Sessional_Paper_1895 — Page 488

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under the bed. I have seen four of the usual divisions the Chinese make in one room, each division having a bed, and underneath each bed a pig sty containing from five to seven pigs, the occupant of the house having a Government license to keep pigs and having no other place to keep them. Attached to this report I send eight licenses, by the authority of which the occupants of the house kept pigs under their beds, and two others where the pigs, though not kept under the beds, were in the same room the people slept and lived in. I could send many others.

The construction of this class of houses is against every sanitary rule as regards drainage, ventilation and cleanliness, which is rendered impossible to the inhabitants, which you

will easily understand by what I shall show you. Many houses being built back to back have no yards, have only a window in front, and there is nothing to promote a current of air through them. In others, which are not built back to back, no yard is provided but a narrow gully exists between the backs of the two sets of houses about a yard wide, not used for passengers, but down which an open sewer exists, in which foul and fœtid matter lies in pools or slowly trickles from one pool to the other, a slight descent assisting. The private drains existing are of the most complicated description beginning in the kitchen of the house and terminating-goodness only knows where-in but too inany cases in the earth itself with no outlet, through which the filth percolates till it finds the water level.

The upper floors of the houses are made with very thin boards which not lying close together renders it impossible to attempt to wash them, as that would result in giving the inhabitants of the rooms beneath a dirty shower bath. They are consequently covered with mud and filth deposited by their human inhabitants (in many instances assisted by pigs) half an inch thick. The ground floors are for the most part mud, though sometimes badly tiled or covered with stones. On this mud floor

every imaginable filth falls, from saliva to pig's urine draining from the pens so that the earth is saturated with decomposing animal and vegetable matter of all descriptions; and mud floors cannot be washed or cleaned.

I don't think the value of this sort of property is known or the enormous prices for which these houses are let. Repairs cost little or nothing yearly. In nearly every room three or more families reside up to as many as six or eight, the room being partitioned off; each partition pays a dollar and a half to two dollars a month rent, and a house of three rooms about fourteen feet square with miserable little kitchens attached will fetch from £55 to £70 a year; if it is a brothel from £80 to £100 a year. I saw one room with four partitions for which the women of the house paid $16 a month rent, the girls paying their $9 a month for each partition. It is thus evident that it is better to own property of this description which requires little or no repair than to own houses in better quarters which pay less- rent and require frequent repair. I mean that the inhabitants have no choice in the first instance and the landlord's none in the other, as to whether repairs shall be done or not, even when they are required. I now proceed to give a few notes of things I saw in certain localities, which notes are applicable to very many other places.

Fuk On Lane, ground floors of most houses mud, upper floors open spaces between the boards, so that neither floors admit of proper cleaning. Kitchens-poky, little holes, overcrowded and occupied by pigs, they being considered fit and proper places by the Inspectors of Markets, the people have licenses. Steps at the upper end of this lane out of repair, underneath, are cavities containing liquid, black and putrid filth.

Open space below Hospital: Road and east of Tung Hing Theatre used as a place to shoot all sorts of rubbish, a disgusting stench pervading the place.

Pound Lane, south end filthy, no drainage, four cases of small-pox occurred here this year. Houses with broken floors containing puddles of filth from which a stench arose enough to make any one sick; outside standing pools of filth, in open drains. Tanks sunk in the ground floors of these houses containing filthy water in which vegetables were being washed for the markets, also bean-cake making going on in these rooms for sale in the markets. As many as from seven to twelve pigs kept in the kitchens here, the people having licenses.

Rutter's Lane consists of a passage about four feet wide paved with large stones with large cavities beneath them, into which I could poke my walking stick up to the handle without finding bottom, these cavities containing black and putrid liquid filth. The houses are horribly filthy and having pigs in them; in one house three children just recovered from small-pox.

At the top of this lane there is an open space, in which all sorts of rubbish is shot. Four wells in this space all more or less receive the drainings from the rubbish collected about. From three of the wells the water was being used only for cleaning clothes and vegetables and the fourth used for drinking. Down-spouts of houses generally in bad state of repair.

Along the back of the houses in Upper Station Street runs a horizontal wooden trough about six feet above ground which is used for conveying away refuse water from the houses; this is not in good repair and leaks, the filthy water trickling down and polluting the walls of the houses. The foundations of these houses look anything but safe, the inhabitants expect them to tumble down before long as the houses in front of them have already done.