Light’s legacy in Penang is more modest. His name only lives on in a street near...
Eugene Quah
is an independent researcher and writer who is working on a book tentatively called “Illustrated Guide to the North Coast of Penang”. He rediscovered the joys of writing after moving back to Penang from abroad.
