CHURCHES (Continuation)
The largest assemblage during the day amounted to about fifty persons; and probably three or four hundred in all heard the sound of the Gospel.
We re-embarked at about half past four p.m., having a fair breeze sailed towards Victoria, on our return at a brisk rate. The people whom we visited were generally Buddhists in practice, and idols were conspicuous in every dwelling."
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The references in the papers these days to the activities of the Anti-Mutilation Society and Society for the Protection of Children remind us that work in the amelioration of the lot of poorer-class Chinese Children, particularly the "slave girls" who for so long went unchampioned here, has been carried out from the earliest years of the Colony's existence. This work, unostentatious and therefore not perhaps fully appreciated, has ever since the Forties been the special care of different religious institutions, particularly the local convents. One of these, which has grown considerably in scope and size since its inauguration on a modest scale many years ago, is the French Convent of Saint Paul at Causeway Bay. Something of its interesting history might well be included in this series on Old Hongkong.
The fine buildings seen to-day at Causeway Bay, including an up-to-date hospital and a convent where a sound education is imparted—there is also a large church opened about six years ago—were not occupied until 1916, when a move was made there from the old premises at Wanchai, at that time almost on the seafront.
But the history of the institution goes right back to 1848, when a party of French Sisters arrived in Hongkong and established, in a small building in Wanchai, close to the then fashionable Spring Gardens quarter, the Asile de la Sainte Enfance, which, as its name implies, was mainly intended for the rescue and succour of the small children of the place. It was a little later that this foundling home developed into a scholastic institution, the forerunner of the present convent; and comparatively recently other branches were formed, such as the hospital for Chinese children and babies known as Le Calvaire, in Happy Valley.
Old files give us the stages of this development, and of special interest is the tracing of the growth of the institution until, when unable to accommodate the children who were increasingly coming under its care at Wanchai, first the small hospital in Happy Valley was opened (in 1908) and then the bigger institution at Causeway Bay.
It takes the following references from old newspapers files, leading up to the first of these expansions.
The work of the Wanchai establishment, and the nature of the premises, which had, in the Eighties, been enlarged to some extent, is discussed in a leading article in the Hongkong Telegraph of December 8, 1903, from which the following is extracted.
"We have, in Hongkong, many deserving institutions for the relief of the indigent and suffering, and amongst these there is one that appeals with especial pathos to our sentiments because its work is amongst the helpless and