Richard James Wilkinson

[4] He was multilingual and had a command of French, German, Greek, Italian and Spanish, and later, Malay and Hokkien which he qualified in, in 1889, while a cadet after joining the Straits Settlements Civil Service.

[5] On 7 November 1900 Wilkinson presented a collection of Malay manuscripts and printed books to the University of Cambridge Library.

[9] He then rejoined the Colonial Civil Service and was the acting superintendent of education at Penang, after which, by the end of March 1897, he became a police magistrate at Singapore.

[18] One of his first acts was to issue, in August, a proclamation informing the citizens of the Straits Settlements that war had "broken out between His Majesty King George V and The Emperor of Austria-Hungary and between their respective subjects.

Projects that had been heavily spent on included the railway line running through the Peninsula to Siam (present-day Thailand) and the construction of the battleship HMS Malaya.

The press noted that Wilkinson was "a man of exceptional financial capacity, and at the critical moment in Malaya, after the declaration of war," had "revealed a grasp of administrative finance, and even of the intricacies of banking, commerce, and exchange which astound men whose whole lives are given to such things.

The Straits Government also decided to make advances to companies against stock, or other securities, averting the fear and anxiety being experienced then.

The papers described his position at that time as "one of extraordinary delicacy and difficulty for an acting Governor," and noted that if he had not taken on the responsibility of stabilising Malayan industry, "there would have been greater disaster than most folk care to acknowledge."

[21] Despite all of that, he managed to have published by December 1914 a collection of Malay pantun (poetry) that he had worked on together with Richard Olaf Winstedt.

Entertainment included performances of ronggeng, mak yong, silat, wayang kulit, and Indian dance, singing and juggling.

The previous governor of the colony, Sir Edward Marsh Merewether, had recommended this rule change be enacted and Wilkinson enforced it.