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Enclosure 6.
Memorandum by the Medical Officer of Health shewing how four or five cubicles may
be erected in the upper flors of existing houses not excee ling 49 feet in depth.
To The Secretary,
SANITARY Board.
Since resuming duty as Medical Officer of Health I have carefully considered the cubicle question, and I am satisfied that a great deal of the misunderstanding and a great deal of the difficulty experienced by this Department in enforcing the cubicle regulations, arises from the fact that owners of property as a rule make no attempt to provide cubicles for their tenants, but leave it to the tenants to put up these structures. The poorer and less educated tenants are not in a position to know exactly what the law permits and what is prohibited, and consequently they do not make the best use of the space at their disposal and constantly put up cubicles which contravene the law.
I quite understand that if owners of property put up the usual matchboarding cubicles they would run the risk of having them demolished and used as firewood by uusatisfactory tenants and I have therefore consulted the Honourable Director of Public Works as to the best material that could be used for permanent partitions and we are agreed that expanded metal framed in 11⁄2 inch angle-irons and strengthened where necessary with the same material placed diagonally, with cement plaster on both faces and of a total thickness of about one inch, would be. both permanent and durable. Such partitions could be kept clean without difficulty and would afford no lodgement for vermin.
I find that the law permits every floor which has two front windows of adequate size to be sub-divided into two rooms and a lobby or landing, vide Type A figure 2. I find moreover that with rooms of the usual height of 13 to 14 feet, and not more than 40 feet in depth there would as a rule be no structural difficulty in providing all the necessary window area for the larger room at a level of more than six feet above the floor. If this is done it is possible, on every upper floor of every building erected before the passing of Ordinance 23 of 1903, to have a cubicle in such room, which will comply with all the cubicle regalations (Section 154); we thus obtain, on every such upper floor, four practically separate sleeping apartments and a lobby or landing (Type A figure 3), and by certain Structural alterations which I have indicated in Type A figure 4, Type B figure 4, Type C figure 4, and Type D figure 2, we are able to obtain five such sleeping apartments and a lobby or landing on every upper floor.
These four types represent practically all the different designs of Chinese houses in the Colony, built before the passing of the Public Health and Buildings Ordinance, and the sub-division of the floors requires only that the windows shall be placed high up in the front and back walls so as to be above the level of the cubicle partitions. The tendency has been unfortunately to extend windows downwards towards the floor instead of upwards towards the ceilings, where it has been necessary to enlarge window areas so as to comply with the law, although it is obvious that the higher a window is placed the greater its lighting power and if owners of property can be induced to place their windows high up in order to sub-divide the rooms I think the result will be an improvement in the sanitary condition of tenement property.
Type A shows the usual 8 feet yard with kitchen in the rear; by removing five feet of the width of the kitchen it is possible to obtain a space opposite the back window of the floor of not less than 13 feet and this allows an additional sleeping apartment to be erected.
Type B shows the ordinary half kitchen and half yard; in this case the additional space to give 13 feet opposite the rear window has to be taken out of the floor space and a new 44 wall must be built on each such floor.
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Type C shows no yard but a lane in the rear-the usual Kowloon type and in this case the removal of five feet of the width of this kitchen, as in Type A, gives the necessary external air with its additional sleeping apartment.