Maria lived in Java with Che Aminah from the turn of the year in 1942/43 until some time after the end of the Japanese occupation.

When Maria was handed over, Che Aminah was living in Bandoeng. But when Mrs. Hertogh's mother went to see her at Mrs. Hertogh's request after Mrs. Hertogh had been interned, she found the house empty.

Che Aminah and Maria had apparently gone to Batavia. Che Aminah told the Social Welfare Department on 24 April 1950 that they later moved back to Bandoeng “because of Bertha. If I were found with a Dutch child, the terrorists would have killed me.”

Maria was known to Malays as “Puteh”, the fair one: she was conspicuous and Che Aminah's claim that the care of Maria was at great personal risk to herself had some basis.

Back in Bandoeng, Che Aminah, making use of a skill acquired during her long residence in Japan, got a job as an interpreter with the Japanese military police.

She avoided trouble during the occupation but continued to be in fear of “terrorists” and, as travel became easier in 1947, she took Maria, via Singapore, to live in Kemaman, in the state of Trengganu in the Federation of Malaya, where she had relatives. She claimed that leaving Java meant the loss of a substantial amount of property which she estimated as being worth about S$50,000.

At Kemaman, Maria attended the Chukai Malay Girls School for more than two years. She wore Malay clothes. She could not use a knife and fork. She learnt the Quran.

Sergeant Hertogh, Maria's father, was sent as a prisoner of war from Java to Japan, where he was released in 1945.

He returned to Java and rejoined his wife. They said they enquired about Maria but could not find her. Eventually they returned to Holland without having been able to contact Maria or Che Aminah. They asked the Dutch authorities in Java and Singapore to try and trace the child.

The High Court had now to decide two related issues remaining from Originating Summons No. 248 of 1950, namely the legality of marriage and the custody of Maria.

Mr. E.D. Shearn and Mr. K.A. Seth appeared for Maria's parents, the plaintiffs. Inche Sardon Jubir represented Che Aminah, Inche Ahmad Ibrahim was for Maria and Mr. John Eber (in forma pauperis) for Mansoor Adabi.

Mansoor Adabi did not appear at the hearing, which began on 20 November. A week before, he had been injured in a motorcycle accident in Serangoon Road and was still in hospital with serious facial and head injuries. Both Che Aminah and Mrs. Hertogh gave evidence.

Mr. Justice Brown delivered judgement on Saturday, 2 December. He reviewed the history of the case in some detail, according to the evidence placed before him. Most of the background which he described has already been included in this account.

The Judge held that Maria's country of domicile was, in law, that of her father, namely, Holland. Under the law of Holland, she had no capacity to marry because she was under 16. He went on to refer to the general rule of English law (applying in Singapore) that a person's capacity to marry was governed by the law of his or her domicile and that no marriage was valid unless each party had the capacity, according to the law of his or her domicile, to marry the other.

There was however a possible exception to this rule which provided that the validity of a marriage celebrated in Singapore between persons, one of whom had a Singaporean, and the other a foreign, domicile, was not affected by any incapacity which, though existing under the law of such foreign domicile, did not exist under the law of Singapore. Singapore recognized Muslim law and, if the exception was to be applied, it had to be shown that Mansoor's country of domicile was Singapore and that Maria was, in law, a Muslim.

Che Aminah and Maria had come to Singapore from Kemaman around 12 April 1950. It was the Chinese year of the Tiger, an ominous year for some.

They stayed at No. 94 Syed Alwi Road. There they were visited on two or three occasions by officers of the Dutch Consulate-General, who found that Che Aminah was unwilling to be separated from Maria. The Consulate then sought the assistance of the Social Welfare Department, which dealt with displaced persons and with children in need of care or protection.

Officers of the Women and Children's section of the Department got in touch with Che Aminah and Maria.

Che Aminah's attitude then was that she was not prepared to give up Maria in any circumstances. She also said she did not want the S$500 which had been offered by the Consulate as compensation for the expenses of maintaining Maria for eight years.

At this point, understanding that Che Aminah and Maria intended to return to Kemaman, Mr. Jacob Van Der Gaag, then acting as Netherlands Consul-General in Singapore, on 22 April 1950, by way of Originating Summons No. 124 of 1950, applied to the High Court for an order under the Guardianship of Infants Ordinance directing Che Aminah to deliver Maria into the custody of the Social Welfare Department, pending the making of a further order.

The Chief Justice on the same day in Chambers heard and approved the application and ordered accordingly.

Che Aminah and Maria knew nothing of all this. Neither was served with copies of the Originating Summons. They were not in court and were not represented.

The Chief Justice's interim order dated 22 April was transmitted that day to the Social Welfare Department and served by an officer of the Department on Che Aminah who surrendered Maria into the Department's care.

She was sent to Middle Road Hospital for medical examination, which was the normal routine for all children committed into the Department's care.

Maria was still at the Convent when the application for a stay of execution, pending appeal, was heard on 11 December. She did not appear in court. She could not influence what was going on or what was about to happen as events moved inexorably to their climax for herself and for many others.

From early morning, people began to gather around the Supreme Court. Some carried white cloth banners demanding Maria's removal from the Convent, others a green flag displaying a crescent and star. They shouted slogans. By the end of the hearing, about noon, the crowd had become a restive mob of 2,000 to 3,000.

Disorder broke out soon afterwards outside the Supreme Court. In the afternoon, it moved to the vicinity of the Sultan Mosque. After nightfall there were outbreaks in other, fairly far-spread, parts of the island.

Rioting was at its worst on the first afternoon and night. It continued on a declining scale until noon on 13 December.

Eighteen people were killed – nine by the rioters and nine shot by the police or military. One-hundred and seventy-three were injured, many seriously. Nearly 200 vehicles were burned or damaged. Most of those killed or injured by rioters were Europeans or Eurasians.

A Commission of Inquiry was appointed by the Governor to report on the riots. It consisted of Sir Lionel Leach, a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, as Chairman, with Sir Henry Studdy, Chief Constable of the West Riding of Yorkshire and Mr. J.H. Wenham, Chairman of the Standing Committee of Surrey, as members. Mr. J.R. Williams was Secretary.

The Commission ascribed the first disorders outside the Supreme Court to the religious passions whipped up over Maria's case but found that later outbreaks elsewhere were racial in character, directed indiscriminately against Europeans and Eurasians.

The rioters were mainly Malays but they included many overseas Muslims. The Commission found no evidence of communist inspiration behind the rioting, which apparently took the Malayan Communist Party by surprise. Some Chinese youths joined in, notably a criminal band known as the “108 Gang”, but their part was opportunist and minor.

After the marriage, there was a period of nearly four months during which the issues remained in suspense. Far from allowing the dust to settle, this interval saw a hardening of extreme attitudes and an inflation of controversy.

Within nine days of the wedding, the London Daily Express wrote in an editorial of “two hundred people of Bergen-op-Zoom in Holland [who] challenge the justice of Britain in the name of all parents.” Describing Che Aminah as a “nurse”, they went on:

This extravagance is quoted to illustrate the worldwide interest in the case and the misunderstanding, chauvinism and intolerance which suffused it.

In the same week, Majlis, a Malay newspaper in Kuala Lumpur, in a leader wrote that the case of Maria had become a religious and national matter and (was) no longer a case between Che Aminah and Maria's parents. Other Malay newspapers, Utusan Melayu in Singapore and Warta Negara in Penang, argued editorially that the marriage should not be interfered with.

Maria and Mansoor received letters from Muslim organizations in Pakistan promising financial and other help. One said that the entire Muslim population in Pakistan would support the couple to fight the case with the Dutch Government. Another declared “any further move by the Dutch Government to separate (Maria) from her husband would be an open challenge to the Muslim world.” Pledges of aid came also from Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.

In Malaya, Malay newspapers began to collect funds for passing on to the “legal defence fund” set up by Mr. Majid's Muslim Welfare Association. The Association obtained police permission to collect door-to-door subscriptions which started on 12 September; originally the permit ran until the end of December but it was withdrawn on 30 September.

The court that heard the first appeal consisted of Mr. Justice D.E.C. Evans (President), Mr. Justice Paul Storr and Mr. Justice W. Thorogood. The appellant, Che Aminah, was represented by Dr. C.H. Withers-Payne (Mr. D.K. Walters, who filed the appeal on 22 May, being ill) and Mr. Ayyamperumal Muthuswamy. Mr. Kenneth Gould appeared for the respondent, the Consul-General for the Netherlands.

The court unanimously set aside the orders made by the Chief Justice on 22 April and 19 May. All costs, at the earlier hearings and in the Appeal Court, were awarded to the appellant, Che Aminah.

The orders were set aside on the ground that the originating summons had not been served on anyone; in particular it had not been served on Che Aminah and Maria, both of whom were named in it and were, in the opinion of the court, necessary parties. No authority to dispense with service had been sought or obtained, nor had there been a waiver of service on behalf of Maria. Thus the requirements of the Rules of the Supreme Court as applying to actions under the Guardianship of Infants Ordinance had not been met. The Appellate Court held that, therefore, the proceedings were a nullity.

The court also found some ambiguity relating to the role of the Consul-General. The claim for custody was based purely on the parental rights of the father but the court was informed that the Consul-General was not acting as agent for the father but in his capacity as Consul. There was no evidence that the Consul-General had been specifically empowered to act for the parents, nor of the father's ability to maintain Maria, nor even of his continued existence.

The proceedings, commented the court, seemed to have been instituted with altogether undue haste and without adequate care for no better reason than to keep Maria within a purely casual jurisdiction, Che Aminah having indicated her intention to return, with Maria, from Singapore to her home in Kemaman. This procedure, said the President of the Appeal Court, had nothing to recommend it.

There are two versions of the circumstances and understanding under which Maria came under the care of Che Aminah. One is the version given by Mrs. Adeline Hertogh and put forward by the Dutch authorities; the other is Che Aminah's. They differ in material respects.

Mrs. Hertogh's version was given in evidence before Mr. Justice Brown at the hearing in November 1950 (see Chapter XI). Its basis is that, at the time of her confinement with her sixth child in December 1942, under her mother's persuasion, she had reluctantly agreed to allow Maria to go and stay with Che Aminah on a short visit. Before Maria returned to her, she was interned.

This is not far removed from the sworn testimony of Frans van Lunteren of the Consulate-General for the Netherlands in Singapore, submitted at the first High Court hearing and dated 22 April 1950, to the effect that Maria had been handed over to Che Aminah for “safekeeping” – not in adoption – immediately before Mrs. Hertogh's internment.

In evidence, Mrs. Hertogh stated that in December 1942, when living with her mother at Tjimahi and expecting her sixth child towards the end of that month, Che Aminah three times asked her to let Maria go to stay with her for a few days at Bandoeng, a short distance away. Three times Mrs. Hertogh refused.

Around the time the sixth child was born on 29 December, her mother, Che Aminah's friend, persuaded Mrs. Hertogh to allow the child to go and visit Che Aminah for three or four days.

Three days after Mrs. Hertogh's confinement, Che Aminah arrived to fetch Maria.

As the child did not return on the third or fourth day, Mrs. Hertogh borrowed a bicycle on the fifth day (eight days after her confinement) and set out for Bandoeng to bring back her daughter.

On the outskirts of Bandoeng, she was arrested by a Japanese sentry because she had no pass. She was thereupon interned.

Maria Hertogh was born on 24 March 1937 at Tjimahi in Java in the Dutch East Indies.

Her father was Adrianus Petus Hertogh. Born in Holland in 1905, he had in 1924 enlisted in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. In the early thirties he married Adeline Hunter, a Eurasian brought up in Java.

Maria was thus a Dutch subject by birth, though she never saw Holland until she was nearly fourteen years old, after the events here described when she became, willy nilly and with tragic results, the central figure in a clash of cultures and religions.

She was born into a Christian family. On 10 April 1937, she was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church of St. Ignatius at Tjimahi by a Catholic priest, Father de Koster. During her earliest years, she regularly attended services at a Roman Catholic Church with her family.

Maria's mother, Adeline Hertogh, was the daughter of one Hunter, son of a Scotsman settled in Java who had married an Indonesian (Eurasian) actress known as Nor Louise. They had two children, Adeline and a brother (two years older) who became a Muslim and was known as Soewaldi.

Nor Louise, Adeline's mother, then acting with the “Bolero Opera Party”, left Hunter when Adeline was five years old for an Indonesian Muslim, also an actor, named Raden Ismail.

Adeline was then “adopted” by an Indonesian Muslim. She was brought up as a Muslim until about the age of fifteen.

She then met A.P. Hertogh, left her Muslim parents and married him in a Roman Catholic ceremony at Bandoeng in West Java.

There is thus a parallel between the early lives of Maria and her mother. Both started off as Christians (or, in Adeline's case, at least as a non-Muslim). Both were “adopted” by Muslims at the age of five and then came under Muslim influences which dominated their lives until about the age of fifteen. Later, both reverted, Adeline, willingly, Maria unwillingly, to a Christian environment.

The circumstances of Maria's “adoption” are disputed, as will be described. Such “adoptions” may seem strange in some western eyes, especially when they involve, as in these cases, a change of religion.

Meanwhile, on 2 August, the day after the marriage, Che Aminah received from Kuala Lumpur lawyers Sisson and Delay, acting for Mr. and Mrs. Hertogh, Maria's parents, a letter saying it was no longer their wish that Maria should continue in her custody and formally demanding that she should by 10 August deliver possession of Maria to the Netherlands Consul-General in Singapore so that he could return Maria to them in Holland, failing which legal action would be taken.

This was the first move in renewed custody proceedings. After a somewhat ignominious showing in the Appeal Court, those seeking the return of Maria to her parents were now setting about the task of remedying the defects which had vitiated the previous proceedings. Maria's father sought the direct assistance of the Netherlands' Government; the Foreign Ministry took over financial responsibility for legal costs from the Netherlands Red Cross.

The letter to Che Aminah must have been written before the writers learnt of the marriage. A letter in similar terms was then sent to Mansoor Adabi. Believing that the marriage settled the matter, neither took any action. The deadline of 10 August passed.

By this time, a document attested by the Indonesian Registrar at Tjimahi, showing that Maria was born there on 24 March 1937, had been received by the Consul-General from Maria's father. For the first time, there was proof of Maria's age.

On 26 August (after further necessary documents had arrived from Holland), an originating summons (No. 248 of 1950) was taken out, under the Guardianship of Infants Ordinance, by Maria's patents, as plaintiffs, against Che Aminah, Maria and Mansoor Adabi, applying for (1) a declaration that the marriage was illegal and that Mansoor was not entitled to the custody of Maria; (2) an order that Mansoor should deliver Maria into the custody of the Consul-General, with liberty to restore her to her parents in Holland; and (3) an order prohibiting the removal of Maria from the jurisdiction of the court during the hearing of the case.

Maria was in the care of the Department of Social Welfare at the Girls Homecraft Centre, York Hill, from 24 April until 28 July 1950.

Before the war, this had been a voluntary charitable institution for girls known as the Po Leung Kok. From July 1948, it became a government institution directly administered by the Social Welfare Department.

It was situated on open ground at the top of York Hill, an eminence next to Pearl's Hill in the City area, approached by turning right at the top of Chin Swee Road. The buildings (demolished in the sixties and replaced by a school) were in four groups behind each other on sloping ground. Though old, they were in reasonable repair, airy and roomy, with plenty of space for exercise, recreation, gardening and animal husbandry.

Immediately after the war, Singapore was short of specialized homes for young people needing residential care. York Hill, as it was commonly known, was one of the attempted remedies. Inevitably in the circumstances of the time, it had to tackle a wide range of functions. It was gazetted as a Remand Home and a Place of Safety.

Apart from occasional remand cases, York Hill catered in its Nursery section for infants, abandoned or orphaned, of either sex up to the age of six years, and in the Homecraft section, which included school classes, girls from seven to eighteen who were homeless, neglected, ill treated, “runaways”, or “in moral danger”; and uncontrollable girls taken in at parents' request. Durations of stay varied widely and the girls entered at different ages, many without previous education; some were physically or mentally handicapped.

Only the experience and dedication of the Superintendent and her largely untrained staff enabled this single multipurpose institution containing so many disparate, disadvantaged, elements to function usefully.

When Maria was admitted, the Home had twenty-one infants in the Nursery section plus forty-four children and ninety-nine other female young persons. There was a staff of twelve.

Four thousand people met Maria and her mother when they arrived at the Dutch airport.

They proceeded as soon as possible to the Hertogh home, 26 Emmaplein, on the outskirts of Bergen-op-Zoom. It was a four-bedroomed redbrick, terrace house, with a steeply-pitched roof of red tiles.

For Maria, it was a traumatic and sudden transition from one world to another, forced upon her in circumstances drenched with emotion, fanaticism and, in the end, blood.

At first Maria was aloof, suspicious and afraid, even with her own family. She could talk only to her mother, the only one who understood Malay. She ignored her father, now a £6 a week military pensioner. She hated the family food – potatoes, meat, bread, sausages, cheese – and demanded rice with every meal, which her mother, brought up in Java, gave her. “Where is the Mosque?” she asked, and went on saying her prayers five times a day.

There were fears for her safety. It was thought she might be kidnapped and taken back to Singapore. A policeman was assigned to escort her whenever she went out. The house was kept under surveillance. A telephone was installed there on police orders so that anything suspicious could be immediately reported. Strangers to the town were questioned.

Slowly, Maria began to adjust to her new environment. A nun came daily to teach her Dutch until she was able to go to the local convent school with girls of her own age. She did reasonably well at the primary stage and moved on to another school to learn professional dressmaking. Neighbours clubbed together and gave her a new bicycle. When she went riding, her father or her police escort went with her. She began to attend Mass with her family.

She shared a bedroom with her two older sisters. Gradually they learned to communicate. One thing she told them was: “I never really lived the life of a married woman. I just got married and went back to Aminah.”

This story centres on the time Maria Hertogh spent in Singapore in 1950, when she became the innocent focus of a tangle of cultures and religions which aroused worldwide interest. There are introductory chapters outlining her origins and an epilogue sketching what happened to her afterwards.

The author was at the time (up to 3 November 1950) head of the Singapore Social Welfare Department which was, as is described, intimately involved. The account is thus largely based on firsthand knowledge. Recollection has been refreshed by reference to the sources listed at the end of this paper, in particular, the author's own notes and the information supplied by Miss B.N. Tan who was Lady Superintendent of the Girls Homecraft Centre, York Hill, when Maria lived there for three months in 1950.

This account was completed at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, during a Visiting Fellowship awarded to the writer in March/April 1980. He is grateful to the Director and staff of the Institute for the facilities and help given to him, in particular to Dr. Sharon Siddique, Research Officer, his mentor at the Institute, who gently improved his efforts without usurping any of his responsibility for what is now presented.