04, 08, 18, 21, 24 and 369

scene of a gang fight - picture from national archive of s'pore

do these numbers make any sense to you? no, they cannot be toto numbers because the last one has 3 digits. there might have been other numbers but these were the ones i can recall. if you grew up during the 50s and 60s, you would have known someone who secretly or openly declared that he belonged to one of these numbered gangs. among my schoolmates and kampong kids were some who claimed allegiance to one of these secret societies.

each gang had its own so-called trade-marks. hand gestures and tattoos were two clear ways of identification. i was told that those who belonged to the 24 gang had two birds, i think they were either swallows or swifts, tattooed on one of their shoulders. i have heard of the butterfly gang - a woman gang in which members had the tattoo of a butterfly on their body.

gangland clashes were common in the 50s and 60s, even right up to the 70s. in the late 50s or early 60s, during the school holidays, i used to stay over with some relatives at dunlop street, a hotbed of gangland activities. a number of times, in the middle of the night, the silence would be broken by the sounds of bottles being smashed, shouting and heavy running footsteps. i was told not to venture out. these clashes, in which parangs, iron pipes and broken bottles were used, usually ended as quickly as they had started.

secret society members seemed to have scant respect for the living as well as the dead. in those dark days, fights at funerals and wakes were not uncommon.

my former neighbour in the kampong, who attended the same primary school as i, started young. at primary 3, he was already relieving me of my pocket money - ten cents each day. this went on for sometime and i cannot remember how and when it finally ended. extortion was one of the ways the gangsters derived some form of income. the other was collecting protection money from shops, hawkers, food stalls, bars and gambling dens.

this particular neighbour of mine ended up as a big-time gangster. i learnt that he was involved in a murder for which he was detained 'at the president's pleasure'.

some gangsters 'retired' after they had set up their own families but they continued to work in the background. they could still be called upon to help negotiate at 'settlement talks' but they would try to keep their hands clean by not getting involved in fights or clashes that might arise out of any failed talk.

not all gangsters were pimps or people who engaged in shady or underground activities. some held respectable jobs. these people would keep a low profile but their trade-mark - the tattoo - that they wore on their bodies might be a giveaway of their past connections.