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In many cases the houses are quite unfit for use as brothels or human habitation, their being no ventilation at all, and many more are much overcrowded,-rooms being built in rooms not only by sub-dividing the floor of one room, but by dividing other rooms above the sub-divisions, making one floor into two, and so destroying the small amount of ventilation there was originally.
Such being the case it is not at all wonderful to find cases of typhoid fever continually brought to hospital. I am bound to say that these cases do not only come from brothels and therefore do not merit the name of "brothel-fever" given to them, for in many private houses of the poorer class that I have inspected the state of things is a hundred times worse than in the brothels, and if some remedy is not found it will ultimately become a formidable invader of the houses of the rich and bring back to Hongkong, with good reason, its not enviable notoriety as a grave of Europeans.
For it must be remembered that it is to these houses and to the Chinese brothels the servants go, and from them may bring the infection into the houses of their masters.
I have written out instructions, some of them applying to all the brothels, some to individual houses only, for the use of the inspectors, and allow a certain time for them to be acted upon; if not fully carried out in that time the houses will be closed until the orders are obeyed. Some houses, about eight in number, I have ordered to be closed, but without continual and efficient superintendence and instruction as to what is required the inspectors cannot be of much use as regards sanitary arrange- ments, the impracticability of the blind leading the blind having been demonstrated by reliable authority.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient Servant,
The Honourable J. G. AUSTIN, C.M.G.,
&c.,
Colonial Secretary,
&c.,
&c.
PH. В. C. AYRES, Colonial Surgeon.
(Colonial Secretary's Minute of 20th January, 1874.)
If without exaggeration, this report reflects seriously upon the Government in respect to the past and throws much responsibility upon it as regards the future.
There is no object to which I would devote time and attention more willingly than the amelio- ration of these parts of the town which are inhabited by the Chinese, but to do anything effectually in the matter would occupy much preparation and much time, and involve very considerable outlay. We cannot therefore move in the matter on the spur of the moment.
As regards the brothels, however, we can take immediate action, and I therefore suggest that the houses which are irremediably bad should be closed at once, and that the others should be left open only on condition that they shall be made satisfactory in all respects within a specified time.
I quite approve of the suggestions made by Dr. AYRES that no brothel should hereafter be licensed without a certificate from a Medical Officer, but I think that the Surveyor General should also have some voice in the matter.
The Honourable the Registrar General will be good enough to give his opinion on the matter.
(Signed), J. G. AUSTIN,
January 20th, 1874.
Colonial Secretary.
No. 11.
GOVERNMENT CIVIL HOSPITAL,
HONGKONG, 15th April, 1874.
SIR,-I have the honour to forward to you a report on the results of my rounds with the sanitary inspector for the information of His Excellency the Governor.
As I have already stated in my report on the inspection of brothels, there are many things brought to notice there that are equally applicable to private houses, such as bad drainage, deficient ventilation, foul privies, filthy condition of the houses, &c., &c.; but if I was astonished at the state of the brothels they did not at all prepare me for what I was to find in private houses. As was the case of the brothels before I came, so it is with the back slums of the town, little or no superintendence over the inspectors has been thought of. The inspectors of brothels and the sanitary and market inspectors have all been left pretty much to their own devices, as I have shown and shall show. Nor does it seem to have come within the province of my predecessors to do this work.
Pigs are universally kept in the houses all over the town, the usual place for their reception being the kitchens, but they are by no means confined to that part of the house. If the droves are too large or the kitchen too small, they are kept in the same room the inhabitants of the houses оссиру
and are as frequently to be found in upper stories as in the ground floors. A very favourite place for them is