Map of Singapore Town, 1881. Sold for $95,000.

Name: Map of Singapore Town shewing building allotments & registered numbers of crown leases

Year: 1881

Map maker: Thambo Peter

Scale: 4 chains to 1 inch (1:3168)

Size: 980 x 1840 mm.

Image source: Bloomsbury Auction 

This map was sold at the Bloomsbury Books and Works on Paper Auction on 30th April 2015. The hammer price was £38,000. If you include the auction house commission, this becomes £47,120, which converts to a cool S$95,389 (according to the latest exchange rates). The hammer price was way higher than the auction house's original estimate of  £800 – £1,200.

This 1881 map is large (184 cm by 98 cm). It must be quite impressive when fully laid out on your dining table, if you have one big enough. The map is not oriented in the usual North-South axis. Instead, The length of the map is aligned roughly with the coast (along the bottom of the map), from almost Tanjong Pagar from the left to near the mouth of Kallang River on the right end, with the mouth of Singapore River and today's Esplanade park in the middle. Landwards (towards the top of the map), one can follow the Singapore River all the way to beyond present day Zion road.  

This is apparently an extremely rare map. According to the auction house, there are no auction record found for this scarce map. The National Archives of Singapore has only a portion of this map which contains the title block [1,2].

According to the auction website, the map was published by Stanford's Ltd, London. It was signed off by Captain Henry Edward McCallum, the acting Colonial engineer and Surveyor General then. McCallum was appointed acting Colonial engineer and Surveyor General in 1881 and was elevated to the substantive position in 1884, a post he held till 1896 [2].  He was a very successful colonial administrator, moving on to be the Governor of Lagos Colony (part of present day Nigeria), the Governor of Newfoundland (part of present day Canada), Governor of Natal (part of present day South Africa) and finally, the Governor of Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka), before retiring. In Singapore, he is better known as the architect of the Raffles Library and Museum on Stamford Road (today's National Museum of Singapore), which was officially opened in 1887. McCallum Street, in down town Singapore is also named after him.

References
[1] National Archives of Singapore. Accession Number: SP002984. Accessed 20150503 
[2] Mok Ly Yng "Mapping Singapore 1819 - 2014", Visualising Space: Maps of Singapore and the Region, (National  Library Board, Singapore, 2015), pg. 97.