603
A PAGE FROM KOWLOON HISTORY (contd)
26.
In the year following, the definite extension of the place is indicated, for in the Hongkong Times of January 23, 1874, a description is given of Yaumati in which it is noted that the Police Station, lately erected,
"Delmar" on the north "rises majestically in the centre of the village, and the Station on the south, form a perfect and agreeable contrast with the Chinese houses in the background. A deep well is now being constructed a short distance from the Police Station." And further: "The vermilion factory, which has caused so much annoyance at West Point, is shortly to be transferred to Yaumati as well as some Chinese boat building establishments now blocking the Praya East and West.
"A Government School has lately been established.
"Two steam launches ply regularly to and fro every half hour."
The local Military records contain some interesting references to the early days of Kowloon under the British regime, and the barracks erected there; and I cannot do better than take some extracts from a previously-published piece of research work by an Army officer stationed here. The following is quoted from an interesting article contributed to the December, 1929, St. John's Cathedral Review by Major Morrison D.S.O.:
In 1860 the question of the appropriation of Kowloon Peninsula is entered into fully in a memorandum, written by the Secretary of War. The following is an extract. "The necessity for increased accommodation for the garrison has long been apparent to the military authorities, and acquisition of a healthy site like that of Kowloon, points at once in the direction in which this accommodation must be found. The annual cost of life in the Garrison at Hongkong, and the invaliding home of the sick, are so costly, that putting all questions of humanity aside, it is well worth the while of the Government, in an economical point of view, to go to considerable expense in constructing new barracks and hospitals, open to the sea breeze."
Kowloon was handed over to the British on the 28th March 1861. On the 31st December, 1861, the Principal Medical Officer in his annual Sanitary Report to the Army Medical Department states "The sanitary condition of the promontory of Kowloon is far from being good: the vicinity of the huts on the north side of the camp is especially objectionable: the whole promontory is more or less surrounded and intersected, in an irregular manner, by belts of paddy cultivation requiring constant irrigation. I strongly recommend that the cultivation be entirely interdicted."
The first troops to occupy Kowloon were housed in ordinary mat huts. The situation of the huts was irregular and followed the natural contour of the ground, so that some huts were nearly 1,000 yards from the others and all communication between the huts was, of necessity, conducive to exposure. The situation of the huts was, presumably, somewhere in the region of the present Whitfield Barracks.
In Kowloon, before any excavations or cuttings were started, men of the 99th Regiment (now the 2nd Wiltshires) after a short residence there, used to get a similar peculiar fever to that of the original Hongkong fever. It was noted that there was an immunity amongst those men who did no night duty, whilst the healthiest men in the regiment were the prisoners, because they had every night in bed and so no night-exposure to the miasmatic poison.
Actually, the whole question was one of exposure to attacks by the malaria-carrying mosquitoes; though in those early days the great discovery regarding malaria transmission had not been made.
The photograph reproduced to-day also shows the land to the left quite bare; since then, a block of semi-detached houses has been erected on the site. The roadway, known as Middle Road, runs right through, but within the last two years has been blocked at the end with an iron railing; while the rock-strewn area seen on the right of the picture has been developed into a children's playground. Prior to the Kowloon Point reclamation...