640714-1896-Report-Tung-Wa-Hospital-Commission- — Page 1

THE HONGKONG GOVERNMENT GAZETTE, 5TH DECEMBER, 1896.

GOVERNMENT NOTIFICATION.— No. 464.

1147

The following Report of the Commission appointed to enquire into the working and organization of the Tung Wa Hospital, which was laid before the Legislative Council on the 3rd instant, is published. By Command,

Colonial Secretary's Office, Hongkong, 4th December, 1896.

REPORT

BY

J. H. STEWART Lockhart, Colonial Secretary.

The Chairman (Honourable J. H. STEWART LOCKHART), Honourable A. M. THOMSON,

and the Honourable Ho KAI.

2

We, the undersigned Members of the Commission, appointed by Your Excellency on the 5th day of February, 1896, to enquire into the working and organization of the Tung Wa Hospital, have the honour to forward herewith the evidence taken by us and our opinion thereon.

2. We examined 14 witnesses and held 9 meetings covering a period from the 14th February to the 2nd July.

3. In accordance with the terms of the Commission we instituted an enquiry into "Whether the Hospital the first matter specially referred to us for investigation, viz., is fulfilling the object and purpose of its Incorporation."

4. To be able to answer this question, it was considered desirable, in the first instance, to ascertain exactly for what object and purpose the Hospital was established, and this necessitated an enquiry into the steps which led up to the foundation of the Hospital.

5. From the Memorandum of Sir RICHARD MACDONNELL and the other papers printed in Appendix III. it appears that in 1869 the attention of the Government was called to the gross abuses and disgusting scenes in a Chinese institution or temple called the "I Ts'z." This institution seems to have been crected in the year 1851, its original object being stated as follows in a petition translated by Mr. (afterwards Sir THOMAS) WADE :—

#

"Petition that a piece of ground be granted to certain Chinese to build a common ancestral Chinese temple. People of other nations and persua- sions have had similar grants; but the Chinese who frequent the Colony being workmen, servants and the like, if they die here have no temple. in which their ancestral tablets may be placed. Many of them come from a distance and if, when they died here, there was a temple to receive their tablets, their fellow-villagers or connections visiting Hong- kong could carry them home. They have subscribed funds and have appointed T'ONG CHIU and TAM A-TIM to the direction of what may be requisite."

6. In addition, however, to being used as a receptacle or depôt for ancestral tablets, the "I Ts'z" developed into a kind of native hospital to which Chinese were taken in a moribund condition. A description of this dying-house is given by Mr. LISTER and Mr. STEWART, who visited it in 1869. The former states :---- "I visited this native hospital, and found a picture of neglect and misery which I shall not soon forget. At my first visit there were, dead and alive, about nine or ten

His Excellency

Sir WILLIAM ROBINSON, K.C.M.G.,

&c.,

Sc.,

&c.