THE MALAY MAIL

RESOURCE : HISTORY INSIGHTS - MALAYSIA

2 December 2024

The Malay Mail is the first daily newspaper published in the Federated Malay States, which made its debut on 1.12.1896. It had its first publishing office at a shophouse along Market Street (now Leboh Pasar Besar). It initially operated with secondhand printing machines bought from a Singapore paper which ceased operations earlier that year. Their shophouse was subsequently pulled down to make way for the Kuala Lumpur General Post Office at the corner of King Street and Market Street.

In terms of ownership, James Henry Matthews Robson (1870-1945) has always been dubbed as the founder of Malay Mail . Robson Heights and Jalan Robson, an upscale area in the Seputeh neighbourhood of present-day Kuala Lumpur were named after him in honour of his role in the first daily newspaper, as well as his subsequent role as a member of the Federal Council of FMS.

In 1900, Malay Mail changed its legal entity to a private limited company. In 1903, editorship was taken over by S.C. Yeomans, a Cambridge graduate, wherein the publishing office moved to Java Street (now Jalan Tun Perak). Robson held the post of a managing director.

In 1906, the paper employed F.M. Price, another Cambridge graduate, as an assistant to S.C. Yeomans.

Sometime in 1907, as readership grew, the company moved into four units of newly built shophouses along Java Street (Picture 4). Simultaneously, a new and larger printing machine was procured from England.

Note: The Malay Mail is a fully online newspaper since 1 December 2018.

Source and image credit: yusrinfaidz blogspot

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6/12/2024 : 9.08 p.m