In the year 1786, Captain Francis Light founded the first colony of Great Britain in Southeast Asia on Penang Island. 13 years later, the place looked this way:
A 1799 map of George Town, Penang Island. Image: Wikipedia
As you see, they had the Burying Ground to the northwest at that time, and that’s where we, dear sirs and madams, will set off in this post. But let me first show the bigger picture of this colony's dawn.
The town is located on Penang, a Malta-sized island by the Malay Peninsula, only 3 km from the mainland.
Before the British, the island was covered with jungles with almost no population, and used as a hideout by pirates who were abundant at that time in the Malacca Strait. Bugis, Malays, Orang Laut, Chinese, and sometimes Europeans too were engaged in sea robbery in this area.
The British not only guaranteed traders' safety but also kept customs duties low or non-existent, and never interfered with religious freedom. From the town of 1,000 people, it grew to 50,000 by the mid-19th century, mainly due to immigration from China and India. Malays, Acehnese, Arabs, Burmese, and Siamese also settled on the island.
That's the background, now let's explore the Old Protestant Cemetery (aka Northam Road Cemetery), a place where history lives on.
Look, for example, at the amazing story of a young lady:
Shortly: this gravestone was set in memory of Alexander Lawrence of Glasgow and his daughter Margaret, who was a beloved wife and died aged 29 years on board the S.S. Glaucus - buried at sea at latitude 8.30 North, longitude 57.00 East. It's here where she fell asleep in Jesus:
Quite far from anything. Poor Margaret.
Another one who never reached Penang:
An American midshipman, 21 years. It's often such stones were set by mates since no family was present.
Have you ever heard about the dangers of miasmas? This:
Joanna, who, after a short but painful illness, entered into the joy of her Lord, aged 27.
Yes, malaria - jungle fever - was the most common reason for entering into God's joy in George Town in the 19th century. (But let's not forget about cholera and dysentery, too.)
However, in the early 19th century, germ theory had not yet emerged so the dominant belief was that diseases like jungle fever were caused by miasmas, bad air from rotting vegetation, swamps, and jungles. The connection between mosquitoes and malaria wasn’t discovered until the 1890s.
There are many graves with young people at this cemetery. At some point, I even got upset - too many.
Aged 24.
Aged 23 - "sweetly fell asleep in Jesus".
Aged 22.
And many more. I would say at least 30% of the graves. And another 40% died in their 40s. Like the founder of the town, Captain Francis Light, who rests from his labours in this white box:
Died aged 54, eight years after the foundation of the town, from malaria, too.
I found several lovely euphemisms of death at the cemetery: "sweetly fell asleep in Jesus", "rests from his labours", "entered into the joy of her Lord"... Poetic. And I like this epitaph, too:
Beautiful!
One more story written in stone:
Christopher Henry Lloyd, superintendent of Panghore and Dingings, who was murdered by a gang of Chinese robbers.
Dingings was the 4th territory of the Straits Settlements, along with Singapore, Penang, and Malacca - they even had their own currency from 1898 until 1939. However, Dingings never turned into a thriving port town.
Ten Straits Dollar banknote from 1927 -
Another prominent storyline of the Protestant cemetery is about the Armenians of Penang. I found 4 graves:
Gregory Lucas, native of Tiflis in Georgia, and for several years one of the Armenian inhabitants of Penang who departed this life [...] in 1828. With an Armenian inscription at the bottom.
Mariamjan, a widow...
That's what I found about these Armenians:
the Anthony brothers expanded A.A. Anthony & Co. to become one of the leading shipping and trading firms in Penang. The brothers had ten other siblings; their mother, Mariamjan, is buried in the cemetery, alongside Michael:
The Arratoons' journey across Asia began during the Ottoman-Persian War (in the early 1600s) when they were forced to migrate to Iran. The search for greener mercantile pastures soon led them to the spice routes that stretched between India and SE Asia.
A grave with an Armenian inscription.
There are graves of other non-British people at the cemetery.
Herr, dein Wille geschehe ("Lord, your will be done" in German):
Coincidentally, I met the current German ambassador to Malaysia not far from this pillar, and showed him this German grave and the inscription (and he photographed it). He was with two companions. Besides us, there were no other living people at the cemetery.
The Japanese bombed Penang in WW2 which caused destruction at the cemetery. That round indentation, which ruined the surname of this German person from Stuttgart, may be a trace of that incident.
A Polish:
There is actually a smaller Catholic cemetery adjacent to the Protestant one but there was a lock on the gate to there. I could only see from far: almost all the graves are destroyed to the ground but several crypts still stand...
I also visited an old Jewish cemetery recently, and that's what I'll post about soon.
All photos were taken with a Nikkor 50mm on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 by the author in June 23, 2025, in George Town, Penang, Malaysia
