CO129-450 - Acting Governor Claud Severn - 1918 [10-12] — Page 366

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4. City below the hundred foot contour at least 75,000 more people are living than was the case in 1911 in the same houses the reason for overcrowding and the wholesale adoption of the cubicle system is obvious. The remaining 25,000 are probably suitably housed in the new buildings on the higher levels, and in streets of new houses of a good type in the Eastern part of the City, and at Kennedy Tom. My subsequent remarks will, therefore, relate to the portion of the City marked in red lines on the enclosed plan. This area is cover- -ed thickly with old houses built in the early days of the Colony, with narrow streets or flights of steps between them, while on the reclaimed ground show in green lines the houses are for the most part of poor design according to modern ideas though erected between the years 1895 and 1910. The epidemics of plague that have occurred periodically since 1894 have found most of their victims in this area, due not only to the chronic overcrowding of the houses, but also to the faulty structure of the walls, staircases, and floors which make them a convenient asylum for large numbers of rats This has been amply explained in numerous reports during the

past twenty years.

Assuming then that in the heart of the

5.

So long as the Province of Kuangtung continues to be in an unsettled condition there will be a large number of persons without legitimate employment crowd- -ed into that portion of the City of Victoria where accommodation can be obtained at a low rate and that is the area within the red and green lines. I think, however, that there is good reason for anticipating that when internal peace is restored in China there will be a considerable exodus of persons of the agricultural class, who at present eke out a somewhat precarious existence as hawkers of all sorts, cargo and street coolies, on cargo and fishing

junks,