Other Hongkong wells are referred to by the Hongkong Telegraph in its issue of February 24, 1885. It appears that owing to the meagre water supply to the Colony in the early days, as was to be expected, many private wells were sunk. The following notes in the paper describe the sites of some private wells then existing:
There was a well in Hing Heen Lane for we read in the old records of a foreigner having fallen into this well with fatal results.
No. 2 Hing Yau Lane had a well inside its front entrance. In Pound Lane a well was situated against one of the walls in the street. This was surrounded by a foot-high parapet.
Just inside the entrance door of No. 6 Rutter Lane was another dangerously placed well.
At No.26 Pound Lane was another of these dangerous man traps, and at the back of No. 16 in the same lane there was another private well.
At the top of Rutter Lane there was a well in the open, the mouth of which was open.
The wells as described constituted but a small portion of the numerous similar private wells in different parts of the Colony. Apart from the quality of the water derived therefrom, serious objection was taken to their dangerous and exposed condition and innumerable cases are instanced of people falling into these wells at night.
1885
They must nearly all have been closed not long afterwards.
The water supply of Kowloon was reported on in May 1890, by Mr. Osbert Chadwick, the official assigned to the job. He commented on the purity and satisfactory condition of water, taken from a well sunk near Yeumati, and it was suggested that a well be sunk in the neighbourhood and a pumping station be erected for the purpose of supplying British Kowloon with its water.
A plan accompanied this proposal, and showed wells to be sunk to the eastward of Mongkok in the locality at present occupied by Homuntin Garden City. Several tanks were to be erected to the south-westward of Kowloon Tong and in the vicinity south-westward of Kowloon City, also near the Observatory Hill, and at Hung Hom. An engine house at Yaumeti was to connect with the wells, which would pump the water to the tanks for subsequent distribution throughout the area of Kowloon.
This plan was carried out in due course, and formed the original water supply system for Kowloon, but was later substituted by the formation of the Kowloon Reservoir,
Practically all the wells sunk were thereupon closed by Government order, but it will be recalled that some of them in the Waterloo Road neighbourhood were at the time of the great drought of 1929 reopened and thankfully used.