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later, conditions improved, though allegations of brutality and corruption were voiced from time to time.18
The force consisted of Chinese, Sikhs and, especially in the higher echelons, foreigners.
The Public Works department equally had its origins in the very beginning of the Settlement when roads and drainage had to be built. At times there were many complaints about the state of the roads; thus one female reader of the North China Herald wondered whether it was "in reason that we should have to walk all the days of our lives over sharp little cubes of broken brick?"19 The department, however, faced a difficult task in the construction of roads on the marshy soil of Shanghai and the situation became only worse when traffic increased to such an extent that often a decision had to be made between demolishing whole rows of buildings, with all the attendant hardships for the occupiers, and letting congestion get out of hand.
The Public Health department was initiated as the Nuisance Department in 1861 because of the dangers to health caused by the throwing away of offal at all possible and impossible places with the result that one reader of the local paper returned from a walk in the Settlement "sickened and disgusted”.50
Besides the official department there were numerous private or missionary hospitals receiving municipal financial subsides.
These tasks were the traditional tasks of a laissez-faire government and in general did not rouse much controversy, apart from complaints that services did not go far enough. It is noticeable that it was only these tasks which were enshrined in the Land Regulations as falling within the realm of municipal administration.
Quite different problems were encountered when it came to coping with the results of industrialisation, especially the regulation of working hours and the abolition of child-labour.
In the west social legislation had increased in scope over the decades since the middle of the 19th century, but in Shanghai most efforts in this direction were doomed to failure. In the early 1920s several attempts were made to pass a bye-law which
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