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In 1850, places such as Kampong Malabar and Kampong Kolam existed in their true sense: as villages, populated not by Malays, but by Indians who are either Hindus or Muslims. If you walk down Chulia Street heading west, you find that it lives up to its name. You will be surrounded by dark-skinned people. You don't find many Chinese as few care - or dare - venture beyond the safe quarters of their enclave.
The Chinese people of George Town in 1850 are the urban merchant class. The majority were Hokkien while some were Teochew. These same people could be found elsewhere on Penang Island and Province Wellesley, where they worked as farmers and fishermen, but in George Town itself, they were traders. There are actually very few Cantonese and Hakka people around.
Mandarin was not commonly spoken. Few Chinese were so learned that they spoke Mandarin, a language used to communicate with the officials in Beijing. They spoke, they read and they wrote in Hokkien, using Chinese characters borrowed and adapted. The Indians were a cosmopolitan mix. There were the Tamils including the Chettiars, then there were the Malabaris, Benggalis, Biharis, Gujaratis, Punjabis and more. Collectively the Chinese regarded them as of two main groups: if they come from southern India, they were Kalinga, if they come from the northern India, they were Benggali. Even north Indians coming from Punjab are similarly labelled Benggali, as they arrived in Penang by way of the Benggali port of Calcutta rather than the south Indian port of Madras.
Today I have found some Indians, even the supposedly educated ones, taking offence to being called Kalinga by the Chinese. Those who took offence are misinformed. Indians should be proud to be known as Kalinga, because it is the name of the Kalinga Kingdom, a time when the Indians attained great heights in culture and architecture.
Unfortunately, somewhere along history, some stupid Chinese made fun of some equally stupid Indians, saying that Kalinga is the sound of the chain made by Indian prisoners coming to Penang, and this twist in history was accepted wholesale. It was the case of the blind leading the blind which should be corrected. I just hope more Indians will learn their own Kalinga history, get to know Emperor Ashoka and all the marvellous temples built by the Kalingas and stop accepting Kalinga as a bad word.
Walking down Chulia Street in 1850 was an "experience". People were swirling around, there were bullock carts and there were plenty of cows. The street was dusty and smelled to high heaven. The drains - if we could call them drains - were open latrines. Beyond the area bounded by Pitt and Chulia Streets, none of the brick shophouses that we know of in George Town today existed. There were kampungs, there were farms, paddy fields and vegetable plots. Carnarvon Street lived up to its Hokkien name of Lam Charn Na - soggy rice fields.
Chulia Street was not lined with the shophouses that we see today. The wealthy had Anglo-Indian bungalows, similar to Yeng Keng Hotel. (Yeng Keng Hotel is a gem - a time capsule to a bygone Chulia Street.) The less well-off lived in stilt kampung houses.
George Town of 1850 had two forms of public transport. Rapid Penang buses (or any other buses) have not been introduced. Instead, there were the bullock carts and there were the canals. The canals of George Town is today a lost legacy, having been turned to drains and covered. In 1850, they formed a useful and inexpensive means for sampans to transport goods and people.
The clan jetties did not exist in 1850. On the southern coast of George Town were wooden piers heading out towards the sea, so that sampans may berth. From the coast, there were stone steps leading down to water's edge, and then the piers. Those steps were the ghauts whose name still exist today. It got its name because this part of town was Indian before it became Chinese.
The land was mangrove swamp, and there was a constant battle between man and mangrove over rights to the coast. The mangrove carpeted the coast in 1850, only to be reduced to pockets by the 20th century, eventually being wiped out. But not totally vanquished. In places where the land was left alone, they make their comeback.
The above is a snapshot of George Town in Year 1850. George Town did not grow in gradual progression. Rather, it experienced bouts of rapid overnight growth. Each chapter is always linked to external forces and events outside its control, among them the officially sanctioned signlining of Malacca in Penang's favour, the attaining of Presidency status, the Taiping Rebellion, the large scale tin mining in Krian. Each of these brought sudden and rapid development to George Town.
Of the aforementioned events, the last two changed the character of George Town to what we know of it today. They were the reason why there are so many Chinese in Penang today. They were the reason why the Indians were elbowed out of western Chulia Street. They were the reason Cantonese neighbourhoods developed in Chulia Street, Cintra Street, and Kimberley Street. They were the reason many Hakkas were Catholics. And all these were to take place after 1850.
  
   
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