- 5 -
In the urban areas the houses generally consist of
three or four storeys, of which the ground floor is
usually let to a shop-keeper who, with his assistants,
live in and at the back of the shop.
The upper storeys are single rooms running the
length and width of the house and each of these is usually
let off to a separate principal tenant who sub-divides
his floor by means of partitions into four or five cubicles,
all having a common kitchen. The principal tenant of the
floor keeps one cubicle for himself and sub-lets the
other cubicles and even sub-lets bed-spaces on the landings.
-
The ordinary working man occupies with his family a
cubicle or bed-space of this sort his "holding" probably
amounts to about one-fortieth of the floor space of the
house.
Many workers of the carrying-coolie class, of whom
there are thousands, live in coolie lodging houses or in
fine weather make their homes on the pavements under
verandahs.
This state of affairs, coupled with the fundamentally
transient nature of the population due to the contiguity
of China, to which reference has been made in paragraph 5
of this memorandum, and with the absence (and probable
impracticability) of any system of individual registration
similar to National Registration in the United Kingdom,
operates to make it practically impossible to devise any
form of electoral registration for the peripatetic masses
of the people which would not open the door to personation
on an extensive scale.
It is, therefore, regarded as essential to link
eligibility as an elector with a property ownership or
householder qualification, with the alternative of liability
for jury service or the statutory exemption therefrom. No
other satisfactory method of identifying the electors
presents itself.
46