Directory_and_Chronicle_1919 — Page 704

646

SHANGHAI

INSTITUTIONS

Among the institutions of the place may be mentioned the Shanghai Volunteer Corps, composed of members of all nationalities, under the command of Major T. E. Trueman. It consists of 50 officers and 1,050 other ranks, made up as follow:-Staff 6, Light Horse 33, Artillery 34, Maxim Company 50, Engineer Company 53, "A" Company (British) 102, “B” Company (British) 73, Customs Company 77, American Company 104, Portuguese Company 69, Japanese Company 96, Chinese Company 115, Shanghai Scottish Company 81, Italian Company 37, Reserve 83, Motor Car Company 19, Maritime Company 30. These numbers are exclusive of the Medical Staff and the Band. On the declaration of war by China on Germany and Austria Hungary, the companies drawn from the subjects of those countries were disbanded. 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 a re-organisation under the late Major Holliday proved successful, and in 1900, during the Boxer crisis, the membership of 300 was more than trebled and included a Naval Company, -since disbanded. At the inspection made just before the war by Major General Kelly, C.B., Commandant of the Hongkong Garrison, the Corps was awarded high praise. Six officers and 675 men were present on parade. The infantry is armed with the Leer Metford and the new short rifles. A separate Company of Volunteers, under the order of the French Consul-General, was formed in May, 1897. The Fire Brigade consists of 44 foreign volunteers under chief officer M. W. Pett with a paid departmental engineer, and a staff of 194 native assistants, and is composed of three motor Fire Engine and one Hook and Ladder Companies, with six motor pumps, a spare fire engine and steam fire float, three escapes, 117 ladders and 37,375 feet of hose. It attended 325 calls to fires, or supposed fires, in 1917, of which 38 were outside the settlement. It is pronounced to be one of the most efficient volunteer brigades in the world. Owing to the increased number of fires an independent brigade for the French Settlement was formed in April, 1908. 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 Settlements are well provided with hospitals. In addition to the large General Hospital, recently rebuilt and forming four-storied block on the northern bank of the Soochow Creek, to which an extension has now been built, there is the Victoria Nursing Home, presented by the com- anunity as a Jubilee Memorial, and enlarged in 1913, with a separate house for maternity cases, and mental wards and an efficient English nursing staff available for outside attendance, and also a large isolation hospital for infectious cases, native and foreign, all these being directly under Municipal control. In 1917 further extensions to the General Hospital were commenced. A bungalow to be used as

a sanatorium in connection with the Nursing Home was purchased in 1907. There are likewise several private institutions under the control of the various missionary bodies. The other public institutions may be enumerated as, the late Subscription Library containing about 12,650 volumes, which was taken under the control of the Council in 1913 and is now a Public Library with free reading room; 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 8 Europeans and 29 Filipinos, paid by the Municipality, which gives concerts in the Public Gardens every day during the summer months, dance music in the Town Hall once a week, and Sunday concerts during the winter; a Race Club, possessing a course of a mile and a quarter, 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 under the Grand Lodge of England; and in 1902 the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts also erected a China Province with a District Grand Lodge under a District Deputy Grand Master, both having their headquarters in Shanghai.

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