12777/94
in the history of the Colony
are in no
As
229
of
the
your Lordship must have been in receipt of despatcties giving full delarte of the Corrible sufferings caused by the ravages plaque and of the disastrous effect the visitation had upon the "whole of the business of the Colony your Memorialists do not purpose in support of their statencuit and to convince your Lordship that
at any great length into a description of these matters but they
way guilty of waggeration your Memorialists would respectfully refer our Lordship to a dispatel published in the Hong Kong Government Gazette of the 12 September last and
forwarded from Hongkong by
Sir William Robinson the Governor and dated The 20th June root in which His Excellency stated that the exodus of panic stricken Chinese was also on the increase, honge
domestic servants applied
were
- being emptied of their clerks, chair coolies by hundreds deserted their
warning.
"
17
lo.
C
• employers wiitiont
for
and many
to Caulow
the amount of their wages then dere to enable them to go
families on the mainland. No less than 300 men
outo
left the Ruer families
the China Sugar Factory one morning and crous mover to Kowloon
" started to walk to Swatow, a distance off 150 mides. At this time the
" admissions to the hospitals were by, yo and sometimes go a
day,
" and the deartes in hospital and the dead bodies collected outside were
ow one occasion
109
in 24
hours."
In the 19th paragraph of the same despatate Ser William Robinson stated Upwards of $550 houses have "condemned as unfit.
unfit for habitation.
x * ม X
bee
already Thousands of people,
" roughly estimated at 80.000 as I have stated in
my telegram of the 164. "June", have left the Istand for the neighbouring province watun the last mouite in every sort of sharive courcyowe, paupers, boats, jinks conveyance, junho "and river stétumers, and I aur inforlued that persons have even walked "on board the steamers at the whardes in Houghong and have died before
• they reached Cauton 8 or 9 hours distant and in the 32% paragraph His Excellency says.
"Wictiont exaggeration I me "trade and commerce are concerved the plaque has assumed the "importance of an unexampled calamity"."
may
red
assert that so
for
As
With reference to the class of persons that left the Colony
(2)
owing