COPY.
fo. 13.
Enclosure
Rec?
10906 424
Rec 13 APR 10
Registrar-General's Office,
Hongkong, 26th. January, 1910.
sir,
I forward herewith for the favourable con-
-sideration of His Excellency the Governor a translation of a
letter from the Tung Ta Hospital asking for a piece of land on
which to build rooms for the temporary accommodation of desti-
-tutes. In bye-gone days the Hospital considered the repatria-
-tion of destitutes and the consequent temporary housing of them
as a work of equal importance, with the treatment of the sick,
but the closer supervision exercised by the medical department
during the last fifteen years and the pressure put upon the
Directors to improve the accommodation and treatment of the sick
has resulted in the other part of the hospital's work-important
though it is being somewhat thrown into the shade, and in the
accommodation provided for destitutes being actually less than
it was twenty years ago. The accommodation in fact has been now
reduced to only one room of about 30 feet by 20 feet, and any
large number of destitutes must be content with the courtyard.
2.
I plead guilty myself to having neglected
this part of the hospital's work, but before I went on my last
leave in 1908 I saw the pressing necessity for increasing the
accommodation. One has to choose one's time, and the opportunity
for obtaining cordial support for the scheme did not arise till
Mr. Lau Chu-pak entered on his term of office as Chairman.
3.
The more careful examination of emigrants
compelled the Registrar-General last year to place in the care
of the hospital as many as 1,559 men and a number of these would
have to wait a day or so for a steamer to take them home. The
organized repatriation of Chinese from the Straits Settlements,
the