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are quilted, for instance. Bedding is composed of quilted cotton, or a stuff resembling soft felt, covered by a light net to prevent it from tearing, and in no case is ever washed; sheets are never used. I never saw any entirely new bedding; the newest I saw was three years in possession of the owner, and he had bought it second-hand.
I have seen bedding twenty years old, and that was bought second-hand. It is taken out and aired occasionally, and a few of the vermin picked out, if they are found to be too numerous.
The average quantity of water used daily by each individual is about two quarts, and this is considered sufficient, as a rule, for cooking, drinking and washing purposes. Often it has to be brought from a considerable distance, and this is troublesome and expensive, so they do with as little as possible.
Kitchens' average size is 13 feet by 6 feet by 10 feet high, with stone or tile floors, always very wet and dirty. It is rare to find a chimney; there is generally a square opening in each of the floors above, forming a sort of shaft, without walls to it, and the smoke gets up through these if it can, or escapes by a small window; that is to say, part of it; the rest pervades the house. In each kitchen there is a small drain in the upper floors; the opening is connected with a downspout, which either passes outside the house or down through the kitchens below. All the inhabitants, when at home, of every floor urinate in their kitchen drain; this is a rule without an exception. The walls and ceilings of the kitchens are always covered with a thick layer of soot.
Ground floors, as a rule, are very dark; the rooms usually have only one window, averaging 3 feet by 2 feet, and the door, for light and air to come through, and they require lamps to be burning day as well as night in order to see anything. The upper floors are often not much better.
The house drain is generally in filthy condition, and in many cases choked; the downspouts are often in the same condition. These latter are, for the most part, composed of unglazed pottery piping, and on the walls down which they run, on either side of them is seen a dark, damp stain, showing how the filthy liquids they convey filter through them, or escape from the joints, into the walls of the houses.
The drains in the gullies, lanes and smaller streets appear originally to have been very badly constructed of rough cut and unfaced stones, loosely put together, which, in many places, have sunk into the ground quite out of their original position, and quite as much liquid as the drains carry off filters out of them into the ground. I have found in many cases from six to eighteen inches of semi-solid, black, putrid filth stagnant in them, according to their size. Many of them have never been opened since they were first constructed twenty or thirty years ago, and some of them have been built over at parts, and their outlets choked, lost and forgotten; but of such places as these tons and tons of filth have been removed only to accumulate again.
In some streets large new sewers have been lately constructed by Government. I notice that the house drains are not connected with these sewers, and I am informed that, in the existing state of the law, householders cannot be made to connect their drains with the new sewers.
Many houses in Tai-p'ing Shan have wells either in the main room or kitchens of the ground-floors, and these wells are invariably within one or two feet of the house drains and downspouts. In some cases the water smells or tastes so bad that it is not used for drinking, but in others, where there is no smell and the water is only apparently slightly foul, the water is used for drinking. In some of the lanes large public wells exist, and the drains invariably run close alongside them, and the condition of things is such that the sewage must filter through the earth in many cases, and mix more or less with the water in the wells. When the water is not used for drinking, it is used for washing vegetables for the markets, for washing clothes, and often for preparing food, &c., &c.
Sent to Survey General. G.S.D. NO.
This is a simple statement of facts as I have found them, and I think it will not be found difficult, after this explanation, for those who read this account to present in their imaginations a slight idea of the state of filth in which at present the lowest class of Chinese exist. I have not spoken of the state of the drains in the better quarters of the town, for that is patent to the eyes and noses of the public and attracts sufficient attention.
If it were not for the heavy rains flushing them frequently in the hot weather, matters would be worse still.
The Typhoons was a great sanitary visitor in the lower quarters of the town, and though it caused a great amount of destruction of rotten old buildings, it did a world of good.
From this it will be seen that every condition exists for the development of cholera or fevers of a typhoid character; if the seeds are once sown, they will have a fair start. Port Louis, Mauritius, a town similarly situated at the base of high hills, with every similar convenience for a good drainage, and having an equally bad state of things, but certainly not worse, has suffered most severely from epidemics, though once it was a renowned sanitarium. I was in the Colonial service there in the fever epidemic of 1867 and 1868, and I sincerely hope I may never see such another, the death rate at one time exceeding 600 people daily. Let the rains fall short, or the monsoons cease to blow here for a time, and Hongkong would be the scene of a similar catastrophe. That condition of things occurred in the Mauritius, and it is not impossible it may occur here.
Hongkong has still an evil name; that it once deserved it, there is no doubt, though it does not at present; whether it will ever deserve it again is the question which, unless some improvement takes place in the water supply and drainage, it is possible may be answered in the affirmative in the future.
The Honourable CECIL C. SMITH,
I have the honor to be,
Acting Colonial Secretary,
HONGKONG,
Office from this.
J.G. Austin
It is a little surprising to find the Colonial Surgeon or any Professional man with a knowledge of the position of the two Colonies, comparing the one with the other.
C. C Smith
Your obedient Servant,
PH. B. C. AYRES,
Colonial Surgeon,
Note Those portions of the foregoing report not marked to be omitted, were printed as the Colonial Surgeon's Annual Report in the year 1874.