Enclosure 5.
& The Daily Press.
HoraKONG, May 31st, 1900.
Tus lengthy report of Dr. FRANCIS W. CLARK, Medical Officer of Health, for the year 1989, is a storehouse of accurate, valuable, and by no means uninteresting informa tion. It is in every way worthy of thoughtful perusal by all intelligent adult members of the community. After carefully reading through the pages of this document and its ap- pendices, we marvel at Dr. CLARK'stireless in- dustry and more clearly than ever, we realise how necessary it is that he should be provided with a properly qualified and capable assis- tant. The duties and calls upon the Sani- tary Board, particularly upon its executive! head, the Medical Officer of Health, are yearly becoming more numerous, more onerous, more exacting; and it is a matter of the most imperative importance that these multifarious duties be efficiently carried on, that these pressing calls be instantly attended to, without the paralysing fear of interrup tion, either through break-down or absence- on-leave. Mr. OSBORNE's motion on this score, on Friday last, at the meeting of the Board, was eminently cogent: we hope to see the Board's wishes assented to by the Government. At the present moment, the Sanitary Board has no jurisdiction over the New Territory, although that will come in due fulness of time; its sway is only exercised over the 32 square miles of land comprised in Hongkong and the Kowloon peninsula up to the bautboo fence that used to mark the old frontier line on the main- land. It is proposed, however, at an early date, to bring all the mainland between the first range of hills and the shore, from Lyeen Pass on the East, to Laichikok behind Stonecutters' on the West, within the provisions of the local Public Health Ordinances. This will add some 15 square miles to the areas already within the Board's sphere of authority, and will, pari passu, increase Dr. CLARK'S arduous duties. A less energetic man might reasonably be discouraged. The city of Victoria extends along the sea-front for a distance of 41 miles, and climbs up the hill-sides, to a height of 800 feet above mean high-water mark. The total city area covered with - buildings, is well over a square mile; and, although this actual area grows but slowly, the number of houses within its limits, and what perhaps constitutes a far more significant menace to our well-being as a body-the alarmingly big number of altera- tions to existing buildings, in the way 'of Fedditional floors, are going up by leaps and
louds. It is this dangerous mode of progression, a mode, by the way, that is occidental rather than oriental, that will give the reader pause.
A Chinese city with
the same population as we have, would
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cover much more ground. Ten years ago. four and five storied buildings were un- known in the colouy, and even places of three stories were uncommon. All this is now being rapidly changed. The place is literally adding to its stature daily. A cursory glance over the city reveals the fact that property-owners on all sides are feverishly putting story on story, or if they
can
afford it, are razing old build- ings and hurriedly running up much loftier ones in their stead: they are eager. to participate in the flowing tide of rents: and who can blame them? The busiest and wealthiest part of London, the City proper, is practically given up, during the night, to policemen and office caretakers. Not so the business quarters of Victoria. Our actual thoroughfares may be empty of ricksha and chair, and of grunting coolies staggering along under burdens; but the buildings, on either hand, are fully as crammed as in the day time. The night here brings no relief to the day. It is to this serious subject of surface crowding, this aerial rather than lateral extension, to which Dr. CLARK so often rightly recurs. Back-to-back houses are now a nightmare of the hideous past. The Insanitary Pro- perties Ordinance, of 1899, definitely and fually swept them away to the limbo of hygienic horrors. The same Ordinance also deals, less thoroughly than we would wish, with the erection of cubicles and mezzanine. floors; as well as with the relative height of buildings ou land hereafter acquired from the Crown to the width of the roadway which they adjoin: lut, as Dr. CLARK pertinently and forcibly remarks, almost all Crown-land comprised within the city- bounds, excepting the resumed and levelled lots to the East of the Tung-wa Hospital, in Taipingshan, have long ago passed into the hands of private owners; and we would further state, not for the short leases of 75 years now in vogue, but in the very great majority of cases, for terms of 999 years.
Aeration by means of wide passengers is no i where more vitally needful than within the tropies. In our own instance, this plea is intensified when we reflect that in the sum. mer season, when ventilation is more essen- tial than at any other period, the cooling breezes come from the south-e., as regards Victoria, pass high over our beads, and only drop to the level at which we are in the city, by the time they have crossed the hur- bour. It is partly for this reason that the peninsula opposite, although often register- ing higher absolute temperatures, is much fresher than Victoria. As old residents well know, the lower portion of the city, on many windless days in the hot season, is nothing more nor less than a huge stagnant acol of fœtid air. This but emphasises the absolute need for broad streets and build- ings of reasonable altitude. The obstruction by verandals, and the constant misuse of¦ them and of flying balconies as genera!