SIR,
[1]
Appendix A.
Petition of Residents at Western end of the City.
HONGKONG, 23rd November, 1887.
We the Undersigned, Residents at the Western End of the City, and others, beg most respectfully to direct the urgent attention of His Excellency the Governor, and the Sanitary Board, to the serious insanitary condition of the above District.
During the past summer months, fever has never been absent from the majority of, if not all, the foreign residences in the neighbourhood, Native and Foreign inmates having been attacked indiscriminately; some households have had as many as forty changes of servants within a few weeks, and the mortality amongst the Chinese has been very great.
That some special causes exist, which produce this insalubrious condition, must, we think, be admitted; it is not in our power to indicate the actual factors at work. We desire, however, to draw the attention of His Excellency to some of the insanitary aspects of the district, which in our opinion may have reduced this neighbourhood to a perfect Hospital.
A.—On Inland Lot No. 795, near the junction of the Pokfoolum and Hill Roads, and on the Hill-side to the South of the Gas Works, a native village of Squatters has been permitted to spring up, with its usual utter absence of sanitation of any kind whatever, the numerous hovels comprising the Village are huddled together in a most irregular and close manner, they are densely crowded every night with men, women and children of the lowest class, cows and pigs are also, we understand, housed in the Village, the ground owing to the absence of drains, &c. is completely saturated with sewage and impregnated with focal matter, so that the place is simply a hot-bed of disease. Noxious trades, such as "Soy making" are carried on there and the smells emanating from this "colony" are, at times painfully apparent and spread to a consider- able distance to the Eastward, especially during the South-West Monsoon.
That such a concourse of Natives should be allowed to collect in such close propin- quity to European Residences, we consider a crying evil which demands instant removal. B.-On the Hill-side above Bonham Road, there is, at times, an exhalation of foul odours that should be abated, caused by coolies drying Sugar bags. The effect of heavy rains on these Sugar bags is to cause the soil to become saturated with refuse from the Bags to such an extent as to become not only a nuisance but doubtless a standing source of danger.
C.-The Tenants of several of the Native Flower Gardens in this neighbourhood, persist in manuring their plants and vegetables with offensive liquid manure; several of them have been summoned, but the result did not encourage the Residents to take further steps in the matter.
D.-In the Native Town just under this part of Bonham Road, there exists a depôt for the storage of garbage and refuse material, which lies rotting and exposed to all weathers. Further West, in the same neighbourhood (Lap-sap-wan) the destruction by burning of refuse matter, street sweepings, garbage, &c. is carried on in a very primitive fashion, the burning being, at times, only partly accomplished; the noisome effluvia caused by the operation permeates the whole Western area.
E. The mode in which the Native Town below the above District is drained and the absolute absence of ventilators in the Public Sewers, has caused the whole of the levels above and along the entire lengths of Caine and Bonham Roads and the Residences near the upper or dead ends" of the Public Sewers, to be poisoned with the concen- trated effluvia from these Sewers, the noxious and the fætid gases being disseminated in all directions.
It has been carefully observed by some of us, and is therefore a "matter of fact," that as the watercourses in this neighbourhood were enclosed and converted into Public Sewers, the fever extended up the hill in a corresponding manner and moved, pari passu, with the extension of the Sewer. While not attributing the fever in the neighbourhood altogether to these Sewers, we cannot help drawing the conclusion they have been and are an important element in the cause. Although in most cases the fever is said to have been of a malarial and not typhoid character, we venture to think this Sewer aspect of
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