Rumah Miskin (Pauper’s House) and Mangkah-kah (Jackfruit Leg) are the old Malay and Chinese names for an area at the junction of Serangoon Road and Balestier Road. Why are the names so different in the two versions? Jerome explores the etymology of the Rumah Miskin Area and finds a plausible explanation relating the two names.

The missing link between the two names is a local landmark, the Kwang Wai Shiu Hospital. As Jerome explains it:

The Rumah Miskin area is also where another landmark, the Kwang Wai Shiu Hospital, which had recently been in the news for the hefty increase in rent following a renewal on its 99 year lease, which expired this February, stands. The hospital was known as the Kwang Wai Shiu Free Hospital then, and did, as the name suggests, provide free treatment for the less fortunate. My grandmother had herself visited the outpatient clinic there on many occasions in the 1970s, when she found that it was more affordable (despite having to pay for the treatment) than the Rakyat Clinic that she used along Balestier Road. The hospital had started in 1910 with buildings that had been inherited from the original pauper’s hospital, Tan Tock Seng, when that moved to Moulmein Road in 1909. That set of buildings were demolished sometime in the early 1950s to make way for the hospital buildings that we see today. It was actually from the pauper’s hospital that the area took its name, the hospital being a home for infirmed and poor, hence the name Rumah Miskin. As to what this has got to do with the name Mangka-kah, the explanation was that the name originated with the sight of patients of the hospital hobbling around on their diseased legs which could be observed in the area – the wounds and sores on their legs of these patients were said to resemble a jackfruit, hence “jackfruit leg”. Whichever explanation for the origins of the name Mangka-kah, it would probably be difficult to establish today.

Thus, a possible explanation as to why the Malay and Chinese names for this area are different, but essentially refer to the same thing. You can read more in Jerome’s A pauper’s house under the jackfruit tree? Another landmark of this area, the Rumah Miskin Police Station, no longer stands today, but you can still see an old picture of it in PICAS.