88
The provisions of the Ordinance were, therefore, speedily suspended and, after some reconsideration of the problem, an amended Registration Ordinance (No. 16 of 1844) was substituted. This ordinance applied the principle of registration only to the poorest classes and exempted from registration all Civil, Military, and Naval employees, all members of the learned professions, merchants, shopkeepers, house- holders, tenants of Crown property, and all persons having an income of $500 a year and over. The amended ordinance came into force on January 1, 1845, and worked so smoothly that on December 31, 1846, it
it was possible to modify it (Ordinance No. 7 of 1846) so as to provide for a periodical census of the whole population.
The intention would appear to have been to hold regular periodical census enumerations and to base the intercensål estimates of the population on the figures obtained from registration. Unfortunately the word "estimated" is omitted and one is uncertain, therefore, whether the figures given as the population of the Colony in these early days represent the results of a census enumeration taken on a fixed day, or whether they are an estimate based on the registration figures for the year together with some sort of an enumeration of the persons exempted from regis tration. Thus the population of 1847 is given as 23,872 and in 1848 as reduced to 21,514. In commenting on this, the Governor at that time attributed the decrease not to the alleged decay of local commerce, but to a more careful registration "which, while giving a truer account of the actual number, relieved the Colony from those who hung loose on it and only applied for registration tickets to make a bad use of them."
The Taiping Rebellion had by this time broken out in China, and Hong Kong began to reap the harvest of increased population which has invariably fallen to its lot whenever the adjoining districts of Kwangtung province are in a disturbed state. A flood of emigrants flowed towards Hong Kong (and Macao). Many passed on to the Straits Settlements, California and the West Indies but many also remained in the Colony. The population increased rapidly and Chinese capital, seeking a safe refuge from the clutches of the marauders, also commenced to flow into the Colony for investment. Even the proportion of females to males now started to improve as the disturbances drove whole families to seek refuge in Hong Kong. In 1848 the population was about 21,500, in 1849 it rose to 29,500, and by the year 1853 it had reached 39,000. In 1848 one-fifth only were females; in 1853 the pro- portion had increased to one-third.
The disturbances in China continued for some time and the population of the Colony increased rapidly. Referring to the year 1856, the Governor reported an increase in the respectability of the Chinese population and stated that a better class of people had now commenced to settle in Hong Kong. In 1858 the popula- tion had increased to 75,503; in 1860 it was about 95,000. The cession of Kowloon brought the total for 1862 to 123,500. After that year the population increased more slowly, and at times decreased, so that in 1871 it stood at 124,198.
In the seventies there appears to have been a census craze as enumerations were carried out on no fewer than three occasions in the decade. Government Notifica- tion No. 68 of May 5, 1871, which is the first printed report so far discovered, . gives the census returns of the population of the Colony for 1870-71, and the date given as the date of the enumeration is April 2, 1871. A further Census was taken on the night of December 1, 1872, (see Government Notification No. 20 of the February 10, 1873), and another on the night of December 4, 1876, (see Government Notification No. 40 of the February 24, 1877). In 1881 there began the regular system of decennial censuses of 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911, and 1921, with intermediate and partial censuses taken for special purposes in 1897 and 1906.
The figures that are given in the early reports for the years 1858 to 1871 seem clearly to be estimates only, such as are still made each year of the intercensal period for the calculation of vital statistics; and the reports of the Censuses of 1871, 1872, and 1876 also appear to be based on registration figures and to give a yearly average rather than the results of a census enumeration. In the case of the Census for 1881,