Plzfa¢i!i,,%aua
ENCLOSURE
The Honourable
THE COLONIAL SECRETARY.
SIR.
Je..
St.
KC.
98
Hoxarosu, 2nd Marg,-1901.
C.0.
10947
The problem of how best to provide for the rapid growth of the Chinese population of the Colony and to prevent overcrowding, especially in the central portion of the city, has at various times since 1860 becu forced upon the attention of the Government, and very many suggestions have been made aind many experi ments tried with a view to an effective solution of the question, yet the problem is still unsolved. The population of the Colony has grown from about 60,000 in 1860 to nearly 300,000 in 1901, and is still increasing in a steadily increasing ratio. The buildings provided for the accommodation of this ever growing population have reached the limits of their possible upward growth. In 1860 they were all one story houses. Now they are all of three, four and five stories and the Sanitary Authori- ties are crying out loudly against any increase in the height of buildings. Three successive reclamations have added considerably to the area of level ground in the Colony yet the overcrowding in certain districts is still so great as to excite the gravest alarm.
The number of people per acre exceeds that of the most crowded portions of London or of New York, and with this overcrowding, plague, small-pox and other epidemic discuses periodically ravage the Colony and threaten to seriously interfere with its commerce and shipping. If the Colony is to go on and prosper in the future as it has done in the past more room must be found for the people who are crowding into it on all sides and the sanitary state of the Colony must, at any expense, be improved and put on a sound footing.
The Reclamations of 1860 and 1876 have long since been covered with dense The Reclamation of 1889, extensive and valuable as it is, piles of Chinese houses, was so long in hand that the population has grown faster than the provision for their accommodation. I have recently obtained the approval of His Excellency for extensive reclamations in the eastern district which, if assented to by the Secretary of State, will afford some breathing space. if only the Chinese can be induced to move out there. I have in hand proposals for still further reclamations to the east- ward in continuation of the work at Wanchai, to include Causeway Bay and North Point, but the value of these are almost entirely dependent upon the completion of cheap, casy and rapid means of communication between the central and eastern portions of the city, and the existence. in the very centre of the Colony, of the military and naval establishments and the impediments they present to this easy and rapid commmuuication, (occupying as they do, the entire sea front), will be found, in practice, a grave difficulty when an attempt is made to get the Chinese population to emigrate in any numbers from the Central districts to the East.
The military and naval establishments have, ever since the population began to grow in 1860. divided the city of Victoria into two parts almost completely separated one from the other, and have prevented the movement of populationi, east- ward from the centre as well as westward. Furthermore, they occupy and occupy exclusively—the naval authorities some 4 acres and the military authorities some 84 acres of the very best building land in the island and the most suitable for business purposes.
The Land Commission appointed in April, 1886, under the presidency of Sir George Phillippo, then the Chief Justice of the Colony and a man of very wide knowledge and of great experience, reported strongly in favour of the removal of the naval and military establishments from their present positions to Kowloon. That Commission was specially instructed to report on “overcrowding in Victoria, its causes and methods of alleviation" and in dealing with the question it expressed itself as follows:---
"The best means to adopt for the checking of overcrowding is to enlarge the area in which people can live and the most obvious thing to do is, if possible, to get the Naval and Military Establishments removed from the centre of the town
*
*
*
***
2
*
*
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.