Background

The Bangkok Times was the city’s newspaper of record from 1888 to 1941. Surprisingly well written considering the small size of the European population, it was lively and covered all events and personalities at a time when Siam was evolving into a modern nation and was beset by the colonizers.

It had many predecessors. The first newspaper was in Thai and appeared in 1844, edited by a missionary. It didn’t survive the decade. Neither did a handful of English-language newspapers. They would begin hopefully but at some point they would print a story that bruised a fragile ego, and that ego would fire back with a lawsuit. Courts generally sided with the plaintiffs. The resulting settlement would prove too great for the owner, generally a missionary, who would be forced to declare bankruptcy.

In 1887, a new version of the Bangkok Times gained enough traction to survive. It would be published until the Japanese occupation of Bangkok in 1941. Beginning as a small six-page weekly journal, the Times would eventually evolve into a bi-weekly, then thrice weekly and, by the late 1890s, a daily, issued every evening.

Evolution

At first, the Times served as a community paper reporting local events. As the decade progressed, it became increasingly cosmopolitan focusing more on European and global news, made possible by two telegraphic services that quickly conveyed international stories to the newsroom. Its shift in focus was tacit recognition that its primary subscribers were businessmen interested in economic and political intelligence. Prices, trade deals, political events that impacted on commerce, court cases, and bankruptcies figure prominently. By the mid-90s, local news was taking second place to world events.

Rather than bundling stories on related topics, we have let them unfold in real time. It is intriguing to watch a situation develop over time as a resolution is reached. It gives a story a sense of mystery as initial, incomplete reports of an event invariably do.

Thus, within these pages is the news you would have read each evening.

Overseas news

By the mid-1890s, the paper’s sources were staff reporters, reader contributions, court transcriptions, gossip, and press releases. World news came via Reuters (formed in London in 1851) or Havas (founded in Paris in 1879) telegrams.

It focused on wars, British parliamentary issues, commerce, regulation changes and other matters of interest to businessmen, importers and exporters. The pages display a fascination with the benefits that modern science was making possible, engendering an optimism about the coming years. Writers displayed no fear about inventions even when a bit of caution might have been in order. Perhaps that is only our view today but period editors seemed to have little inkling of the horrors in store. Cars, X-rays, and radioactivity were reported with a childlike enthusiasm that is rather beguiling.

Locals

The hot news topics of the 1890s included the introduction of electricity, the construction of railways and the electric tram, the Paknam Incident, the first visit by a Thai king to Europe, the Spanish-American War, foreign designs on Thai territory and threats to its continued existence as a sovereign nation.

Most local news comprised short items on royal activities: new laws; dances and social events; sports (the Sailing Club, cricket matches, snipe shooting in the Don Meuang area, shooting, and golf at Sanam Luang); arrivals and departures; births and deaths, new buildings, roads, and bridges; gossip, and other topics. Either Bangrak [New Road between Suriwongse and Sathorn] was the epicenter of the city or reporters were disinclined to venture further, because most news seemed to arise from this district.

Health was precarious and “We regret having to report the death of…” was a daily refrain, often two or three times per issue. There is continual reporting of local and overseas cities consumed by plague, or cholera—worst at the beginning of the rainy season i.e. late May, early June—and frequent mentions of local luminaries who were feeling unwell or were in hospital. These events were important because with the lack of antibiotics, minor ailments could mutate into fatal illnesses.

There were also reports of too-frequent tramway accidents that resulted in death or injury. On the rivers, steam-powered boats were constantly running down or slicing through smaller vessels, with attendant loss of life. In some instances, pistol shots fired from one boat to another also made for exciting journeys.

The longest stories were generally devoted to lawsuits and court cases and the number of cases is often alarming, suggesting a litigious society in a realm without clear-cut legal precedents. Most dealt with cases of malfeasance and a large number were against the Tramway Company for injuries. These were brought by ordinary citizens and seldom were police or authorities summoned to witness. It suggests that commoners had rights and exercised them.

Many court proceedings were printed verbatim and took up dozens of column inches, the C-Span of its day. At the same time, they resembled reality TV, so detailed were the accounts, with titillation rather than legal niceties appearing to be the chief focus. These cases were tried in a variety of courts: the International Court, Borispah (police) Court, and Legation (embassy) Courts. Complicating matters were that many Asians claimed protection by European embassies under the concept of extraterritoriality.

Crime also occupied many column inches; we could repeat them ad infinitum but will desist. Robberies and burglaries, often of a violent nature, occurred nearly three times per day, and that did not include crimes committed beyond the European districts. Hat snatching, house burglary, warfare between rival Chinese gangs, lone holdups, and others suggest that life was precarious. They were generally coupled with appeals to augment the small police force and to install more lamps to illuminate dark streets.

There was news of Comings and Goings among the European community. A surprising number of official government posts—police commissioner, military officers, advisors, etc.—were occupied by Europeans in the employ of the Siamese government and familiar names pop up frequently.

Given the importance of imports and exports, there were long lists of ship arrivals and departures under the heading of “Shipping Intelligence”. Merchants apparently kept a close eye on timetables and on accidents with nearly one shipwreck a week attended by rather horrifying loss of life and, of course, goods. Not all of these founderings were due to storms but occurred because of mechanical failures or helmsmen errors.

Europeans frequently penned Letters to the Editor that were often as little informed as many are today. We’ve left out most of them because they are generally long and meandering and take forever to get to the point.

Style

Much of the charm in reading these old stories lies in the colorful use of English, and in a manner seldom heard today. Often more subjective than objective, it is often characterized by tongue-in-cheek reporting, a fascination with the bizarre, and sardonic wit especially when referring to the French.

There is a spelling inconsistency which suggests the lack of a style book that normally guides newspaper editors. The spelling of place names is erratic, as is punctuation. There are also frequent changes in fonts, caps/lower case, type sizes, especially in the advertisements that often resemble circus posters. While British spelling predominates, there are occasional lapses into Americanisms suggesting that the sub-editors varied in their origins. Rather than standardize them, we have left the spellings as they originally appeared.

This applies to renditions of Thai words as well. The Chao Phya River was always referred to as Meinam or Menam, the editors apparently not aware that the word simply means “river”. Other odd substitutions were Taphan for saphan (bridge), Sanon for Thanon (street), Patoo for Pratu (Gate), as well as many variants of Ayutthaya, Sapatoom, and other place names. Again, we’ve left the erratic spelling as it is. The currency of the realm was the “tical” rather than the baht. Many words had been coined in India under the British Raj. Thus, we find tiffin, kafir, punkah, pukka and others dropped into a story as though the readers were familiar with them. Fortunately, we know what they mean because of a thick dictionary of Anglo-Indian words published in 1886 called Hobson-Jobson.

Every date ends with a classifier. Thus, it is never October 5, but always October 5th, etc. Similarly with the appearance of the Latin word “ult” (ultimo mense) means “in the previous month”; “inst.” (instante mense) means “occurring in this month”; and “prox.” (proximo mense) means “next month”. Other Latin words occasionally appear and there are many references to Greek and Latin mythology with which readers would have been familiar from their school days. Moreover, the editors switch back and forth between metric and avoirdupois. Adding to the confusion were various Thai and Chinese weights, measurements, and coinage (see Glossary).

Tone

The stories reflect a very farang [foreign] point of view about Bangkok’s shortcomings. Some of the stories are supercilious and arch, suggesting colonial predilections. At the outset, the Times was even-handed in its treatment of other nationalities and the paper was relatively unbiased. After the Paknam Incident in 1893, however, it became more stridently British i.e. anti-French, although the British were guilty of the same territorial aggrandizement. The Siam Free Press was continually called “our New Road contemporary” and the constant sniping at the French editors was often scathing. There is also latent and blatant racism that reflects attitudes at the time. For example, “Chinaman” was in common parlance and we repeat it here to show its prevalence.

The Times was passive-aggressive on the subject of women. On the calls for universal suffrage, the paper was decidedly anti-, preferring that the women hew to traditional roles. Interestingly, it would take a noble stand on the issue of women’s rights and then the next moment, repeat a misogynous canard about this or that failing of a woman.

What is striking is the paper’s bellicosity with a large degree of saber-rattling and jingoism. Everyone seemed to clamor for conflict; beating the war drums, thumping their chests over perceived encroachment on territory. It is easy to conclude that they were a bloodthirsty lot. Each day found the paper reporting on half dozen or wars, from South Africa to the Philippines, and from China to the Mideast; there seemed to be insurrections and disturbances on every continent. Peace was definitely not in vogue, at least among the male editors.

The attitude to Siamese royalty and government officials was deferential. Europeans seemed to have held King Chulalongkorn in high esteem, and praise for his reform efforts don’t seem to have been dictated by a fear of lese majeste. When the King experienced a health scare in 1894, it set off a panic in the European community. His conduct during his state visit to Europe engendered pride among Siamese and Europeans alike.

Humor

Humor was an important element of the Times. It reflected bemused observance of the world and its foolish eccentricities and the pages were sprinkled with it. Some of it was quite witty but there was also a large measure of droll flummery, shaggy dog stories, and hoary old jokes so lame it is hard to believe anyone laughed. Almost every section labeled “Humor” as in “Schoolboy Humor”, “Battleship Humor”, was decidedly unfunny to modern sensibilities. Rudyard Kipling and Mark Twain were considered the leading humorists.

Oddities

It seems strange that the newspaper was so little interested in self-promotion. Its editors didn’t bother to announce the shifts from bi-weekly to weekly back to bi-weekly, and thrice-weekly and finally daily. Suddenly, the reader would notice that it was being issued more frequently. Things were done without fanfare, with no pre-notice whatever. One day, unannounced, two photographs appeared and despite, the novelty, no photographs appeared during the rest of the decade, other than in ads. Most surprising was that at the end of 1899, there was no summation of the century nor projection of what the coming century might hold. True, at the time, April 13 was still the traditional Siamese New Year but the paper followed the European calendar.

Also odd is that at least five stories were repeated word for word, three years apart. It is as though, panicking at an encroaching deadline, a sub-editor grabbed whatever he found to fill the pages.

This editor’s comments

Unfortunately, time has not been kind to extant copies of the Times. Because the copies were nearly 100 years old by the time they were microfilmed, many had been so badly damaged by time, humidity, and white ants that the pages are often too dark or too light to read. Thus, the large gaps between items and dates is often due to the illegibility of the text.

Adding to the difficulty in the reading them is the fact that the pages were scanned as negatives meaning that text is white against a black background; similarly with advertisements. We’ve done our best to re-produce them by photographing the pages on which they appeared but they still appear smudged and indistinct. We’ve included them to suggest how their imaginative typography and graphics appeared.

To provide context, we explain a lot of unfamiliar terms and begin each year with a summation of important Siamese and world events. Translated words are enclosed in parentheses: (); explanations and comments by this editor have been inserted between brackets: [ ].

Afterword

We tend to regard people of an earlier age as less-sophisticated versions of ourselves, as people who were dealing with simpler problems in a less-complicted world. As one reads the newspaper, he is struck by the realization that these people were fully-formed, intelligent human beings dealing with similar complex dilemmas that bedevil us today.