Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore
A brief historical note by Arthur Knight tracing the founding, relocation, and expansion of Tan Tock Seng Hospital in Singapore from 1844 to the completion of new Government-built premises on Moulmein Road in 1909.
The article reproduces the inscriptions on commemorative tablets marking the hospital’s origins: built in 1844 at a cost of $7,000 by the merchant Tan Tock Seng, enlarged by his son Tan Kim Ching, and removed to Seranggong Road in 1860 when the military authorities took the original Pearl’s Hill site (p. 72). Knight documents the hospital’s incorporation by Ordinance VII of 1880, its governance structure, and the substantial contributions of Chinese benefactors, including Tan Beng Swee’s 1879 wards and the notable exception of Syed Ali bin Mahomed al Junied, an Arab merchant who assigned over five acres of property to the hospital in 1857 (pp. 73–74). The new buildings, completed in 1909 at a cost of $481,210, were funded principally by Government with a $50,000 gift from Towkay Loke Yew and a bequest from Wee Boon Teck; a separate ward for blind patients was subsequently added through a $12,000 gift from Ong Kim Wee of Malacca (pp. 74–75).