{"id":33730,"date":"2026-04-05T23:50:37","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T15:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=33730"},"modified":"2026-04-06T13:03:03","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T05:03:03","slug":"the-taiping-lake-gardens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=33730","title":{"rendered":"The Taiping Lake Gardens"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A few weeks ago, I published a post <\/a>about the KL Lake Gardens, now renamed Perdana Botanical Garden<\/a>. The gardens were developed in the 1880s and opened on 13 May 1889. During this period Sir Frank Swettenham was Resident of Selangor, and his wife, Lady Sydney Swettenham, was a strong supporter of the project\/ In her honor the lake was named Sydney Lake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew that Lady Swettenham was also a supporter of the Taiping Lake Gardens, I searched for more information and found a Wikipedia article Taiping Lake Gardens<\/a>, in which she is mentioned in the history section. But how? I was shocked. Here is a quote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Taiping Lake Gardens was originally a mining ground before it was established as a public garden in 1880. The idea of a public garden was the brainchild of Colonel Robert Sandilands Frowd Walker<\/a>.[1]<\/a><\/sup> The garden was developed by Charles Compton Reade<\/a> (1880\u20131933), who was also responsible for planning the Kuala Lumpur garden town, together with Lady Swettenham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That the garden was developed by Reade is clearly nonsensical, as he was born in 1880., the year that Colonel Walker came with the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked Marianne, a member of the Taiping Heritage Society and experienced in using the NewspaperSG<\/a> online archive to search for information. She found a gem. Here it is<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 4 December 1893
As it is not easy to read, I have added a transcription.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Public Gardens (the original name) were opened on+ 17 November 1893 by Sir Frank Swettenham, the Resident of Perak and his wife, Lady Swettenham. She performed the opening ceremony by turning on the fountain presented by the Chinese community. Frank Swettenham gave a speech in which he praised W.R Scott who had put his whole heart in the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not only the reference to Raede is bizarre, also the opening date of the Garden is incorrect, and it is not the first public garden in what soon would become the Federated Malay States, because the Kuala Lumpur public garden had been opened in 1889, 4 years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I often do, when I find discrepancies in Wikipedia, is to check the history of the article. Followers of my blog may remember the Amelia Earhart saga, where the author of the Tekah Aeodrome<\/a> article , had wrongly assumed that she had landed there on 7 June 1937.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I checked the history of the Taiping Lake Garden topic, and I was shocked to find that the creator of the Lake Gardens topic on 5 February 2009, was the same Andrew Kidman, who created the Tekah item on 12 June 2007. He has been quite active between 2007 abd 2012, creating 36 Wikipedia page<\/a>s. No sign of life after that, I have tried to contact him in 2019, no response. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does it matter, these two mistakes? Yes, because these errors have percolated the Internet during the more than 15 years that they went unnoticed. Google for the history of the Taiping Lake Gardens and you may find that they are the oldest public gardens in Malaya and designed by the New Zealand town planner Charles Compton Reade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my opinion, the Taiping Heritage Society has the best credentials to correct the errors.
I am willing to assist them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A humorous detail: Swettenham compares the two public gardens in Taiping and Kuala Lumpur. He can do that because, before becoming the Resident of Perak (1889-1896), he was the Resident of Selangor (1882-1889). This is his opinion about the Taiping Lake Gardens: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course they could never expect to have such a beautiful garden as in the adjoined State of Selangor when the grounds seemed to have been formed by Nature for the purpose<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Would current visitors of both gardens still agree with him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A final remark<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lady Swettenham opened the gardens by activating the fountain given by the Chinese community of Taiping. The beautiful fountain is still there and has been rejuvenated last year. It is commonly called the Ng Boo Bee Fountain. But that is incorrect. In my next post I will explain the confusion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago, I published a post about the KL Lake Gardens, now renamed Perdana Botanical Garden. The gardens were developed in the 1880s and opened on 13 May 1889. During this period Sir Frank Swettenham was Resident of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[68,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-taiping"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/WhatsApp-Image-2026-03-14-at-2.43.17-PM-1.jpeg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2LqIR-8M2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33730"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33730\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33757,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33730\/revisions\/33757"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}