Upon this point Dr Ayres throws further light... (paragraph 81), "Now what has been argued of late years is that the unwholesome style of building in Hongkong is peculiar to the Chinese; and therefore, though bad enough as one-storied buildings, they have been permitted to make them three or four storied, and even then to subdivide each storey by cock-lofts. For whose sake? Not for the sake of the Chinese population, but for the sake of a set of gamblers in house property. The overcrowding has been represented as showing the prosperity of the Colony, when it is a well-known fact that crowds were procured by the speculators to fill these houses free of rent, in order that they might represent them to purchasers as being tenanted, and to this as much as anything else is due such an increase of the population living from hand to mouth as has appeared in the last few years, and the consequent overcrowding!"
With regard to the alleged freedom of the Chinese from those filth diseases which accompany defective...