452
Fever in the Registered Chinese Brothels
As this was likely to be a very unpleasant and arduous piece of work and the arrival of the New Colonial Surgeon was still expected, it had been put off. The Acting Colonial Surgeon being a private practitioner, and not a Government Officer.
On enquiry from me, a number of cases were still coming in to Hospital from these Brothels and I proceeded with the enquiry at once. It took me four hours a day, every afternoon, after those duties requiring my attendance at the different Establishments under my supervision at regular hours in the morning, to go through all these houses, hundred in number. I went on these inspections accompanied by the Inspectors of Brothels. I wrote down the state of each of the houses in a book as I examined them and the necessary steps required to render each house habitable and put it into a proper Sanitary condition as regards overcrowding, ventilation, and cleanliness, drainage. This book was shown to the Registrar General the morning following the day of my inspection so that each case might receive immediate attention.
When the series of inspections was finished, I sent in a special Report to Government, dated 19th January 1874, stating the overcrowded, filthy, and general insanitary condition of these places was astounding, that many of them were perfectly unfit for human habitation at all, and recommending these houses should be closed and not permitted to be inhabited till they were renovated. These Brothels all being houses under Government supervision and in such a state, I proceeded to personally and thoroughly overhaul and inspect the whole City of Victoria.
I found the drainage system, public and private, in the best houses as well as the worst slums, as bad as it ...