John St Maur Ramsden

John St Maur Ramsden
File:Ramsden, John St Maur.jpg
Born	1902
Died	1928
Residence	Bulstrode, Gerrards Cross, Bucks
Society Membership membership ordinary fellow left 1928 deceased elected_AI 1921.05.31

Notes

House Notes

1921.04.21 proposed by L.C.G. Clarke, seconded by T.A. Joyce

Notes From Elsewhere

John St Maur Ramsden
Birthdate: April 26, 1902 (46) Death: June 07, 1948 (46) Immediate Family:
Son of Sir John Frecheville Ramsden, 6th Baronet and Joan Ramsden
Husband of Lady Catherine Hume
Father of Carola Eloise Philippi
Brother of Sir Geoffrey William Pennington-Ramsden,
The massive manor house was built in the late 1800s, and once belonged to the Ramsden family, who came to Malaysia to grow their already extensive fortune by growing rubber trees. Fortunately for the Ramsden’s, the gamble paid off and the plantation became massively successful, and with all that cash, the wealthy family built themselves a sweet crib that included a weirdly specific number of doors – 99 to be exact.
The Ramsden family continued to grow their fortune grew substantially until tragedy struck in 1948, when their grandson, John St. Maur Ramsden, was viciously murdered on the steps leading into the home. Shot twice in the head, John’s killer – and the motive – were never discovered, though many suspected it was retaliation from a jealous competitor.
After the murder, there were quite a few wild speculations that cropped up locally, one being that the Japanese secretly took over the rural manor, killing the Ramsden’s altogether. The only thing for certain is that it was right around this time, the 1950s, that the 99 Door Mansion began to exhibit some very strange paranormal behavior.
Locals will swear up and down that the entire Ramsden family were killed on the property and have continued to haunt the building to this day, but they aren’t the ghosts you have to worry about. According to the legend, once the 99-Door Mansion was left abandoned, it became the perfect hideout for a local Bomoh, a Malaysian witch-doctor, who used the house and its mystical 99 door rooms as his personal airport for the dead.

The name Edward Horsman (1807-1876) was the first to be introduced in this story. He was an absentee landlord prodded by a rich brother-in-law (John William Ramsden) to invest in sugar plantations in the far east. He was himself a politician (member of Parliament), married to Sir John Charles Ramsden's only daughter (Charlotte Louisa, sister to John William). ...
The Ramsden family bought the estate from Horsman and made it successful. The Ramsden were already huge landowners in Scotland, owning hundreds of thousands of (quite useless) land, good only for hunting. Under John William Ramsden, the 5th Baronet (1831-1914), the estate covered well over 160,000 acres in the UK.
The Ramsdens appeared to be fascinated with big lodges putting in a lot of money into building really big mansions and planting more than a million trees (probably harvested for their timber). When the Ardverikie lodge (where Queen Victoria had stayed in 1847) burnt down in 1871, John William rebuilt it but when it was about to be completed some careless workers left hot coal in a fire bucket in one of the bedrooms. And of course the new house burnt down. But John William set about rebuilding it. Now that's perseverence.
These houses were let out at certain time of the year to make money. The Ramsden were privileged landowners. Baronets they were, honoured by the king for services to the country. Usually that means donating a lot of money for all the king's horses and all the king's men. (Get it? Rich landowners had to support the king's army to fight off pretenders/challengers to the throne. Have you read "Pillars of the Earth"?) It reminds me of similar stories of the big towkays in Malaya "supporting" the sultans in Kedah and Johore and being rewarded with concessions and positions (even as chief of police in Johore).
Baronets are hereditary titles and they are entitled to use the title "Sir" but these are not knighthoods (which cannot be passed down to successors). So the Ramsden legacy dates way back to the 17th Century. But if you google their names, you would not find any references to Province Wellesley. So far, I could only find information about their estates in Scotland and UK. The Ramsden also had a tradition of "public service" as elected members of Parliament. I guess their business in the colonies were private and kept from prying eyes. Their business has evolved but the 6th Baronet (John Frechville) was to lose most of the family fortune in the mid-1900s mainly because revenue was insufficient for the upkeep of the estates so they had to sell off some to maintain others. Before John Frechville died in 1958, he created a family holding company to avoid heavy taxation.This company has remained successful, switching from timber (when demand fell) to production of hydro-electric fed into the Grid.
Lynn tells an interesting story about how these British lords conducted business from a distance without ever stepping foot in Malaya. Every week the managers would write detailed reports about what's going on in each of the specially labelled plots (identified by numbers) of the estates (like yields, number of workers). These reports would travel by snail mail (hey, this was 1800s) and reach Scotland after one month. The reports would be organised into books and sent to the boss Ramsden. He would scrutinise each report and make detailed observations, giving suggestions or instructions. These would then travel back to the managers in Malaya, taking another month.
I get the sense that the estate had prospered because, according to Lynn (she had access to those letters in Scotland), the Ramsden holdings in Malaya covered an extensive 51,000 acres at it's peak. And the distance covered was so far that the managers would fly between estates on private planes. I am guessing those tiny planes with propellers. So the area in front of The Caledonia was actually an airstrip.
The Caledonia must have been a sort of estate headquarters but perhaps even more of an R&R where managers could meet, unwind, drink, be merry and of course report about profits and loss and problems with the coolies. So, this explains the floor layout of The Caledonia. It was not designed for family living. It is not a proper house. It has no living room or dining room or even a front door. It has eight huge bedrooms with independent access. And as befitting a place to unwind, there is a huge covered patio at the back of the first floor facing east. This patio has beautifully decorated archways but not a single door. Here, these managers would be able to escape the afternoon heat. And drink gin and tonic all afternoon long.
The final name introduced in the lecture by Lynn was John Saint Maur Ramsden, born in 1902, son of the 6th Baronet John Frescheville Ramsden (1877-1958). John St Maur served in the navy and airforce and saw duty during the Second World War but eventually settled in at Caledonia to manage the family estate after the war. In one family tree, John St Maur is listed as having been "killed on active service in Malaya" in 1948. He was in fact shot in the neck and killed on the front balcony on the first floor of The Caledonia.
The police arrested two suspects. One was his driver who was found with a gun and casings and sentenced to 2 months jail (I believe) for possession of firearms. Not for the murder. Eventually both were released and the police refused to pursue it further. Lynn interviewed some people who used to work at the big house and they suggested that John St Maur was having an illicit affair with the driver's sister (and the driver killed him because of that). On the other hand, the family of John St Maur believed that he was assassinated by Communist guerrillas. Coincidentally, there followed several more such murders in other areas.
But apparently there was an even more intriguing (untold and unspoken in public) version of the murder (it was not part of the lecture). The story is that John St Maur was having an "unnatural" relationship with one of the servants. [I heard whispers; get your imagination in overdrive] John St Maur is buried in a cemetery in Penang.