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which I had a large supply while I got a grant from Government for those needed at once and a sum put in the yearly estimates for keeping up a proper supply.
The Hospital Building was blown down in the big Typhoon of September 1874.
An old Hotel in the Central district of the town opposite the Central Police Station was taken up as a Hospital. The accommodation was much better but not what a Hospital should have, and not in a sufficiently open space, and the correspondence concerning a new Hospital still went on.
In 1897, on the 26th of December, this building was burnt down in a great fire which consumed over four hundred houses in the Central District, so rapidly did the fire spread that there was only time to clear the building of patients, no lives were lost and I had time to remove the coolies' Commonry, but all the stores, bedding, chemicals, books, and records were burnt.
The Lock Hospital was then occupied as a Government Civil Hospital; it has since been altered and enlarged, a new wing built, a house for the Superintendent built, and a Mortuary. Quarters for Nursing Staff and Chinese attendants are now in the course of construction and when all is completed there will be no better Hospital in the East.
The work I have had in getting this building through all its stages sanctioned, properly organized, and an efficient Staff thoroughly well fitted has not been amongst the smallest of my duties, and was added to by being opposed by the Superintendent in every possible way. He was an officer of very superior abilities, but unfortunately of a morose and irritable temperament, insubordinate to the last degree, opposing everything likely to increase his work unless it increased his power.