Northam Road cemetery is the oldest European cemetery in Georgetown in Penang, opening shortly after the East India Company founded Georgetown in 1794, and closing roughly a hundred years later.

As a consequence there’s a lot of pre Victorian grave monuments as well as some later ones.

Walking round the cemetery last week, what struck me was the number of Scottish surnames on the stones – Dundas, Rattray, Wedderburn and more – showing just how many of the sons of the impovrished Scottish gentry went to seek their fortune in the East India Company’s army …