The Waterbury Democrat., 1940-10-02

Of the police department III olnsApe som -of-a-gun on earth.
 Here is the cross roads where Pa port where Dutch, Malayan, British Moro, Javanese, Polynesian and all the polygot conglomeration of civilizations of the Near and Far East come together. It should be the center for more mutiny, in- trigue and crime than any other city on earth.
 And yet, Inspector General A. IT. Dickinson, with 29 years of service in his potential hell hole, is the mildest hammered, most cul- tured gentleman you could poSsi- bly meet. Gray-haired, gray-eyed, quiet, pleasant, smiling, fond of flowers.
 General Dickinson come to Sin gapore as a young civil servant, fresh from school in England. He has stayed here, made it his home, devoted his life to maintaining law and order, cleaning up pest hole and making it city so safe that family parties can drive through the center Of Chinatown at night in open cars, unarmed and unafraid.
 HELL HOLE
 CLEANED UP
 Singapore is city of million people, 100000 of them being Chi nese crowded into a quarter which in some areas is so thickly popu- lated they count the inhabitants 1000 to the acre. How they survive at all, in the sticky, oppressive heat of the equator at sea level, IS the great mystery of life.
 Tn halcyon days this Chinatown was the rankest hole of the east. When colonial development was at its peak, from 12,000 to 15,000 Chinese laborers poured through Singapore in day, enroute to the new plantations and mines of the South Pacific. It was worse than any slave market ot old Africa or Arabia.
 In all this crowding began the colony of river boats, sampans where whole families spent their entire lives in poverty and filth. On Malay street was the worlds worst white slave center, Chinese tongs sprang up and flouriShed. There were four leading tongs at one time, and their hatchet work and fueds tied up the harbor time and again. There were nests of spies, and nationalist leaders for every native race of the Pacific made Singapore the center for their operations.
 It was during the first World War that the British decided Sim rarore must be cleaned up. Spies and nationalist agitators were driven out. Malay streets white slave and opium dens were com pletely wiped out. The tongs were brought under control. Food ped- dlers were licensed and cholera and dysentery, scourges of all tropics, reduced to g. minimum. STILL PLENTY
 or COLOR
 sOld-timers in Singapore lament She passing of the old city, with all its filth, but there is still plenty of atmosphere left.
 There are streets of the silk merchants, streets of the coffin makers, whole section for the iricksha runners, theater districts where the clang chatter . bang gong g-crash-wham of Chinese mu- sic batters discord against west ern ears. Wood carvers, ivory merchants, wild animal dealers have their combined shops and homes in open front stores on the sideWalklesS streets, each estab- lishment sheltering three or four generations of the family.
 Chinese drug stores sell remG- dies the American Medical Asso- ciation never heard of and fakirs and doctors without license adver- tise in six languages with such intriguing signs as "Oculist for Eyes, Piles and Impotency."
 And so. though Lavender street still stinks and the din of the Chinese market surpasses any noise on earth as the hawkers and housewives battle over shark meat, sting rays, inkfish, snails, slugs and other food delicacies, Singapore today is fast becoming a modern city. It has been Brit ish for nearly century, and as fast as many of the original 90- year leases expire, the old dives and tenements on their sites are torn down and replaced by modern buildings.
 SIKHS NUCLEUS
 OF POLICE FORCE
 Tn the residential sections on the hills are big estates and homes such as you find on the best streets of Montclair and Ev- anston and Pasadena. Parks and botanical gardens are world fla nous. In contrast to the crowded slurns of Chinatown, richc Chinese merchants and rubber men live on estates that rival Long Islands best, have their exclusive Garden Club in new quarters, with all the