316
VICTORIA GAOL.
The following table gives the number of admissions to the Gaol and the daily average number of prisoners for the past ten years :—
Total No. admitted
to Gaol.
Daily average No. of Prisoners.
542.15 .....552.00
1883,
...3,486..
1884,
4,023......
1885,
..3,610.........
..530.00
1886,
•
.4,600......
....674.00
1887,
.4,302..
...584.00
1888,
1889,
.3,627..
...3,705..
...531.00
1890,
...3,444...
1891,
1892,
.581.00
..566.00
...507.00
.....515.00
.5,231... .5,046.......
There is a decrease in the admissions to Gaol of 185 as compared with 1891, but an increase in the daily average number of prisoners in Gaol of 8. The great increase in the admissions to Gaol on the past two years is due to the Gambling Ordinance entirely. That is to say that an increase of about 1,700 prisoners for a week or fourteen days each, 80 per cent. of whom gamble to the extent of 10 cash at a time, (less than a third part of a penny), $1—2/9 or 1,030 cash, compared with whom boys at home tossing for half pence in the gutters are opulent gamblers. Most of them are miserable wretches and have added largely to the increase of patients in the Gaol Hospital and out-patients in the cells, getting no work or very little to do, medical treatment and extra diet. In any case less work and better food than they get outside for the great majority of these prisoners.
Even with this great increase of sickness compared with former years, 1,035 cases treated in and out of Hospital there were only six deaths. One of these was an Opium smoker, death caused by rupture of a duodenal ulcer and peritonitis setting in, this death can hardly be put down to the Opium habit.
LUNATIC ASYLUMS.
The European Lunatic Asylum was unusually full this year, Sixteen cases were received and one death occurred. Four coloured lunatics were admitted, no deaths occurred.
In the Chinese Asylum, thirty-one cases were admitted and three deaths occurred.
TUNG WAH HOSPITAL.
The number of cases admitted to the Hospital during the year was 2,455. Of these 1,365 were discharged, 1,090 died; among these deaths were 353 received in a moribund condition and dying within 24 hours. 112 remained in Hospital at the end of the year.
In the Small-pox Wards there were 50 cases admitted, 12 were discharged, 38 died, the majority of these deaths were young children.
2,227 Vaccinations were performed. Of these 230 were done in the out-stations by the visiting vaccinators of the Hospital. Calf lymph from the Vaccine Institute was supplied to this Hospital by my Department.
VACCINE INSTITUTE.
This was first opened in the spring to supply Calf Lymph for the use of the new troops that arrived for the Hongkong Regiment. During the summer, Mr. LADDS, who was appointed Super- intendent of the Institute, conducted a series of experiments and the real work began in October. I cannot report satisfactorily till next year as real work only began in the last three months of 1892. The calf lymph supplied is good and I calculate the expenses should be $50 a month when it is in full working order and its earning power be at least $150 a month, as there has been a great demand from the local Dispensaries and also from the Coast Ports.
Mr. LADDS has been appointed Superintendent, but his time is fully occupied by his duties as Veterinary Surgeon to the Sanitary Board and he has to do the most part of this work in his leisure hours often after dark; and as the Institute ought to be a very paying business, I do not think he should be called upon to do this work gratuitously as at present. It is work that was never contem- plated in his original appointment and his own particular duties have increased very much since he was originally appointed.
Moreover, the work is not in his own Department under the Sanitary Board, but he is called upon to do work in my Department gratuitously as we have no one capable of doing this work able to give sufficient time to it.