Jonclosure
303
1.
To The Right Honourable Lewis Harcourt M. P.
His Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies
The humble petition of the undersigned
merchants and traders in the Colony of
Hongkong.
Sheweth as follows:-
1.
On the 13th day of March 1911, at a meeting of the members
of the Sanitary Board of Hongkong, Dr Francis Clark, the Medical
Officer of Health, was reported in one of the newspapers issued.
in this Colony to have stated it to be his opinion that
condensed skimmed milk was not suitable food for infants, and
to have intimated that the mortality amongst Chinese infant children might possibly be due, to some extent, to the use of
such food by Chinese parents for their infants; and he advocated that it should be rendered by Legislation an offence to sell
tins of condensed skimmed milk unless the words "not suitable
"for infants" were placed on such tins in Chinese characters.
Subsequently to, and in consequence of,such report appearing, certain of your petitioners, namely the firm of W. G. Humphreys & Co, and the firm of Blackhead & Co, who have for some years past been accustomed to deal in tins of condensed skimmed milk imported by them from Europe, caused samples thereof to be analysed by the Government analyst, and by other analysts, the analyses so obtained were handed one to Dr F. 0. Stedman,
a well-known British medical practitioner of many years experience in this Colony, and the other to Drs Muller Justi & Foch, well-known German medical practitioners long established in Hongkong, for the purpose of ascertaining the opinion of the said medical practitioners as to the suitability or otherwise
2.
and