102
H. J. LETHBRIDGE
Row in Tai Ping Shan was then known as 'Samshu Corner' because many Europeans resorted to it for cheap topping. The commissioners ascertained that much drinking went on in barracks, troops sending Chinese 'boys' out to buy bottles of samshu or whisky for them. Drunkenness was a direct consequence of boredom and idleness.
The problem of venereal disease was related to that of drinking, for bars and brothels clustered together. From 1867 to 1887, the Contagious Diseases Ordinance, patterned on the English act of 1866, was in force in the colony to protect the health of British servicemen. Briefly, the 1867 ordinance made all prostitutes working in licensed brothels for Europeans only (Chinese brothels for Chinese only were exempted) subject to compulsory medical inspection at the Lock Hospital. European prostitutes, on the other hand, could undergo examination at home. It was claimed that the repeal of the Hong Kong ordinance in 1889, following the repeal of the English act in 1886, led to an upsurge in the rates for venereal disease. In 1895, admissions into hospital for venereal infection in the home army were 173.8 per 1,000; in India, 522.3; in Hong Kong, about the same figure.
It follows, then, that the chance of a male member of the European lower orders becoming infected with venereal disease was always high during the period under review here, 1842-1900. The police, for example, were so prone to catching this social disease, almost an occupational disease for them, that at one time they were also subject to compulsory medical inspection. The practice was stopped in 1873, but before that date, there was a monthly examination of all foreign members of the force.
Middle-class Europeans did not escape entirely from all these afflictions from alcoholism, syphilis, boredom, and loneliness. Both classes Taipans and pong-paan — also fell victim at times to a variety of diseases, such as malaria, typhus, cholera, and bubonic plague, as the Colonial Cemetery at Happy Valley amply testifies. But the well-to-do could at least escape to the Peak from Hong Kong's enervating summer, or recuperate in cooler latitudes, in Japan or northern China; and since many of the prosperous were respectably married and lived a normal family life, cosseted by a houseful of servants, they were protected to some degree by domestic circumstances from the temptations that soldiers, sailors, seamen, and their kind, had to face day and night in the city.