Tan Kim Ching who happened to be Anna Leonowens, a young widow, looking for work to support herself and her two children. The story of the schoolteacher and the King of Siam has been made popular through the films "The King And I" (Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr) and "Anna and the King" (Chow, Yun Fatt and Jodie Foster). When the King and Queen of Siam landed in Singapore in 1890 they stayed at Tan Kim Ching's house, "Siam house", in North Bridge Road. It was reported that The King, who was expected to arrive in Singapore at Tanjong Pagar Wharf on board
Anna Leonowens the Commissariat in Perth. The Leonowens family left Australia abruptly in April 1857, sailing to Singapore, and then moving to Penang, where Thomas found work as a hotel keeper. In or before the first week of May 1859, Thomas Leonowens died of "apoplexy" and was buried (7 May 1859) in the Protestant Cemetery in Penang. His death left Anna Leonowens an impoverished widow. Of their four children, two had died in infancy. To support her surviving daughter Avis and son Louis, Leonowens again took up teaching and opened a school for the children of British officers in Singapore. While the