maria background

Maria Hertogh was born on 24 March 1937 to a Dutch Catholic family living in Tjimahi, near Bandung, Java, then a part of the Dutch East Indies. Her father, Adrianus Petrus Hertogh, came to Java in the 1920s as a sergeant in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army. He married Adeline Hunter, a Eurasian of Scottish-Javanese descent brought up in Java, in the early 1930s. Maria was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Ignatius at Tjimahi on April 10 by a Catholic priest.

how the riots started

The Maria Hertogh Riots between ethnic Malays and the European and Eurasian communities in Singapore occurred on 11 December 1950. The riots took place over a period of three days and saw at least 18 people killed and 173 people injured. It was sparked by the controversial custody battle between Maria's adoptive Malay family and her Eurasian parents.