CO129-340 - Governor Nathan Acting Governor May - 1907 [4-6] — Page 595

Extract from "The Hong Kong Daily Press"

With June, 1904

I studied it not in my office in an arm-chair but by going out into the town and revisiting blocks of houses with which I have been well acquainted during the last fourteen years owing to the opportunities offered to me while I was in the police, while I worked in two plague epidemics, and while I was a member of the Sanitary Board. The result of my inspection, I would like to say here, is that I find that the town as a whole is in far more sanitary condition just now than ever I have known it before. I think that a great deal of credit for this fact is due to the Sanitary Board, to the officers who had the direct control of the sanitary staff, and to the sanitary staff itself, and last but not least to the Chinese community who have learned to appreciate the value of keeping thoroughly clean their own domestic dwellings. But my inspection proved to me one thing, and that is that the existing law relating to cubicles has failed. (Hear, hear, and applause.)

We hoped, gentlemen, those who sat around this table for many weeks considering that Ordinance, No. 1 of 1903 and No. 23 of 1903, that by prohibiting cubicles in new houses we should force landowners to put up a more sanitary type of dwelling. I may tell you that our hopes are woefully disappointed. The sort of thing that happens is this. Houses have to be rebuilt; architects send in plans to us showing the old deep, funneled-shaped type of house lighted fore and aft but not at the side, with which we are familiar. I received one of these plans not long ago myself, and we wrote to the architect on behalf of the owner. We said we beg to remind you that when these houses are built, cubicles will not be allowed on the floors. The architect wrote back in polite terms, "You mind your own business. The cubicles are regulated by the law, and we know the law as well as you."

What will be the fate of those houses? The owner will let them to another man who will sub-let them by the floor. The lessees of the floors, if the floors are inhabited as tenement dwellings, will sub-let them to a number of different families. As soon as the families come in, they will put up cubicles. In comes the sanitary inspector; down go the cubicles. Out goes the sanitary inspector; up go the cubicles again. And so this kind of Sisyphean jugglery goes on. You never really get rid of these cubicles. After a time, along comes an epidemic, and some Europeans are attacked by the disease. There is an immediate outcry, "What is the negligent Government doing? Why don't they clear out these hotbeds of disease?" The hotbeds are then cleared out. An interval of some years elapses during which plague is checked, but trade gets very bad, and things are depressed. Then the same people come forward and say, "These Government officials are well named blighters, for they blight the whole land by their unreasonable regulations. Whoever heard of asking Chinese families to live without cubicles?" So the sordid story goes on to the end of the chapter.

Now, gentlemen, I am perfectly convinced that you will have this cubicle question with you as long as you live, unless you take steps to force the owners of property to put up sanitary houses in which cubicle-like rooms can be built in which Chinese families can decently live. I believe such can be done without loss. We have made proposals under which a larger number of people will be allowed to inhabit decently sanitary houses than were allowed under the old type.

I am in great hopes that the community as a whole will take this subject into their most serious consideration and try to arrive this time at some method of dealing with this question which will really settle it once and for all. It is a very serious matter and affects the prosperity of the Colony. Plague means loss of money, but there are other epidemics of disease besides plague to be thought of, and as long as an insanitary type of house is allowed to be built ad infinitum, one insanitary type of house to replace another that has gone before it, there will never be any permanent improvement. Gentlemen, I have made these few remarks because I consider that of all the points that have been brought forward in the report of the Commission, there is no point which has a greater bearing on the prosperity of the Colony than this question of the housing of the Chinese population.

The Hon. Mr. HEWATT: Your Excellency, with your permission, I would like to make a few remarks in reply to what you have just said and also in regard to the paper laid on the table this afternoon. If I am not in order, Your Excellency will no doubt inform me of the fact, and I will then give notice of what I propose to say later on. There being no reply,

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The Hon. MR. HEWETT continued: Your Excellency has spoken generally on the wording of the report. I can not say, as a member of this Council and of the late Commission, I am only too glad to receive Your Excellency's assurance that the recommendations which presumably were made in the interests of the community at large will receive the fullest possible sympathy of the Government. There are a few points to which I would like to refer. The first point to which I would like to refer, with Your Excellency's permission, is the paper No. 24, a copy of which has been laid on the table, and which includes a copy of the letter dated 3rd December, 1902, addressed to His Excellency Sir Henry Blake by Mr. Shelton Hooper. That letter, as Your Excellency will remember, was specially referred to in your memorandum on the report of the Commission. Considerable attention was directed in that memorandum to the statements then made by Mr. Shelton Hooper. Having been a member of the Commission, of which he was also a member, I very naturally asked him how it came about that he had signed, along with other members of the Commission, the recommendations which were contained in the body of the report, in view of that letter. Mr. Hooper explained to me that the letter was written under a misapprehension; consequently, what I am about to say takes the form of a personal explanation on behalf of him, as one of my colleagues on the late Commission. I trust I shall be allowed, on behalf of Mr. Hooper, to make an explanation showing that he has been perfectly consistent throughout in what he has written.

As Your Excellency will remember, when the draft bill of 1902 was put before the public, the principal landowners in Hongkong, including about twelve firms, asked a certain number of architects to make a report, paragraph by paragraph, on this bill. This was done. These landowners subsequently forwarded a petition to the Governor, dated 28th September, 1902, enclosing a copy of the report of these architects. In the draft bill, paragraph 170, which is now paragraph 175, one of the most contentious in the existing Ordinance, contained reference to open spaces "by the owner." The criticism by the committee was that if these words "by the owner" are put in, then compensation must be insisted upon. Section 175, now Section 180 of the existing Ordinance, also spoke of compensation with regard to back lanes and forth. As originally drafted, no provision was made for compensation, but on the presentation of certain property owners, words were incorporated in subsection 5, Section 175, providing that the amount of compensation to be paid to the owner should be determined by arbitration. At the time Mr. Hooper wrote the letter, December 3rd, 1902,