28-3-
A PLAGUE VOLCANO.
THE HORRORS OF HONG KONG.
By Surgeon-General G. J. H. Evatt,
M.D., C.B.,
late Principal Medical Officer H.M. Troops, Hong Kong and China.
At a time when the conditions under which Chinese working men live and carry on their employment are being considered, it may be interesting to describe the existing state of affairs in an English colony, and directly under the English flag. I maintain that there could not be found anywhere in the world, or under any Administration whatever, conditions so deplorable and so degrading to human existence as can be found in the crowded Chinese quarter of Victoria City, in that Colony.
Hong Kong dates back to 1841, when on the termination of the first Chinese War Hong Kong was ceded to us. The island is small, and rises abruptly from the sea, with very little if any level land at the foot of the high mountain that constitutes the island. When founded the streets were laid out on very narrow lines, and the houses were but a single story high. The splendid situation of Hong Kong as a commercial centre gradually drew a very large Chinese population to the place, and there cannot be far short of 300,000 Chinese workers employed to-day in and about the city.
The narrow streets laid out for one-story houses are now lined by houses three, four, and five stories high, and densely packed together. The population per acre far exceeds that in any other part of the world I have ever seen or heard of, and the most crowded London slum may be considered an "open space" by comparison. The houses have no yards or gardens whatever, but rise directly from the street, without any enclosures. Latrine accommodation is non-existent, and the vilest filth is kept stored in the overcrowded rooms of the house—often quite close to the wretched kitchens of the tenement floors. Human imagination fails to conceive the overcrowding and the filth of the conditions under which the Chinese workers dwell.
The rooms are constantly quite dark on their inner portions, needing lamp light; and as the houses are built back to back air cannot circulate through the rooms. Cubicles with partitions are everywhere found, noisome beyond conception, and if the ceiling is at all high, a second range of beds is placed on a kind of mezzanine floor to increase the accommodation.
I have visited much of the East—India, Persia, Turkey, and other parts of Chinese territory under Chinese administration—but I have never at any time or any place seen anything to compare for downright degradation of human life equal to that to which the splendid Chinese workman is exposed under Colonial Office rule in Hong Kong city. I say Colonial Office rule, for Hong Kong is a Crown Colony of the strictest kind, and the whole administration is in the hands of paid officials of the Colonial service.
The climate of Hong Kong is also a very serious factor when linked with the foregoing conditions. From April to November a most exhausting damp heat prevails, and not a breath of air of the monsoon strikes the place, as the high Peak Mountain acts as an effectual wind guard against perflation. I never served in a more enervating and exhausting climate.
As a result of this deplorable and degrading overcrowding, largely depending on a complete neglect of sanitary warnings, plague struck the place in 1894, and has now practically become annual and endemic. The plague apparently came down from the Yunnan Province, and passing through Canton, found in the shameful slums of Hong Kong a splendid breeding-place. I have frequently visited Canton, under direct Chinese rule, and the sanitary state of that city, although far from ideal, is infinitely superior to that of Hong Kong. I consider Hong Kong to be the highest expression of sanitary neglect on the face of the earth, and its sanitary service weak and feeble to a degree, not as individuals, but in point of numbers and efficient recruiting.
The sanitary inspectors have often 15,000 or 20,000 Chinese inhabitants in a single inspector's district, and the work cannot be fully performed. They are greatly to be pitied. I am of opinion also that from Hong Kong, as the headquarters and chief distribution centre of the plague poison, India, Mauritius, and the Australian Colonies became infected, and thus untold sorrow and misery have come upon the world from disgraceful and preventible conditions existing under the very eyes of the Colonial Office in London, and under the English flag, which flies over the Colony. Every year for month after month unclean bills of health alone can be issued to the thousands of ships using the port, and a more dangerous port of concentration and embarkation for Chinese labour for South Africa it would be impossible to conceive. If such an attempt is made every ship that sails to Capetown will be a plague ship.
If I am asked what word in the English language fitly describes the overcrowding—the want of latrines, the want of bathing accommodation, the foul odours of a crowded humanity under a sweltering and moisture-laden heat—that word is "Hell," and it is alone the word that sums up the conditions under which the Chinese workers carry out their unceasing labours in a colony swathed and enrolled in the unsympathetic control of the English Colonial Office in London. I do not here speak of the moral side of the matter.
I refer now mainly to the fact that Hong Kong is a plague volcano, ever belching forth the flames and the fumes of that terrible disease which is the highest expression of human neglect of natural health laws. Any day the plague existing there might assume more dangerous proportions, and go far towards sweeping the European population and garrison into the grave; but one must protest, in the name of common humanity, in allowing this poison-laden port to be the entrepôt and embarkation depôt of a Chinese coolie trade which is quite certain to infect a new continent with its terribly destructive germ.
Knowing Canton, Shanghai, the Yangtze ports, Wei-hai-Wei, and Chifu, I would far rather see Wei-hai-Wei made the depot of such a trade—if such a trade is at all to develop. I do not attach any blame whatever to the Chinese population for the conditions of Hong Kong. They are powerless to help themselves, and I know personally that they resent them in the fullest way. They are fearfully fleeced for rent, and this rent is largely remitted to English capitalists living in England, and it is the local representatives of these absentee owners and inert officialdom in the island—
404
C. O.
1C707
Rec'd 25 MAR 04.