Fact File – Ipoh 1912 - The Year St Michael's was born........................................

•           In 1912 Ipoh was riding the crest  of the great tin boom.  World War 1 (1914-18)  and worldwide  industrial demand created an insatiable appetite for the Kinta Valley’s mineral wealth. Ipoh was at the heart of the world’s richest tin field. The town   became the tin capital of the world and was looking forward to a golden age. The alluvial  bed  of the Kinta River ( which flows past  St Michael’s) was and still is rated as one of the richest beds of tin ore on earth.

·          St Michael’s was located  near the Ipoh railway station as many of its first students came from as far south as Tapah and as far north as Taiping. 

·          Mass immigration from China  and India since the 1880s had given Ipoh’s  population an overwhelming   Chinese flavour spiced with a strong Malay and Indian  element.

·          Malayan nationhood was still a thing of the future but it is most certain that schools like St Michael’s moved the Federated Malay States forward towards a  wider conception of Malayan nationhood.