CO129-364 - Public Offices & Others - 1909 — Page 301

299.

reached Hong Kong I applied to the Government for assistance in It was refused the matter of quarters or an allowance instead.

and soon afterwards the P.C.M.0. Dr. Atkinson explained to me that the difficulty of getting anything more for me lay in the fact that the Government (Sir Matthew Nathan, Governor, Mr. May, Colonial Secretary) had made up their minds that £360 salary

was the utmost they would give Dr. Hunter for an assistant, and that

at the Government had no idea that they were getting a Medical

You will think this too man when they engaged the assistant. extraordinary to be true, but I heard it repeatedly in Hong

On the other hand Dr.

Kong, and not only from Dr. Atkinson. Hunter so gave his requirements that no Medical Adviser to the

Colonial Office could have suspected that any one but a Medical Bacteriologist was being asked for, and Dr. Hunter told me

that his only object in getting me, was that he intended in a

short time to ask for a year's leave and wanted an assistant

to do his work so that the Institute would be self supporting

and his post kapt for him instead of other Medical Officers in

You will thus see that the Service being called in to do it.

in the matter of salary I was a victim to Dr. Hunter's in- trigue: the commencing salary of Junior Medical Officers

had for many years been fixed at £480 per annum, the Government having tiad Dr. Hunter down to £360 (the compounded salary of

three Chinese assistants at £120) for an European assistant he

proceeded to get a Medical man for the money, the Government

not knowing that a Medical Bacteriologist was going to be got.

While discussing the question of the ability of Chinese

in research work Dr. Hunter told me that except for keeping

his post warm for him when on leave, two Chinese assistants

at £120 would have been more useful. The Government (Sir

Matthew Nathan, Governor, Mr. May, Colonial Secretary) had only yielded reluctantly to the appointment of an European assistant to the Bacteri@logist, and on Dr. Hunter's return I

should have been wanted by no one.

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