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It is perhaps doing Surgeon-General Evatt no injustice to suggest that his views are biassed by the fact that the late Governor refused to appoint him to be a member of the Sanitary Board (22257/99).
In any case his knowledge is out of date as he left the Colony in 1899, and much has been done since then. The main features of his account are narrow streets; houses without back yards; overcrowding; insanitary cubicles; lack of latrines and lack of baths. Professor Simpson and Mr. Chadwick visited the Colony in 1902 and their reports to some extent bear out what he says. Overcrowding; lack of latrines and baths; lack of proper ventilation in Chinese dwellings are admitted and stress is laid on the necessity of abolishing back-to-back houses and rebuilding the insanitary areas.
As a result of these reports a consolidated Building and Health Ordinance has been passed (No 1 of 1903), which was subsequently amended by No. 23 of 1903. These Ordinances deal with several of the points raised by Surgeon-General Evatt.
(1) Cubicles are regulated by Part III of the latter Ordinance. No windowless cubicles are allowed in future buildings; where they are allowed to remain in existing buildings stringent rules are laid down as to the ventilation of the rooms.
(2) Overcrowding is checked by the provision that