PHT Vice President Khoo Salma Nasution telling visitors about the dog sculpture on Andrew Duncan's grave at the cemetery. — Picture by Steven Ooi KE
“Cemeteries are a part of our history and culture and this cemetery, managed by the city council, is well maintained and worth exploring,” she said. The cemetery is divided into two sections, a Catholic section and a Protestant one, and it is still in use with some vacant plots and a columbarium as space becomes scarce.
The marble dog has spawned many romantic stories similar to that of Japan’s Hachiko, the dog which waited for its master at the railway station until it died there. The Sarkies brothers were the top hoteliers of the East and their hotels in Penang and Singapore dominated the hospitality industry in the Straits Settlements for almost 50 years during that period.
“It was the Great Depression and business was bad, yet he remained generous and even let patrons stay and eat for free which earned the E&O the nickname ‘eat and owe’,” Salma said. He was killed when unknown persons shot him twice in the head at the grand staircase of the mansion on June 8, 1948. Despite having 10 rooms in the two-storey building, the mansion has 99 doors with most of the rooms having five to six sets of doors each and this earned it the nickname “99-door mansion.”
During the Battle of Penang in 1914, the Russian ship Zhemchug was attacked by German ship Eden on October 28 and sank. The Armenians’ graves were shifted to this plot at the Western Road Cemetery and placed in a rectangle. — Picture by Steven Ooi KEThere was a small community of Armenians living in George Town in the 1800s. There used to be a church — Church of St Gregory the Illuminator — built by an Armenian merchant on Bishop Street.