Singapore Cemeteries



There are several cemetery records in the Family History Library. Do a Place search with:

SINGAPORE - CEMETERIES

Here are a number of online resources:


 * http://app.nea.gov.sg/cms/htdocs/article.asp?pid=2318

Bidadari Cemetery (Chinese : 比达达利坟场, Malay : Perkuburan Bidadari) is a historical cemetery in Singapore. There are two sections. The Muslim section is at the base of Mount Vernon, bounded by Upper Aljunied Road, Upper Serangoon Road, and Bartley Road. The Christian section is across Upper Aljunied Road from the Muslim section, and bounded by Upper Serangoon Road as well.

Apart from being a place of remembrance, the trails inside Bidadari Cemetery used to be very popular as a running route for members of the Gurkha Contingent. Bidadari Cemetery is no longer in use, and most of the graves have been exhumed for redevelopment. Woodleigh MRT Station now occupies part of the former site.

In November 2012, 107 headstones were photographed and now appear on the BillionGraves website. They are found here: Bidadari Memorial Park

The word bidadari means "fairy" and is probably derived from the Sanskrit word widyadari, which means a nymph of India's heaven or a houri of paradise. The bidadari are depicted as kindly fairies and genies that preside over the union of flowers. In the local context, the name is a reference to the beauty of the wife of Maharajah abu Bakar of Johore who had a house there. The cemetery took the name after the sultan's wife ceased to reside there, the grounds were leased to a Japanese person who built moats with typical Japanese wooden bridges and a teahouse. The cemetery was a burial site of A. P. Williams, an English sailor on whose life, writer Joseph Conrad based his novel, Lord Jim. Burials were not permitted after 1972, and it was the same year that the Mount Vernon Crematorium and Columbarium was opened, which eventually closed in 2004 due to redevelopment. The government began to exhume graves in 2001 in the Christian portion of the cemetery to build a new town in the future, reportedly known as Bidadari New Town.

Other Cemeteries in Singapore
In November 2012, a person visiting Singapore began photographing headstones using the BillionGraves app and a number from a variety of different cemeteries as shown below are now available for browsing. If anyone knows Japanese, Chinese, or other languages can transcribe these, please do. For ease in indexing and finding the indexed records, please romanize all data. Instructions on how to choose an individual cemetery to transcribe are on the BillionGraves website itself. In some larger cemeteries, not every headstone got photographed in the November 2012 trip by that person who shot the images.

However, all the headstones photographed in November 2012 have been transcribed in some way or another and the data is now on BillionGraves.com, and if not already, should appear in an update to the BillionGraves Index on FamilySearch that may take place in the late March to early May 2013 time frame.

In late March 2013, the person who had been photographing these cemeteries returned, and on 28 March added 600+ images, those were transcribed within an hour of being uploaded to the BillionGraves site. All were from the Kranji War Cemetery.


 * Bukit Brown Chinese Cemetery Very large cemetery. Chinese on markers for the most part.
 * Cathedral of the Good Shepherd Cemetery Mostly in English.
 * 'Fort Canning' Cemetery Name unsure, if no actual military site nearby, it may be derived from street names. Contains a lot of burials of expatriates who died in Singapore who were from the United States or British Commonwealth countries. Headstones contain more detail than common.
 * Japanese Cemetery Park mostly all in Japanese
 * Traditional burial site for Raja Iskandar Syah, Keramat Iskandar Syah (alternate spelling 'Sya') the last of the Kings of Singapore going back to the 14th Century.
 * Kranji Military Cemetery May be in fact amalgamated with the one below, since they are on the same land.
 * Kranji War Cemetery Some in Japanese, but many Romanized headstones exist. Also note the existence of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission office on the property, they will have even more about this cemetery and likely others. Many burials which have headstones without any Asian language inscriptions are of British Commonwealth military burials. Some will provide information on the unit the person buried there had served in, some were killed in action during World War II. An example of one of these is at this link
 * Mount Vernon Complex has some headstones that are romanized at least in part. Many are Chinese. May also be a part of the Bidadari cemetery at the top of this article.
 * St. Andrews Cathedral cemetery Mostly romanized headstone inscriptions, some expatriates possibly buried here. Just to east/southeast of capitol building and northeast of the Supreme Court building.
 * Tiong Bahru Cemetery This is mostly Chinese with others, some English inscriptions including this marker, second photo of same marker as the two people named on that marker were involved in the matter that was the basis of the musical 'The King and I'.
 * An unnamed cemetery. Small roadside burial site, probably no more than two dozen graves. Headstones almost all Chinese or Japanese.