480
66
majority of the Board, when it appeared that the mercantile community and the general public would be seriously inconvenienced, and things were relegated to the future for further consideration; as in the case of the Sub-Committee appointed to enquire into the Fat-Boiling Nuisance to which I referred in my Annual Report for 1893. whose report although referring to the condition of filth and general insanitation of the houses in which this business was conducted, situated in First, Second, Third and High Streets, some of those being houses the insanitary condition of which I mentioned in my Report of the 15th April, 1874, were situated to the west of the Hospital in High, First, Second and Third Streets. Mr. EDE and Mr. HUMPHREYS, unofficial members of the Board the Sub- Committee appointed, inspected these premises and sent in a report in which they said :-"Nearly the "whole of the houses are in a most dilapidated condition. The floors were recking with filth. The "drainage was very bad, smell abominable. In some of the houses were dark holes in which there were quantities of decomposing and putrid meat, fat and bones, and one of them filled with maggots. The stench from these places was unbearable." I inspected these houses also and found. them in the same condition I had reported twenty years ago; fat-boiling was going on there, but, with the assistance of the Registrar General, I had them cleared out and suppressed that business in the neighbourhood of the Hospital. It had begun again of late years and I have often reported them before with result that the nuisance has abated for a time. When this report was read before the Board I stated that these houses were in as disgusting a condition as many of the worse slums of the Central District of Taipingshan, independently of the fat-boiling, that many other houses in the same streets where no fat-boiling was done were in the same filthy and insanitary condition, and that these houses were, in my opinion, unfit for human habitation. The Board then recommend-" That "the tenants should be called upon to abate the nuisance," which was done. The Board also recommended- "That the landlords should be notified to put these houses in proper order." That the notices were served is proved by the papers attached to the documents which had been before the Board, but there is no record to show that the landlords paid any attention to the notification, and no further steps appear to have been taken in the matter and it ended in nothing being done. The houses in these streets, next to the walled up portion of Taipingshan, were the worst centres of the plague-stricken districts; scores of them were closed as unfit for human habitation and remain so to this day.
Reports of the Board's Sanitary Surveyor on houses requiring re-draining are continually being referred back for further report in the interest of the landlords or the tenants whose rights must not be infringed upon, or only sanctioned conditionally, or refused sanction altogether on account of insuffi- cient water supply rendering re-draining incompatible, in the opinion of some members, with the necessities of the case.
The powers given to the Board to act are not used because they are insufficient, because they interfere with the rights of the landlord, the tenant, or the public. Action is deprecated in every possible way. The Board's legal members are great in explaining what the Board cannot do in consequence of the want of sufficient powers and but little light is afforded to the Board by them as to what can be done with the limited powers the Board possesses. Every care was taken to hamper the Board in doing anything, and every opportunity to declaim on the iniquity of the water supply not being in the hands of the Board, the want of powers to act, the need for reform (especially Muni- cipal Reformn) and the very great need of a Municipal Council to save the Colony from destruction. All sorts of wild theories are promulgated and beautiful plays are acted for the benefit of the gallery occupied by the reporters of the public press who furnish the papers with jesting and caustic reports of the discussions to the great amusement of the public, and subject those members desirous of doing the work for which they were appointed to unlimited chaff; the reports of the Board's meetings being looked forward to as a source of amusement in these dull times.
When the plague began a small and Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board was appointed to see necessary things done to stamp out its invasion. The meetings were held daily and in the beginning were rather of a stormy character. There was no gallery, I mean no reporters, but the majority meant business and would recognize no rights but the public welfare, and landlords and lessees who had fattened on the profits of the disgusting and filthy dens for years had to submit to forego those profits for the future. Many houses have been taken away from them altogether and the Land Resumption Ordinance put in force; scores of other houses have been closed as unfit for human habitation until the required alterations necessary to render them fit are made; hundreds of others have had a definite period fixed to put them in order with the threat of closure unless those orders are obeyed. And it has been shown very definitely that a great deal could be done in a very short time when necessity that knows no law required it.
The Chinese have received a very necessary and salutory lesson that riots and strikes will no longer be permitted to override the law, and I desire to protest against their being permitted any interference in or control over hospitals for epidemic disease in the future after our experience of the past year.
I deprecate any accommodation being sanctioned by Government for plague patients not under European supervision in the immediate neighbourhood of the Colony in future. The condition of things existing at the Lai-Chi-Kok Hospital and cemetery was correctly described by the medical