CO129-365 - Governor Sir Lugard - 1910 [1-3] — Page 430

COPY.

fo. 13.

Enclosure

Rec?

10906 424

Rec 13 APR 10

Registrar-General's Office,

Hongkong, 26th. January, 1910.

sir,

I forward herewith for the favourable con-

-sideration of His Excellency the Governor a translation of a

letter from the Tung Ta Hospital asking for a piece of land on

which to build rooms for the temporary accommodation of desti-

-tutes. In bye-gone days the Hospital considered the repatria-

-tion of destitutes and the consequent temporary housing of them

as a work of equal importance, with the treatment of the sick,

but the closer supervision exercised by the medical department

during the last fifteen years and the pressure put upon the

Directors to improve the accommodation and treatment of the sick

has resulted in the other part of the hospital's work-important

though it is being somewhat thrown into the shade, and in the

accommodation provided for destitutes being actually less than

it was twenty years ago. The accommodation in fact has been now

reduced to only one room of about 30 feet by 20 feet, and any

large number of destitutes must be content with the courtyard.

2.

I plead guilty myself to having neglected

this part of the hospital's work, but before I went on my last

leave in 1908 I saw the pressing necessity for increasing the

accommodation. One has to choose one's time, and the opportunity

for obtaining cordial support for the scheme did not arise till

Mr. Lau Chu-pak entered on his term of office as Chairman.

3.

The more careful examination of emigrants

compelled the Registrar-General last year to place in the care

of the hospital as many as 1,559 men and a number of these would

have to wait a day or so for a steamer to take them home. The

organized repatriation of Chinese from the Straits Settlements,

the