Within this book are stories of shopkeepers, stallholders and other small businesses rarely featured in the Singapore Story. Though they never became well-known like the towkays, they were the backbone of the economy and community. A great variety of little trades did business in the congested but lively Chinatown of old, from storytellers and brothels to textile shops and tea merchants. But as the town was remade through renewal and conservation, the shopkeepers were swept along into a world in motion, grappling with forces beyond their control.
Loh Kah Seng is an independent historian and founder of research consultancy Chronicles of Old Singapore. He is interested in all things that happened in the history of Singapore and the little histories of its people. His books include Squatters into Citizens: The 1961 Bukit Ho Swee Fire and the Making of Modern Singapore (NUS Press, 2013); Tuberculosis – The Singapore Experience, 1867-2018: Disease, Society and the State (Routledge, 2020); Theatres of Memory: Industrial Heritage of 20th Century Singapore (Pagesetters, 2021); and Pandemics in Singapore, 1819-2022: Lessons for the Age of COVID-19 (Routledge, 2024).
Stephen Dobbs has been a working academic at the University of Western Australia for the past 25 years. Prior to this, he was a labourer in a BHP steel mill in Western Australia. As a staunch unionist and defender of workers’ rights, he has always had a strong interest in the working class and their often-untold historical accounts. This interest carried through to his research over the years on people and occupations that have been largely ignored in Singapore history, beginning with The Singapore River: A Social History, 1819-2022 (NUS Press, 2003).
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