AS Singapore sets off on the fast track for the 21st Century, a Murdoch historian’s research has split the opinions of university departments and inspired a flow of cultural activity in the city.

In 1978, tucked away in a dusty cellar under the Singapore Subordinates Court, Professor Jim Warren stumbled upon a mountain of documents and papers that breathed life into the city’s past culture of Chinese society and colonial rule.

“Most historians examine the big picture through material such as employment and wage figures or amounts of opium use,” said Professor Warren.

“Examining bundles of the misplaced Coroner’s records from 1880 to 1940, which were filthy, damp and ravaged by white ants, lifted the veil of anonymity of all those immigrant workers on whose shoulders Singapore was built.”

Professor Warren’s first project was to sift through the Coroner’s views, Coroner’s inquests, suicide notes, letters, the odd recipe and household bills to draw together the threads of rickshaw pullers’ lives.

“Rickshaw pullers were ubiquitous in Singapore and yet little was known about their lives,” he said.

“These Coroner’s records described what life was like for Chinese bachelor migrant labourers, right down to the clothes they wore, food they ate and the intricacies of their workplace and everyday relationships.

“At the same time we can learn about the experience of migrating from China, dislocation and belonging, and the colonial attitudes, as well as what it was like living in the depression and wartime, and the impact of the birth of the automobile on the life chances of the rickshaw pullers.”

Professor Warren’s unusual approach to historical research, which straddles the boundaries of several disciplines, has had a tremendous impact on the Chinese-speaking community in Singapore and has particularly struck a chord with artists and writers.

His first two books, exploring the lives of rickshaw pullers and prostitutes, have inspired a plethora of projects including major plays, literary works, documentaries and a TV series. By encouraging social history research to be expressed through popular performance in this unconventional approach to research, Professor Warren believes that he enabled many Singaporeans to both rediscover and explore their cultural roots and histories. This occurred at a time when pre-war historical memory and valuable anecdotal and biographical evidence is becoming rare.

His third book, about death in Singapore Chinese society and culture, and which will complete the series, is eagerly awaited.