This is a group photograph of members of the Caulkers community, at Sri Mariamman Temple at South Bridge road. They Caulkers lived in communal buildings along Jalan Sultan, and North Bridge Road up to the md-20th century. However, they spent all evenings at the South Bridge road Mariamman temple, contributing towards the activities and the development of the temple, so much that it came to be known as the street that “housed the Indian Caulkers” (“Hidden hands and divided landscpes” by Anoma Pieris) and was known as Caulkers Street (Kalapathukadai Theru).They were distinctive in their dressing, as the men only wore white shirts and white dhotis, for all occasions. A significant number of them started migrating to Singapore with their families in the 1960s.
