by Quah Seng Sun
Captain Francis Light is the man credited with putting Penang on the map. And this year, 2024, marks the 238th anniversary of Penang’s founding as a British settlement on 11 August 1786.
This picture above, originally published in the Pinang Gazette and Straits Chronicle on 4 October 1939, depicts a 10-foot tall bronze statue of Francis Light, modelled after his son, Colonel William Light, Surveyor-General of South Australia and founder of Adelaide.
The statue was mounted on a 12-foot high granite pedestal and unveiled a day earlier by the Straits Settlements Governor, Shenton Thomas. It was the work of Frederick John Wilcoxson (1888-1974), an Associate of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, and cost roughly 15,000 Straits dollars (£1,050) to create.
On the pedestal was a brass plaque, measuring 1 ft 9 ins by 3 ft, bearing the inscription: FRANCIS LIGHT FOUNDER OF PENANG 1786.
This plaque was surmounted by the crest of the island, consisting of three ostrich feathers, executed in bronze and cast as an integral part of the plaque. This addition increased the height by another nine inches, making it 2 ft 6 ins in total.
The statue arrived in Penang by the SS Glenfinlas on 13 May 1939, and the plaque on 6 August the same year.
Contrary to what historians and bloggers have previously written about the statue’s original location, it was erected not inside Fort Cornwallis but outside, on the grass verge in Light Street between two of the fort’s bastions, at a point opposite the District and Police Courts, which are now the Penang State Legislative Assembly building, as shown here by the encircled X in red (source: Pinang Gazette and Straits Chronicles, 10 May 1939).
According to the Straits Settlements (Penang) Association, it made a suggestion to the Municipal Commissioners to have the statue erected there instead of alternative sites like Downing Street or King Edward Place, with Fort Cornwallis as a background and facing the Courts, and it was subsequently approved (source: Pinang Gazette and Straits Chronicle, 10 Jan 1938).
About two years after its unveiling, the statue was unceremoniously dumped by the Imperial Japanese Army, which occupied Penang during the Second World War from December 1941 until August 1945. It was later rescued after the British re-occupation and moved to the lawn of the Supreme Court grounds in August 1946.
In June 1966, the Penang state government succumbed to pressure groups seeking to remove all vestiges of Penang’s colonial past. The Francis Light statue was among the casualties and was consigned to the Penang State Museum in Farquhar Street where it first languished in a corridor before being relocated to a more respectable, though still secluded, outdoor spot often missed by human traffic.
When the Adelaide City Council heard of the statue’s downgrading, it attempted to have it transferred to them. However, this request was rebuffed by the then Chief Minister, Wong Pow Nee, who, to his credit, could still recognise that the statue was an historical object and should be retained in Penang for posterity (source: The Straits Times, 29 July 1966).
Since 2003, the Francis Light statue has been returned to a site within Fort Cornwallis, albeit without a proper pedestal and now missing its brass plaque.