435
3
As to the general question of the sanitary state of the city, I have been very anxious on the subject and in the early part of the year I asked for a list of 20 or 30 of the worst specimens of insanitary dwellings, information easily obtained from the records of the Plague Commission. One morning I sent for the Principal Medical Officer, the Acting Colonial Secretary, the Honourable Mr. Chater, member of the Legislative Council, and the Director of Public Works, and with them I inspected over 20 of the houses. The tenants were quite unprepared, indeed did not know who was visiting them. The structural defects of some of the houses were very apparent, but I was surprised at their cleanliness and am quite certain that the houses were cleaner than I should have found the same class of house in London.
6.
Since the outbreak of the Plague which has up to the present claimed more than 1100 victims, I have in the early mornings ridden through the streets and lanes especially of the plague-stricken parts of the town two or three times every week. I do not believe that there is so clean a city in the East, I question if there is so far as the streets are concerned a better scavenged city in Europe. I have seen the furniture of entire streets turned into the street while all the houses were being whitewashed and thoroughly cleaned. The furniture was washed with Jeyes' fluid and the bedding and clothing disinfected by the dry steam process before the houses were reinhabited. Yet after all was done