EUROPEAN WORKING CLASS IN 19TH CENTURY
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clandestine (i.e., unlicensed and unregistered) brothels. For example, John Lee, an Inspector of Brothels in 1877, had joined the Hong Kong Police in 1864 and had been appointed Inspector of Brothels by the government in 1870. As a constable he had spent part of his service on dockyard duty; appointment as an Inspector of Brothels was a step up in the world; he improved both his status and finances. Such persons, too, had chances of obtaining, corruptly, substantial sums of money from Chinese, in this case from brothel keepers and their charges.5
The increase in demand for, what may be termed, low-level European man-power, was caused by the establishment of new government departments and an expansion in the activities of the old, as ordinance after ordinance was introduced into the colony. This was particularly true of the Surveyor General's Department, renamed the Public Works Department (P.W.D.) in 1891. The carrying out of large public works projects, such as the construction of public buildings, reservoirs and roads, meant that there was an increasing need for supervisors, overseers and inspectors. There were difficulties in finding suitable men. Departments had to take what they could find locally. Some specialists badly needed by the Hong Kong government were, however, recruited in London by the Crown Agents.
Many P.W.D. overseers were former Royal Engineers, who had taken their discharge in Hong Kong, and as soldiers had had experience in the building of fortifications and other military works. They were, in modern army parlance, ‘tradesmen'. But an overseer admitted to a commission of enquiry in 1902 that it was always difficult to obtain responsible assistants:
"You can get beach-combers (sic) and old sailors, but they are no earthly use if you put them on a job and you have to depend on a Chinese foreman or contractor for a knowledge of the details of the work. They must be figure heads, but it is no use to put them on a Department like this."
He also confirmed that ‘any European here—it doesn't matter who he is or where he is picked up—can be put on a job and is termed an Overseer'. An architect concurred, stating that many overseers were picked from the beachcomber class. It appeared that in an attempt to rehabilitate beachcombers, clergymen and benevolent societies had been sending such persons along to the P.W.D. for