Heirlooms in newsprint: Singapore couple safeguard copies of The Straits Times from 1950s

July 15, 2025

SINGAPORE – The elderly gentleman hunches forward, squints behind his glasses and runs his finger along paragraphs on the newsprint. He flips the page. He has been at this for about 20 minutes, every now and then muttering under his breath. He flips another page and this time, something in him stirs.

His eyebrows dart upwards. A smile begins to form and his eyes glint.

“You can’t tell from just looking at this,” he says, right index finger tapping the page, “but this is a cigarette advertisement.”

The bottom half of the page in this 1951 edition of The Straits Times simply carries the words “Player’s Please” on a plain white (well, sepia) background. In the bottom right corner of the ad is a circular crest featuring a bearded sailor and the words “Player’s Navy Cut” around him.

But this is not just any cigarette advertisement.

“This,” says Mr Hassim Mokhtar, 73, with a fond smile, “was the first cigarette I smoked; I must have been about seven or eight at the time. They sold for five cents for two sticks.”

For a fleeting moment, this silver-haired septuagenarian transforms into a kampung boy again.

We are in Mr Hassim’s cosy Housing Board flat in Choa Chu Kang on a rainy March afternoon, and he and his wife, Ms Hernie Lim, 71, are traversing time through copies of The Straits Times laid out on their coffee table.

​For the most part, newspapers from before the turn of the millennium have been preserved on microfilm or digitised. Singapore’s National Library Board (NLB) has more than 220,000 issues of various titles of local newspapers online.

Like leaves through the seasons, paper yields to the elements over decades. They turn yellow and brown, dry into brittleness, and fall apart. In any case, newspapers outlive their purpose once they have been read, so discarding or recycling them becomes the choice for most.

Considering this, Mr Hassim and Ms Lim are custodians of veritable treasure, in the form of three Straits Times special editions that are seven decades old.

The oldest is a Charter Day souvenir copy from Sept 22, 1951, when Singapore was proclaimed a “City of the British Commonwealth” by King George VI. This meant Singapore became known from then on as a city instead of a town, and was accorded a new set of liberties, privileges and immunities.

Then there is a special marking the coronation of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth on June 2, 1953; and a copy of The Sunday Times on Sept 1, 1957, the day after Hari Merdeka, when Malaya gained independence from the British.

Each issue is completely intact, from front page to back.

A constant escort

They are accidental heirlooms handed down from Ms Lim’s late mother, Madam Bertha Wong Yun Tshin.

For decades, the newspapers were stored in a room among books and magazines in Ms Lim’s childhood family home in Upper Serangoon. At one point, the pile of newspapers and magazines even made for a makeshift bed for her elder brother, says Ms Lim.

“My mother loved to read,” she recalls, “and she fed my brother and me a lot of information. Anything that pertains to general knowledge or history, she would make us read.”

Such was the value Madam Wong placed on reading that when she moved to live with Ms Lim and Mr Hassim in their multi-generation flat in 1981, she made sure the Straits Times specials followed her.

The trove of newspapers was a constant escort, too, each time Madam Wong uprooted when the couple moved.

The repository at NLB keeps old newspapers in vacuum-sealed bags and in a stable climate-controlled environment for long-term preservation. Mr Hassim and Ms Lim have a less scientific approach.

“We did not have a special way of storing the newspapers,” he says. “Most of the time, they were placed in a tote bag, wrapped up, put in a cupboard in the storeroom and the only time it was taken out was at each move.”

That, they reckon, is how the publications remain in relatively good condition even after seven decades.

Madam Wong, who died on Christmas Day in 2013 at the age of 94, collected all sorts of knick-knacks – coins, stamps, household ornaments – and copies of other publications like Reader’s Digest, Life, and Time magazines.

Most of these items are gone, given away or disposed of during one of the couple’s moves, but some remain in their flat, which can pass for a sleek antiques’ gallery.

On a waist-high cabinet rests a hefty cast-iron typewriter made by the British manufacturer Imperial. In a corner of the hall stands a Singer sewing machine stand, fitted with a custom-made, pearl-white marble tabletop. Neatly displayed at the foot of its treadle are a lime-green tiffin box, two charcoal irons and a porcelain steamer.

There is also a traditional Chinese 16-liang weighing balance, also known as a “tael” or “liang” scale. “My mother used to weigh the newspapers,” says Ms Lim, lifting the scale’s stick, “to ensure the karung guni (rag-and-bone) man didn’t cheat her.”

But the value of the antique editions they own is not measured by their weight.

The cover of The Straits Times’ Queen Elizabeth coronation special reads “One Dollar”. On online marketplace Carousell, a copy with tattered sides is currently listed for over $300. Mr Hassim’s copy is pristine by comparison and one might wonder how much it could command. Yet, to him, there is no point even thinking about a dollar amount for the publications they own.

“In some ways,” says Mr Hassim, “they are somewhat priceless to us… To pen down its worth is hard to even contemplate.”

Laughter and lightness fill the air as they flip through the pages, recognising some names or places or tickled by oddities from a bygone era.

They see on the pages some familiar brands – SCS butter, Borneo Motors cars, Eveready batteries – and other lesser-known products that have fallen victim to time and technology. Falks Veritas candle powder, anyone?

Mr Hassim Mokhtar and his wife, Ms Hernie Lim, flipping through an old copy of The Straits Times. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES

‘Like textbooks’

The couple may be in their 70s, but even they are too young to recall most of the news events reported in those issues.

For example, Mr Hassim was five, and Ms Lim three on the date of the Merdeka issue, so that momentous event, really, was lost on them.

For Ms Lim, who had an administrative job at an international school before devoting time to social work, the publications laid out in front of her are contemporaneous textbooks of history.

“We all learn about Sir Stamford Raffles in school, so everyone knows about that part of Singapore’s history,” she says. “So it’s interesting to look at these pages and learn about what daily life was like back then.”

In the 1950s, Singapore was still rebuilding following the end of World War II and the brutal occupation by the Japanese, and was still some ways from independence, which was gained in 1965. It was a different time, a different life.

Editorial standards and rules were different, too.

Mr Hassim, who was a meter reader for 30 years, exclaims in a mix of shock and amusement when he finds, in a two-page photo spread from 1951, a trishaw rider who is seen taking – as the caption describes – a “satisfying whiff” of opium. Let’s just say such a photo would not make it to print today.

These evolved standards, too, are the reason you probably have never seen a cigarette ad in a newspaper, or anywhere else for that matter. Singapore banned all tobacco advertising in 1971.

People and their habits change over time. So do newspapers, which have had to transform or die in a digital age.

What is a newspaper worth to a society? Mr Hassim and Ms Lim have pondered that question in recent years – they have thought about donating their treasured copies to SPH Media or the National Archives, but are not 100 per cent sold on the idea.

“We want to pass them on to someone or some place that will understand the importance and value they carry,” explains Mr Hassim.

As he trails off from that sentence, another sparkle appears in his eyes.

“You should have them,” he says.

Me?

“Yes,” he says. “You work in newspapers so you know what they mean, and will take good care of them.”

It is an unexpected, deeply humbling twist in our long chat.

I got to know of Mr Hassim’s collection through my father-in-law, who was his schoolmate. But I had never met him before the interview. Becoming an inheritor, of sorts, certainly never crossed my mind.

But the amiable couple seem sure about their decision. I feel the weight of pressure, having just listened to both speak about what the newspapers mean to them and their families. But at their urging, I decide to accept.

They pose for photos with the copies they will soon part with, wearing tender, contented smiles.

Afterwards, Mr Hassim and Ms Lim see me off at the door and as I wait for the lift, I find myself gripping the bag that is under my arm just a little tighter.

I wonder if one day, I, too, with greying hair and squinting eyes, will find myself hunching over these cherished copies of The Straits Times. Reliving the special day they were entrusted to me.