Directory_and_Chronicle_1906 — Page 815

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SHANGHAI

15, Signallers Company 17, Reserve Company 84, total of all ranks 611. These numbers are exclusive of the Medical Staff and the Band. Originally formed in 1861 the Volunteer Force gradually went to decay, until the fear of attack after the Massacre at Tientsin in 1870 caused its revival with considerable vigour. It again dwindled in numbers, but the last re-organisation under Major Holliday proved successful and in 1900, during the China crisis, the membership of 300 was more than trebled and included an American and Naval Companies since disbanded The annual inspection was made in 1995 by Major-General Villiers-Hatton, C.B., Commander of the Hongkong Garrison, and the Corps was awarded high praise. The infantry is armed with the Lee-Metford rifle. A separate Company of Volunteers under the order of the French Consul-General was formed in May, 1897. The Fire Brigade, consists of 78 Foreign volunteers with a paid departmental Engineer, 6 paid assistants and 60 Natives, a total strength of 145, and is composed of four Engine and one Hook and Ladder Companies, and a fire float. It attended 135 fires in 1904. It is pronounced to be one of the most efficient volunteer brigades in the world. There is now a Public Health Laboratory at which bacteriological investigations and chemical analyses are carried out, vaccine lymph prepared, and the Pasteur treatment of rabies undertaken. The Victoria Nursing Home has 25 beds and had 208 indoor and 60 ontdoor cases in 1904. There is also a new Muni- cipal Hospital for infectious diseases. A Municipal Hospital with 36 beds was erected in 1904, at a cost exclusive of the land of Tls. 175,000. There are also several Hospitals for natives and a new Municipal Hospital for infectious diseases. The other public institutions may be enumerated as, a Subscription Library containing about 25,000- volumes, a branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, with the nucleus of a Museum, a Masonic Club, a Sailors' Home, a Polytechnic Institution for Chinese, a Seamen's Library and Museum, a Wind Instrument Band of thirty-five men, paid by the Municipality, which gives concerts in the Public Gardens every day during the summer months, a Race Club, possessing a course of a mile and a quarter, and which holds race meetings in May and November, a Country Club on the Bubbling Well Road, Parsee, Portuguese, and Customs Clubs, also Pony Paper Hunt, Cricket, Rifle, Yacht, Baseball, Racquet, Golf, Skating, Football, Swimming and various other Clubs, Philharmonic and Choral Societies, English and French Amateur Dramatic Societies, and other institutions for amusement and recreation. There are sixteen Masonic bodies, with over 500 members. In 1876 a District Grand Lodge for North China was constituted, with Shanghai as its headquarters.

INDUSTRIES

There are five Docks at Shanghai. The one at Tungkadoo, opposite the city has a length of 380 feet over all, with a depth at spring tides of 21 feet; the Old Dock at Hongkew is 400 feet long and 18 feet deep at springs; the New Dock at Pootung, at the lower end of the harbour, measures 450 feet on the blocks, 50 feet wide at bottom and 134 at top, is 80 feet wide, at entrance between pierheads, with a depth at high water springs of 22 feet; the works connected with this dock cover an area of 16 acres; the Cosmopolitan Dock, on the Pootung side about a mile below harbour limits, is 560 feet long on blocks, and 82 feet wide at entrance. The International Dock is a new and larger dock. All steamers and most sailing vessels now discharge and load at the various public and private wharves. The premises of the Associated Wharf Companies have a frontage of about three-quarters of a mile. The Chinese Government has an Arsenal, Dock, and Shipbuilding establishment at Kaou Chang Miao, a short distance above the native city. It commenced as a small rifle factory in 1867.

Th Great Northern Telegraph Company's cable was laid to Shanghai in 1871, and that of the Eastern Extension Company in 1884, there being now three distinct lines of communication with Europe. An overland line to Tientsin was opened in December, 1881, subsequently extended to Peking, and in 1894 connected with the Russian land lines through Siberia to Europe. There is also a line west to Kashgar and south as far as Laokay on the Yunnan border, there connecting with the French Tonkin lines and to Bhamo, connecting with the Burmah line. During the operations in 1900, the Allied Powers found it necessary to be independent of the Chinese landlines, and submarine cables were laid connecting Shanghai with Kiao- chow, Weihaiwei, Chefoo, and Port Arthur. A railway constructed by a foreign company was opened to Woosung in June, 1876, but after running for sixteen months it was purchased and taken up by the Chinese Authorities. During the short time it was running the passenger traffic alone covered the working expenses,