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I speak with authority for what I say in these reports. Many and many a time have come out of the houses to vomit in the street, in spite of using strong scents and essences to prevent it, and I closed this series of inspections with an attack of typhoid fever, which nearly cost the my life, which was entirely owing to infection caught in these foul slums; and I say, as I said before, that while this state of things continues we stand in danger of being visited at any moment by some fearful epidemic, and I do not think the most advanced sanitary authority at home would combat this opinion."
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
PH. B. C. AYRES, Colonial Surgeon.
Honourable F. STEWART, L.L.D.,
Acting Colonial Secretary, fc.,
Fe.,
fr.
SANITATION IN HONGKONG.
REPORT ON THE LICENSED BROTHELS in Hongrong, 1874.
HONGKONG, 19th January, 1874.
SIR-I have the honour to forward the following report on the sanitary condition of the brothels of Hongkong, I have made over twelve inspections, varying from three to four hours each, and have not yet succeeded in completing the round, but lave quite sufficient data to express an opinion on.
With regard to the form headed “Contagious Diseases Ordinance", enclosed in the Acting Registrar General's letter No. 39, dated 5th August, 1873, I am of opinion it is useless. A certain number of feet might be laid down, as a rule, for the accommodation of each individual, other things being equal, but other things are in no case equal,--situation is different, ventilation is different, the forms of the houses are different, and so are the lengths of the rooms; so that a room in one house sixteen feet square may sufficiently accommodate four persons, but a room in another of exactly the same dimensions be totally unfit for one.
The Inspectors of Brothels cannot be expected to be judges of the sanitation of houses, entirely uninstructed as they are, and in my opinion, no brothel should be sanctioned without a certificate from a medical officer that it is a fit and proper place for sauction and the accommodation of so many women. The inspection of brothels appears to have been left entirely to the Inspectors of Brothels, men of limited education and certainly unable to perform the duties required of them without efficient super- intendence and instruction, which has not apparently been the duty of my predecessors in the Colonial Surgeoncy of Hongkong, and that this is evidently required this report will show. The Inspectors have simply confined themselves to seeing that the laws laid down by the Contagious Diseases Act have been carried out, and nothing in the way of sanitation has been done at all.
I have found invariably in every house the kitchens in filthy condition. Many without chimneys, the smoke of wood and charcoal fires distributing itself all over the house and rendering the air difficult to breathe the drainage more or less deficient, and, where existing, in a most deplorable condi- tion-greasy soot lying thick on the walls and ceilings--floors saturated with decaying animal matter, washed off the dressers and thrown out of pots, &c., and left to drain away how it can. The floors being broken bricks or decaying boards, there were no proper receptacles for rubbish, which accumulated in corners or was heaped in broken baskets, and only removed when it became of sufficient importance, by taking up too much room and becoming inconvenient.
In the kitchens were generally one or more hutches used as privies, consisting of a few boards knocked together to form a rickety screen, and from age and neglect they were saturated with filth. No proper receptacle for night-soil was found in these hutches, sometimes a broken pot, sometimes a
leaky old tub, sometimes nothing at all, the night-soil being deposited on the floor and the urine draining away, as best it might, into the surrounding floors. I've a pretty good stomach and don't stick at trifles, but I found the inspection of these places acted as a very unpleasant emetic.
The girls' rooms, next the kitchens, nearly all had ventilating openings into the kitchen,--of what benefit to the inhabitants of the rooms may be gathered from the foregoing paragraphs. In at least a dozen instances I found a girl's room separated from the privies by a boarded partition, through the interstices of which the inhabitants of the room could see into the privies and vice versa. As often, rooms were over the privies, with floors in a similar condition.
In all ses almost without exception the floors of the rooms and passages, the walls and ceilings or roof were in filthy condition; so thick was the greasy dirt on the floors that it could be scraped aside
with the foot.
In many cases the houses were quite unfit for use as brothels or human habitation, there being no ventilation at all, and many more were much overcrowded, rooms being built in rooms, not only sub- dividing the floor of one room, but, by building other rooms above the subdivisions, making one floor into two and so destroying the small amount of ventilation there was originally.
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Such being the case, it is not at all wonderful to find cases of typhoid fever continually brought to hospital. I am bound to say these cases do not only come from brothels, and therefore do not merit the name of brothel fever given to them; for in many private houses of the poorer class that I have inspected the state of things is a hundred times worse than in the brothels; and if some remedy is not found for this state of things, sooner or later the fever that originates in the hovels of the be found a formidable invader of the houses of the rich, and bring back to Hongkong, with good reason, its not enviable notoriety as a grave of Europeans. For it must be remembered that it is to these houses and to the Chinese brothels the servants go, and from them may bring the infection into the houses of their masters.
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I have written out instructions, some of them applying to all the brothels, some to individual houses only, for the use of the Inspectors, and allowed a certain time for them to be acted upon; if not fully carried out in that time, the houses to be closed until the orders are obeyed. Some houses, about eight in number, I have ordered to be closed. But without continual and efficient superintendence and instruction as to what is required, the Inspectors cannot be of much use as regards sanatory arrangements, the impracticability of the blind leading the blind having been demonstrated by reliable authority.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Honourable J. G. AUSTIN,
Colonial Secretary.
Your obedient servant,
PH. B. C. AYRES,
Colonial Surgeon.
MINUTE BY THE COLONIAL SECRETARY.
If without exaggeration, this report reflects seriously upon the Government in respect to the past, and throws much responsibility upon it as regards the future.
There is no object to which I would devote time and attention more willingly than the amelioration of those parts of the town which are inhabited by the Chinese, but to do anything effectually in the matter would occupy much preparation and much time, and involve very consider- As regards the able outlay. We cannot therefore move in the matter on the spur of the moment. brothels, however, we can take immediate action, and I therefore suggest that the houses which are irremediably bad should be closed at once, and that the others should be left open only on condition that they shall be made satisfactory in all respects within a specified time.
I quite approve of the suggestion made by Dr. AYRES, that no brothel should hereafter be licensed without a certificate from a Medical Officer, but I think that the Surveyor General should also have some voice in the matter.
The Honourable the Registrar General will be good enough to give his opinion in the matter.
20th January, 1874.
MINUTE BY THE REGISTRAR GENERAL.
J. G. AUSTIN,
Colonial Secretary,
I am already in communication with the Colonial Surgeon on this matter, and have arranged to cancel or suspend the licences of those brothels which are not fit for occupation at all or in which the alterations required by Dr. AYRES are not effected within a reasonable time.
I entirely concur with him as to the obvious necessity of a Medical inspection of houses already licensed, which should be periodical, and of houses before they are licensed.
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