Sir Hugh Low, (10 May 1824–18 April 1905) was a British colonial administrator and naturalist. After a long residence in various colonial roles in Labuan, he was appointed as British administrator in the Malay Peninsula where he made the first trials of Hevea rubber in the region. He is often considered the first successful British administrator in the region, whose methods became models for subsequent British colonial operation in the entire South East Asia Region. He made the first documented ascent of Mount Kinabalu in 1851. Both Kinabalu's highest peak as well as the deep gully on the northern side of the mountain are named after him.
Early life Low was born in Upper Clapton, England, the son of a Scottish horticulturist, also named Hugh. He is not related to James Low, the Scottish East India Company officer active in the northern Malay states and Siam from the 1820s to 1850. At an early age, he acquired botanical expertise working in the family nursery. At 20, his father sent him on a collecting expedition for orchids to Southeast Asia. He based himself in Singapore but soon joined James Brooke, the White Rajah, in Sarawak. In the months following he became well enough acquainted with interior of Sarawak to write a definitive book on it on his return home. In 1847, Brooke was appointed Governor of the recently established British colony of Labuan and Consul General of Borneo. He made Low his Colonial Secretary (1848–1850) and William Napier Esq., Lieutenant Governor. They, and Napier's daughter, Catherine, returned to the Far East in 1848.
Labuan Low married Catherine Napier when they reached Singapore on 12 August 1848 at St Andrew's Cathedral They had a son Hugh "Hugo" Brooke Low (1849–1887) and a daughter Catherine "Kitty" Elizabeth Low (1850–1923[?]). Low also married a local Malay woman named Siti Hawa. The marriage ended with the death of Catherine from fever in Labuan on 1851. Low buried her and 14 other fever victims at night in his garden of new Government House (known to locals as Bumbung 12, Malay: "twelve roofs") which he designed, due to fear of the potential headhunting by the Dayaks ransacking of graves as they had earlier done at the Christian cemetery. The children were taken care of by their grandfather and uncle. In Labuan, Low acquired administrative experience, fluency in Malay and an enduring reputation as a naturalist, and while there would set up various gardens, tame many animals and buy a plantation. During this time, he quarreled with both geologist/naturalist James Motley, and his daughter Kitty's husband Sir John Pope-Hennessey, the Governor of Labuan; the latter's unfavorable reports on him would have risked ending his chances for further advancement, had he not become known to the Colonial Office as being particularly talented. He was Police Magistrate from 1850 to 1877. It was also from Labuan he made his three visits to Mount Kinabalu, the first in March 1851 and twice with Spenser St. John, the consul General of Brunei, in 1858.
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