[ { "id": 214381, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "205\n\nfind the funds which would be required for the installation of a modern sanitation system.\n\nFinance was not the only problem. Chinese opinion was rarely more resolute than in matters concerning personal hygiene. Chinese people and Europeans simply did not see sanitary matters in the same light and both groups thought that their views were correct. In her examination of colonial Singapore, Brenda Yeoh showed how the Chinese regarded matters of sanitation and disease very differently from Europeans and that these alternative views were not restricted to the uneducated and 'plebeian classes.' Thus, 'Whilst Western sanitary science advocated the removal of filth, the disinfection and ventilation of houses, and the isolation of the sick as essential preventive measures in stemming the tide of a disease, Chinese medical theory did not necessarily imbue these measures with similar significance.' According to traditional Chinese thinking, good health was the product of balance within the body whereas ill health occurred where disharmony existed. If, as Yeoh contends, these Chinese attitudes had survived for centuries, there is little reason to doubt that the average Chinese person living in Hong Kong in the 1880s thought any differently from his or her counterpart in Singapore.\n\nFrena Bloomfield deals with the background to this very basic Hong Kong plumbing problem in her book The Urban Council 1883-1983, which describes the development of the Urban Services Department which grew out of the Sanitary Department. The birth of the Sanitary Department arose from the recommendations of Osbert Chadwick, a renowned British engineer with experience in sanitary matters, who was brought to Hong Kong at considerable expense to assess the sanitary conditions of the colony and propose improvements. Chadwick was not the first professional to comment on the adverse state of the colony's drains. In 1870 the Colonial Surgeon, Dr J. Murray, had noted 'It is not creditable to this colony that after their unhealthy condition has been pointed out, both by myself and by the Sanitary Commission, they [the drains] should remain as they are, a source of disease and death.'\n\nChadwick visited Chinese dwellings and talked to members of the Chinese community during his examinations. The result of his study was a comprehensive document completed in November 1882 which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214384, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 242, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "208\n\nnior Inspector of Nuisances' and the 'Instructions to Head Watchmen and Watchmen' are of importance in this current study and, since the duties of the Watchmen contained in these instructions are so different from those originally envisaged by the creators of the District Watch scheme, their relevant parts are reproduced at the end of this paper.\n\nBefore continuing with a discussion of the District Watchmen's role in sanitary inspections, some explanation of the word 'nuisance' is appropriate. In the context of Victorian Britain, the term 'nuisance' implied something much more than the modern milder meaning of 'pest' or 'irritant.' 'Nuisance' was a general term to describe anything noxious which would offend the senses, whether these were sight, sound, smell or touch. Brenda Yeoh, in her study of colonial Singapore, describes it as 'an elastic term which encompassed many possibilities from filthy premises to undesirable animals.' She further mentions the comprehensive list of nuisances in The Acts and Ordinances of the Legislative Council of the Straits Settlements from 1st April 1867 to 1st June 1886 compiled by Mr C.G. Garrad which extended over two pages. Given the graver meaning of the term in the nineteenth century, it can be seen that the post of Inspector of Nuisances was much more important than might be regarded today from its title. Inspectors of Nuisances were found throughout the British Empire and also in the Treaty Port of Shanghai.\n\n14\n\nReturning to the removal of the District Watchmen to undertake sanitary duties, what we have here is the appropriation by the Hong Kong Government of the whole of an existing viable private security force to be used by the Government for a completely different function. Moreover, this change would incur the Government in only minimal additional expense since the bulk of the watchmen's wages would still be met by the Chinese merchants. There can be no doubt that the plan was put into operation since, in the Blue Books for 1883-85, a total of six Head District Watchmen and thirty-seven District Watchmen appeared under the heading of Sanitary (a sub-heading under Public Works Department) at an annual cost to the Government of $24 for each Head District Watchman and $12 for each District Watchman. During these three years the Chinese merchants continued to provide these men with an annual wage of $180, in the case of a Head District Watchmen, and $72 per annum for each District Watchman. The following year there appears to have been a change in policy because, in the 1886 Blue", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214402, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 260, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "226\n\n1\n\nNOTES\n\nUndated Minute made available by Mrs Margaret Leeds, formerly Research Officer with the Royal Hong Kong Police.\n\n2 Henry J. Lethbridge, \"The District Watch Committee: The Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong?\", in Hong Kong: Stability and Change, (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1978).\n\n3 This paper is based on a chapter of the author's PhD thesis, Private Security and Government: A Hong Kong Perspective, 1841-1941, awarded by the University of Hong Kong in 1999. In the interests of space, most of the end notes contained in the thesis have been omitted from this paper.\n\n4\n\n5 Kaifongs were local Chinese welfare associations. As early as 1857 a sworn mutual aid association known as the U-lan-shing is claimed to have united the four smaller kaifongs of the Tai-ping-shan, Sai-ying-pun, Sheung-wan and Chung-wan districts. Henry J. Lethbridge, op. cit., pp. 105-106.\n\n6 China Mail, 8 February 1866; China Mail, 22 February 1866; J.W. Norton-Kyshe, The History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong, (Hong Kong, Vetch and Lee Ltd., 1971, first published 1898), 2, p. 86.\n\n7 Annual Report of the Registrar General for 1867, Blue Book 1867, p. 248, §20 - §21.\n\n8 The Baojia or Native Chinese Peace Officers scheme, which was introduced in 1844, was discontinued by 1861.\n\n9 Trevor Bennett and Richard Wright, Burglars on burglary: prevention and the offender, (Aldershot, Gower, 1984), pp. 50-53.\n\n10 Minute by Cecil C. Smith, 22 December 1871: CO129/156, pp. 117-118.\n\n11 Hongkong Government Gazette, 6 January 1872, p. 2. Henceforth HKGG.\n\n12 Report of the Police Commission, 27 June 1872: CO129/164, p. 290 (20, §60).\n\n13 Brenda Yeoh, Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore, (Kuala Lumpur, Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 117; Under the heading 'Asian Counter-strategies against Municipal Sanitary", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214403, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 261, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "13 \n\n227 \n\nControl', Yeoh describes in detail how, in the late 1880s, the Chinese population in Singapore hindered the advance of Western sanitary methods by refusing to comply with the many regulations introduced by the Municipal Branch. ibid., pp. 119-125.\n\nGovernment Notification No.223, HKGG, 23 June 1883, pp.538-544.\n\n14 Yeoh, op. cit., p.110.\n\nElizabeth Sinn, Power and Charity: The Early History of the Tung Wah Hospital, (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1989), p.152.\n\n16 Registrar General's Report for 1891, Hongkong Government Legislative Council Sessional Papers, No.19/92, p.241. Henceforth HKGLCSP.\n\n17 Ibid., p.257.\n\n18 Colonial Estimates for 1870-1873, (Hong Kong, Noronha), Miscellaneous expenditure.\n\n19 \"The matter is important enough for the District Watch Committee to have authorised the extension of their system of watchmen by opening a new station in Kowloon.' Hongkong Hansard, 9 October 1913, p.71.\n\n20 Stubbs to Churchill, 18 March 1922: CO129/474, p.221.\n\n21 Ibid., (enclosure).\n\n22 Between 1912 and 1925 Claud Severn administered the colony on ten separate occasions during the absence of Governors Sir Francis May and Sir Reginald Stubbs. Hong Kong Civil Service List for 1935, pp.46-47.\n\n23 Severn to Churchill, 22 August 1922: CO129/476, p.96-98.\n\n24 E.R. Hallifax, C.Mcl. Messer and R.O. Hutchison, 'Report on the searching of passengers on arrival at and departure from Hongkong', 17 March 1917, HKGLCSP, No.8/17, p.44.\n\n25 Hong Kong Hansard, 6 November 1930, p.235.\n\n26 Police Report for 1933, Administrative Reports for 1933, p.K12. It was not only", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]