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She was admitted, as one of only three girls, to the Methodist Secondary School for her post-secondary education, and then, as the first ever MBS girl, went on to the University of Malaya in Singapore. On graduation with a B.Sc. (Hons) degree and a Diploma in Education, Elizabeth was posted to St Johns Institution in 1961 to teach Botany. 
In the VI staffroom (1966); Seated second from right with VI science & maths staff (1966) Despite her youth and diminutive appearance, she impressed her students with her deep knowledge of the flora of the Bukit Nanas area. Carolus Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, would have been proud! They would grow to love this caring teacher who impressed upon them the importance of ecology, decades before the crisis of climate change began to rear its ugly head. Among her Upper Sixth Form pupils, was one Loh Kung Sing, who would eventually major in Botany himself. In 1965 Elizabeth was transferred to the
With her non-nonsense but kindly manner, Elizabeth coaxed and guided her charges through their School Certificate and Higher School Certificate syllabi. She loved her subject, and always cared for her students and set the highest standards for them. These were the golden years of the V.I. with annual exam results, including those of Elizabeth's charges, regularly surpassing those of the previous year. Today, all over the world, her ex-pupils can be counted in medical professional ranks as well as those of academia. As a strict teacher who cared deeply about her
pupils' progress, Elizabeth unfailingly kept track of their exam and test marks
in a V.I. exercise book throughout her years at the V.I. She brings along this
unusual dog-eared relic to every V.I. reunion,
After four years at the V.I., Elizabeth was sent on study leave to Cambridge to train as chief examiner for biology. On her return, she was posted as Vice-Principal of Tunku Kurshiah College in Seremban. Among her pupils during her three years there was Wan Azizah Ismail, who would become the ophthalmologist wife of Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. Elizabeth was finally posted as an Education Officer in charge of science programmes on educational TV where she remained until her retirement in the early 1990s. In retirement she still keeps busy, doing volunteer work at the St Mary's Cathedral and serving on the Board of Governors of her old School, the PES, among other activities. More significantly, she has adopted one or two children, mentoring them and passing on her own values to them.
Chong Seong enjoyed Elizabeth's classes for, to her, plants were not theoretical concepts. He followed her on ecology trips to Port Dickson to study mangroves and to Ampang to explore its secondary forests. Chong Seong was probably one of her favourite students for she often commented to the class how good his botanical drawings were. With Elizabeth's guidance, Chong Seong did well enough in
Botany and Zoology to read medicine at the University of Malaya in 1968. On
graduation he worked at the General Hospitals in Kuala Lumpur and Seremban.
He has always been interested in orchids, thanks to his parents' interest in gardening. Their garden in Kuala Lumpur was full of orchids and Chong Seong recalls his grandmother's physician, Dr Soo Kim Lan, one of the first lady doctors in Kuala Lumpur and President of the Selangor Orchid Society, admiring the blooms. In Sydney, Chong Seong started an orchid nursery in the late 1980s called The Orchid Mart growing different types of orchids. He retails his flowers under the name Sydney Orchid Centre and online as well. Now retired, he probably has the largest collection of Slipper Orchids in Australia. With several awards for these hybrids, Chong Seong was the founding President of the Paphiopedilum Society of NSW, Inc. 
Nursery, Sydney Orchid Centre He has created numerous orchid hybrids for breeding purposes, not exactly an easy enterprise as it takes a minimum of five years and up to ten or fifteen years to successfully pollinate an orchid flower, germinate the seeds and grow them into mature flowering plants. Among the various orchids he has experimented with are Cattleyas, a genus originally from Costa Rica south to Argentina. 
In gratitude to his former biology teacher in Malaysia, Chong Seong recently decided to name one of his hybrids, a cross between C. Paradisio and C. Bonanza Queen, the Cattleya Elizabeth Periathamby. Registered by the Royal Horticultural Society on August 20, 2021, this is an extremely rare gesture of naming a flower, an orchid to boot, after one's former teacher from half a century ago. But it helps pass the time in his retirement and gives this ex-Victorian great peace of mind. And the world a lovely new orchid named Elizabeth. 
 With former student, Wong Kok Kien, an O&G  With Vinayak Pradhan, 1968 School Captain, at a 2017 reunion  With former student at same reunion. Loh Kung Sing is at right.  At St Mary's Cathedral Elizabeth Periathamby 1936-2024
She and I taught together in the V.I. for a few years. After I left Malaysia and I returned for visits, Lizzie would come over to my mother's house and bring my favorite food, yong tow foo! Later, when I visited with my daughter, Lizzie took us around to the old Central Market where I bought handicrafts, batiks, T-shirts, and ate the foods I missed. She helped me deal with the Malaysian bureaucracy to get my TPF and EPF accounts closed. In short, if someone needed help, Lizzie would be there. We kept in touch all these years; she saved photos of friends, saved little gifts for when we would meet. The gifts could be anything as simple as a key ring, or a pencil case, but it was something meaningful to me. Her letters were always informative, and at Christmas we exchanged cards. This year, I did not hear from her and now I know the reason. I'm glad to have known someone as caring as Lizzie; I could not have asked for a better friend. Moo-Lan Siew Silver, VI staff 1965-1969 Elizabeth Periathamby - teacher, mentor, friend
I can still recite many of the long Latin names of our flora she imprinted on us. She preceded each lesson with a five-minute quiz on the previous one. We loved the ecological tours of Bukit Nanas, long before anybody talked about climate change. Most teachers of yore were born to inspire us. Although l had already started working at the Ministry of Agriculture upon graduation, Miss Periathamby encouraged me to be a teacher. And so I did. When I joined the Victoria Institution in 1966 as a biology teacher, she was there too. Before long, she became a friend and mentor whom I called Lizzie. Lizzie showed me the importance of imparting INTELLECTUAL HONESTY onto our students. The biology students would try to phish what biological specimens would be provided for the Cambridge school certificate and the Higher School Certificate practical examinations. The day before the exam, students would shadow Lizzie to see what specimens she was gathering for the practical exam. But she was smarter. She gathered live frogs, cockroaches and other specimens well beforehand and stored them in a bathroom in her granny's house in Bangsar to await the practical biology examinations. I recall working with Lizzie at a time of news reports of leakages of practical biology examination material. Accordingly, we swiftly substituted an animal dispersed seed (Bidens sp) for a wind dispersed one, a weed we had luckily spotted growing wild in vegetable gardens in Serdang. Lizzie and I also replaced our pre-planned hibiscus with Dillenia suffruticosa, collected at 5.00 am from the Lake Gardens on the morning of the examination, a flower that our students had never seen before. Exam candidates were provided at the last minute with a small ikan bawal look-alike instead of ikan kembong. Thus our V.I. students were forced to use the observation skills they were taught instead of just spouting memorised answers. I learnt the meaning of COMPASSION and JUSTICE in setting and marking examination papers from her. After Lizzie became the SPM Biology chief examiner, she invited me to join her to set a SPM Biology multiple-choice paper. I remember proposing a multiple-choice question of a picture profile of the Malaysian primary forest. It was a simple question worth one mark perhaps. But Lizzie rejected it. Her reason for rejecting that question was simply: "Other teachers do not teach like us". This remark still rings in my ears. In 2021, Tay Chong Seong, a former student of hers now residing in Sydney, wanted to name a cattleya orchid hybrid he had cultivated in her honour. Lizzie had to be persuaded to overcome her HUMILITY to accept this honour without any fuss. Mrs Susheila McCoy, her contemporary in her university days, then attempted to have this cattleya story published by the STAR. Despite much pleading, Lizzie refused to share this story which could have made the nation proud of our teachers. With others though, Lizzie was very GENEROUS with her time and MONEY. She hardly spent any money on herself. She adopted a family of refugees which had three sons, who became her godsons. For twenty years, she helped these godsons with their school fees, and paid for computers, smart phones and the internet in their home. Besides this family she also helped many others. Susheila McCoy once bought Lizzie a computer hoping that she too would learn to use online social media which would enable many of Lizzie's friends and former students to keep in touch with her. Two VI boys also offered to teach her the abc's of computers. However, Lizzie found this too stressful and instead gave the computer to her youngest godson. I thank Lizzie for allowing me to be more than a friend, probably the only one who could persuade her to finish some prescribed antibiotics a couple of weeks before she left this world. Lizzie lived alone in a gated community. I am glad she spent her last days with her adopted family instead of dying alone in her own house. Thank you, Amoon and Ruby, for accompanying her on much of her journey on earth.
Lizzie was a very active member of the Anglican Church. She was a member of the Board of Governors of Pudu English School. She often fretted over the slow production of the communion wafers. Her love for and her trust in God flowed through everything she did. I failed in my attempts to get her to declutter her house and to write her will. She trusted the Lord and left this part of her life to Regina, her younger sister, and their lawyers. Lizzie LOVED all her students. Regina has discovered the exercise books in which Lizzie recorded the test marks of all her students from 1961. I am glad she spent her final weeks enjoying lunches and fellowship with former colleagues and friends. Praise the Lord for giving us this wonderful woman. Thank the Lord for taking her home to eternal peace. Loh Kung Sing, VI staff 1966 - 1971, Senior Science Master 1971 
Last update on January 11, 2024. PageKeeper:
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orn in the late 1930s, Elizabeth Periathamby grew up in an
Anglican family under a strict father. She was steeped in Bible studies at
a very young age. Her schooling was interrupted by the Pacific war. When
peace returned, Elizabeth was enrolled in 1946 at the Pudu English Girls
School. The youngest in her class, she excelled at sewing - and science,
a harbinger of things to come.
VI where she taught Upper Secondary classes. (Ex-pupil Loh Kung Sing,
on his graduation joined her on the staff a year later, becoming VI
Senior Science Master in 1970.)
to confront her blushing ex-pupils with their test and exam marks of half
a century ago!
Of the biology students in her five years at the V.I. was one
Tay Chong Seong. A grandson of the prominent Kuala Lumpur businessman, Tay Chek
Meng, he had numerous uncles and cousins who were Victorians as well. The pressure
on him to excel was enormous. 
There he trained in anaesthetics, and after obtaining Part 1 of the Fellowship
of the Royal Australian College of Anaesthetists, he decided to move to Sydney
to finish his Part Two.
izzie was one of the kindest, most caring people I knew.
After she retired from teaching, she was even more a bundle of energy,
working for her church, her old school (PES), keeping in touch with
friends and former students.
hen the 1961 Upper Six students at SJI first set
eyes on this petite girl on the way up the stairs to our class, we
thought she was a new student. She might have been fresh from
university, but Miss Elizabeth Periathamby soon showed us that
she was born into the teaching profession. 