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I saw one room with four partitions, for which the woman of the house paid $16 a mors rent, the girls paying her $9 a month for each partition. So that it is evident, it is better to own property of this description, which requires little or no repair, than to own houses in better quarters, which less rent and require frequent repair. I mean that the inhabitants have no choice in the one instance, and the landlord none in the other, as to whether repairs shall be done or not, when they are required I now proceed to give a few notes of things I saw in certain localities, which notes are applicable to many other places.
Fuk On Lane.-Ground floors of most houses are mud; upper floors, open spaces between the boards, so that neither floors admit of proper chimney; kitchens, poky little holes, overcrowded, and occupied by pigs. Steps at the upper end of this house were out of repair, underneath which are cavities containing liquid black and putrid filth.
Open space below Hospital Road, and east of Tung Hing Theatre, used as a place to shoot all sorts of rubbish, and a disgusting stench pervading the place.
Pound Lane.-South end filthy; no drainage; four cases of small-pox occurred here this year. Houses with broken floors, containing puddles of filth, from which a stench arose enough to make
any one sick; outside, standing pools of filth in open drains. Tanks sunk in the ground floors of these houses containing filthy water, in which vegetables were being washed for the markets; also cake- making going on in these rooms, for sale in the markets; as many as from seven to twelve pigs kept in the kitchens here, the people having Licences.
Rutter's Lane consists of a passage about four feet wide, paved with large stones, with large cavities beneath them into which I could poke my walking-stick up to the handle without finding bottom, these cavities containing black and putrid liquid filth. The houses horribly filthy, and having pigs in them; in one house three children just recovered from small-pox.
At the top of this Lane is an open space, in which all sorts of rubbish are shot. Four wells in this space, which all, more or less, receive the drainings from the rubbish collected about. From three of these wells, the water only being used for cleaning clothes and vegetables, and the fourth used for drinking. Downspouts of the houses generally in a bad state of repair, and badly made.
Along the back of the houses in Upper Station Street runs a horizontal wooden trough, about six feet above the ground, which is used for conveying refuse water from the houses; this is not in good repair and leaks, the filthy water trickling down and polluting the walls of the houses.
The foun- lations of these houses look anything but safe; the inhabitants expect them to tumble down before long, as the houses in front of them have already done.
Back of Market Street, Tai-ping-shan, a gully three feet wide, down which an open drain runs, the black and putrid filth trickling slowly along or standing in puddles.
Back of Tank Lane, a gully with no name. Pigs in the upper and lower stories, and in holes let into the foundations of the houses. Place filthy, baskets of putrid rubbish standing about outside the houses. In the midst of puddles of filth in the broken pavement, saw a hole sunk in the ground, with a machine for pounding rice in it opposite to the doorway of a hole which could not be called a room, as it was not more than seven feet square, and was only large enough to contain a bed, in which a family slept, and underneath which were a lot of pigs.
Another gully with no name, one end of which opened into Caine Road, just below Dr. ADAMS' house; the other end into Market Street. This gully is floored with a platform of boards, raised about two feet above the ground; the earth below is sodden with black liquid filth, and underneath this foot- way fowls are kept, which afterwards go to the markets. The houses here are cramped-up little hovels, with filthy floors, and the inhabitants are licensed to keep pigs, as many as ten each.
First Street, Say-ing-poon, is a wide street, in which the houses look well from the front; pigs kept, of course. At the back of these houses are gullies of the foulest description, the stench from which is horrible, and in the rooms in these gullies the people keep pigs.
Wai On Lan.-A gully at the back of, and composed of the basement floors of Third Street; nearly every room contained pigs, there being nearly a hundred in the place. I could not stay to inspect it properly, as the strench drove me out retching violently. These places, taken from different quarters of the town, are quite sufficient to illustrate what I have said.
An intimate acquaintance, during the course of my student life in hospital practice, with the worst quarters of Lambeth, Waterloo Road, St. Giles and Somers Town, enables me to say that I do not believe there could be found in London worse places than are to be found in Hongkong, if so bad, and in Indian towns filth of the description found here would not be permitted by the "Caste" of the inhabitants.
Here the people inhabiting the worst quarters are not so poverty stricken; they wear good clothes and pay high rents, indeed, exorbitant rents, and nowhere have I seen anything approaching to the poverty I have seen in London or India.
Few propean residents of this generally supposed clean town know of or would believe the things I have brought to notice in this and my report of the brothels, and it is no wonder, under the circunstances, that, in their ignorance, they think the town is clean enough and more water is not required, seeing, as they do, only the best quarters, and those that are fair enough outside but foul within and behind.
In many places the people have to go long distances for water, or else get it from foul wells; so that they have to do without it as much as possible, not because they don't want it, but because it is a great deal of trouble to procure. They never wash or clean the floors of their houses, because the construction of the floors does not admit of it; so water is not used in this way.
I am of opinion that, in the town, there is no fit or proper place for pigs to be kept at all, and this, at all events, should not be sanctioned by Government; but that places should be found out of town, over at Kowloon, and the pigs brought to market when required.
No house in the town should be permitted to have floors so constructed that they cannot be properly cleaned; in upper
floors the boards should be well fitted together, so that they can be washed, and all ground floors should be well tiled and kept in repair. For the same reason, no mud floors should be permitted; every house should be well whitewashed within, ceilings and all, every six months, or at least every year. The landlord should be held responsible for these things, and for the drains being in proper order that belong to the house,
In some cases, however, the house drainage cannot be managed, as there is no proper drainage to the streets or gullies.
In future, no houses should be built without sufficient yard space at the back, and in no case should they be built back to back.
With such a state of things as I have reported here, no one will dispute, I think, that there is good reason for my prognostications as regards typhus and typhoid fever, and it is not to be won- dered at that cases become more and more frequent. I have seen three this week. A cholera epidemic here would be something too dreadful to think of, and small-pox, crowded as the inhabitants are, is by no means to be thought lightly of.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Honourable J. G. AUSTIN,
Colonial Secretary.
Your most obedient servant,
THE PIG LICENSING SYSTEM.
[In C. S. O. No. 2321.]
Pa. B. C. AYRES, Colonial Surgeon.
BANK BUILDINGS, HONGKONG, 6th August, 1874.
Sm-Several applications have been made to me for ground to the westward for the purpose of keeping pigs, and I propose to prepare two considerable areas for this object, viz., fuland Lots Nos. 671 and 674 Shek-tong-shuj.
As these places are almost close to the slaughter house and removed from the neighbourhood of foreign residences, will you have the goodness to inform me whether the locality would be deemed unobjectionable.
I have the honour to be,
Honourable C. C. SMITH,
Registrar General.
Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
GRANVILLE SHARP.
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