130
Hong Kong Annual Administration Reports, 1841-1941
120 REPORTS EXHIBITING THE PAST AND PRESENT
*Enclosure 7 in No. 15.
RETURN of the MORTALITY amongst the CHINESE, during the Year 1840.
Population of each Place. Colony. Died in Colony. Died out Total. # City of Victoria 13,087 40 40 Dead bodies of Chinese found exposed in Victoria, and buried by Police 14 14 Number of Chinese died in Government Civil Hospital 10 10 Total in Victoria 64 64 Aberdeen 857 1 Stanley and vicinity 1,050 10 10 Tytam-took 78 1 Sou-koan-poo? 247 Sai-wan Show-ke-wan and vicinity. 145 Tani-che-muy, and vicinity 438 38 Dead bodies of Chinese found exposed in villages, and buried by Police. 213 ** Total in villages 263 Grand Total 101 104It is necessary to remark, that no record of deaths has been kept by the Police during the year, and that although only 14 deaths have been specified in the Census returns for Victoria, doubtless many more occurred, as the population is very migratory, and of many who left the Colony and died on the mainland, no record or remembrance would be left. The number of dead bodies found exposed, and buried by the Police, is a proof of the friendless state of a great part of the Chinese population, and it is reasonable to presume that all who had the means would, in serious sickness, remove themselves to their native places.
The Returns from the villages may be considered more accurate, as the inhabitants are more settled.
C. MAY, Superintendent of Police,
(True copy).
(Signed)
W. CAINE, Colonial Secretary.
#
Enclosure 8 in No. 15.
REPORT of the COLONIAL SURGEON on the Diseases and Climate of Hong Kong, 1849.
Any one who will stop to reflect will, I think, readily admit that in collecting information from statistics involving small numbers, the inquiry is pursued under every circumstance of disadvantage, which can only be corrected by extending it over a series of years.
In a population so limited as that of Hong Kong, it is impossible to draw any accurate inference touching the relative proportion of death to life, or of disease to health, from the computations of one or two years. If a certain peculiarity is found to be repeated for several years, and to bear a certain and uniform relation to fixed numbers, or if the same peculiarity be in excess one year and the reverse the next, yet, should it establish a uniform average for several years, it can hereafter be predicted to be a property of the numbers in question. Even in a population like that of London, it would be rashness to determine that a certain number of casualties, for example, of a given kind, were peculiar to the pursuits and habits of the people, because a fixed relative number of them to the population were computed in one year. A faithful statistical record of such events having now been taken for a series of years, it can be predicted, as an undeniable peculiarity of that population, that it is liable to a certain number of defined casualties. An isolated statistical fact is like a stone hewn ready for the builder - it has no obviously defined purpose until it occupies its place in the superstructure it is destined for. Accumulated and well-collated statistics faithfully reveal the social, the political, and sanitary condition of a people. No statistical records are absolutely correct in numbers, yet they are always the nearest possible approximation to truth. He who has never reflected on the subject can have no conception of their vast utility, or the wide range of their influence. They warn us from concealed dangers, and suggest remedies for evils that have worked their ills in secret; they uproot erroneous conceptions of the mind, that guide us to destruction, and they enable us to walk through life in the broad daylight of truth. The Registrar-General, instructed by the information in his office, has been able to point an unerring hand to the sources of the late pestilence in England, by which we have lost - in all Britain more lives than we have lost in battle since the days of Marlborough - and he is as certain of the power of eradicating and preventing this scourge, by purifying the sewers and cesspools, as that the disease hydrophobia has, by police regulations, become a permanent blank in London nosology." By the same means, he indicated that between 30,000 and 40,000 inhabitants of Liverpool lived in noisome dens called cellars, elaborating pestilence, and practising every vice. In 1849, 4,700 cellars