No. 234.
SIR,
Sanitary Board's letter submitting Public Health Bill.
SANITARY BOARD ROOM,
HONGKONG, 22nd December, 1886.
411
I am directed by the Sanitary Board to transmit you for submission to the Governor in Council the enclosed draft of a proposed Public Health Ordinance, and accompanying By-Laws which the Board have had under consideration for some months past.
2. The Board regret they should have been unable to place these documents in your hands at an earlier date, but the length of the Bill, the variety and import- ance of the subjects coming under review, and the caution and deliberation which it was necessary to observe, inore particularly in the framing of those provisions likely to affect private interests, have made the delay unavoidable.
3. Even now the By-Laws proposed to be made under the Bill are far from complete, and the Board will do itself the honour of submitting from time to time in a supplementary form, the remaining By-Laws still to be framed in connection with the various subjects set forth in the sub-sections 7 to 27 of Article 13 of the Bill, but as these additional By-Laws would not be of a nature to necessitate any postponement of the consideration of the Bill, the Board venture to hope-in view of the pressing need of sanitary reform in the ventilation and drainage of private dwellings in Victoria-- that the measure in the shape now submitted may receive. the early attention of Government.
4. I am to point out that many of its more important provisions have been detached from the body of the Bill, and have been grouped together in the form of By-Laws, because it was conceived that in this form their amendment from time to time as future experience might dictate, would be more easily effected than by any partial repeal or amendment of the Ordinance itself, and I am to express the hope that the course adopted by the Board in this connection will commend itself to the judgment of the Government inasmuch as it is justified by ample precedent in the sanitary enactments of Parliament, as may be seen by reference to the Public Health Act of 1875 (38 and 39 Vict. c. 55) whereby it is decreed in Section 157 that every urban authority may make By-Laws with respect to the structure, sewerage, and closet accommodation of dwelling-houses, to the sufficiency of space about buildings in order to secure ventilation and a free circulation of air, and to the closing of tenements unfit for human occupation.
5. I am to state briefly that as regards the drainage and sewerage of tenements, the Bill has been drafted in the general lines of the municipal sanitary legislation of England, but that under the important head of space and ventilation in dwelling- houses, the Board regrets to have to report that it has been debarred by the un- favourable peculiarities of the site on which the city is built, by the small depths in the dimensions of existing lots, and by the scarcity and high value of building ground from following as closely as they could have wished, the wise provisions now adopted by all Municipal Authorities and Health Boards in the United Kingdom under the guidance of the Local Government Board.
6. The By-Laws of the Local Government Board prescribe that every tene- ment shall have a back-yard ten feet wide in order to secure the light and ventilation necessary to the health of the inmates, and it is further provided that if the tenement be fifteen feet high the back yard shall be fifteen feet wide, that if the tenement be twenty-five feet high the back-yard shall be twenty feet wide, and that if the tenement be thirty-five feet high the back-yard shall be at least twenty- five feet wide.
7. In Hongkong, native tenements are generally three storied and would therefore in accordance with Western hygienic rules require back-yards at least. twenty-five feet wide. The Board however has not been able to recommend for the reason previously given any back-yard wider than ten feet even for three storied houses intended to be reconstructed. This width is less than one half that laid down by English municipalities, notwithstanding that the tropical climate of Hongkong would seem to exact a more generous provision of air space.
8. But with regard to such entirely new houses as may be erected on vacant lands intended to be leased by Government for building purposes after the Bill shall bave passed into law, the Board see no reason why the minimum of open space for light and ventilation adopted in England should not also be adopted in
1
9