Sessional_Paper_1895 — Page 489

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At the back of Market Street, Taipingshan, is a gully three feet wide, down which an open drain runs, the black and putrid filth trickling slowly along or standing in puddles.

At the back of Tank Lane is a gully with no name-pigs in upper and lower rooms and in holes sunk in the foundations of houses-place filthy, baskets of putrid rubbish standing about outside the houses. In the midst of puddles of filth in the broken pavement, saw a hole sunk in the ground with a machine for pounding rice in it, opposite to the doorway of a hole which could not be called a room, as it was not more than seven feet square, and was only just large enough to contain a bed in which a family slept and underneath which were a lot of pigs.

Take another gully with no name, one end opening into Caine Road just below Dr. ADAMS' house, the other end into Market Street. This gully is floored with a platform of boards raised about two feet above the ground, the earth below is sodden with black liquid filth, and underneath this footway fowls are kept which afterwards go to the markets. Houses here are cramped up little hovels with filthy floors, and the inhabitants are licensed to keep pigs to the number of ten each.

First Street, Saiyingpoon, is a wide street, in which the houses look well from the front-pigs kept, of course. At the back of these houses are gullies of the foulest description, the stench from which is horrible..

In Woi On Lane, a gully at the back of, and composed of the basement floors of, Third Street, nearly every room kept pigs, there being nearly a hundred in the place. I could not stay to inspect it properly, as the stench drove me out retching.

These places taken from different quarters of the town are quite sufficient to illustrate what I have said.

An intimate acquaintance in the course of my student life in hospital practice with the worst quarters of Lambeth, Saint Giles, and Somers Town, enables me to say, I do not believe there could be found in London worse places than are to be found in Hongkong, if so bad; and in Indian towns filth of the description found here would not be permitted by the caste of the inhabitants.

Here the people inhabiting these places are not so poverty-stricken, they wear good clothes and pay high rents, indeed exorbitant rents, and nowhere have I found anything approaching to the poverty I have seen in London or Indian towns. Few European residents of this generally supposed clean town know of or would believe the things I have brought to notice in this, and my report on the brothels. It is no wonder, under the circumstances, in their ignorance they think the town is clean enough and more water is not required seeing as they do only the best quarters or those that are fair enough outside, but foul within and behind. In many places the people have to go long distances for water or they get it from foul wells, so that they learn to do without it as much as possible, not because they don't want it, but because it is a great deal of trouble to procure. They never wash or clean the floors of their houses, because the construction of the floors does not admit of it, so water is not acquired for this purpose.

I am of opinion that in the town there is no fit or proper place for pigs to be kept at all, and this at all events should not be sanctioned by Government, but that places should be found out of town or over at Kowloon, and the pigs brought to market when required.

No house in the town should be permitted to have floors so constructed that they cannot be properly cleaned, in upper floors the boards should be well fitted so that they can be washed, and all the ground floors should be well tiled for the same reason, no mud floors should be allowed, and every house should be well white-washed every six months or at least once a year. The landlords should be held responsible for this and for the drains being in proper order that belong to the house.

In some cases, however, the house drainage cannot be managed as there is no proper drainage to the streets or gullies. In future no houses should be built without sufficient yard space at the back, and in no case should they be built back to back.

With such a state of things as I have reported here no one will dispute, I think, that there is good reason for my prognostications as regards typhus and typhoid fever, and it is not to be wondered at that the cases become more and more frequent. I have seen three this week.

I have seen three this week. A cholera epidemic here would be something too horrible to think about, and small-pox is by no means to be thought lightly of.

I have the honour to be,

Sir,

Your most obedient Servant,

The Honourable J. G. AUSTIN, C.M.G.,

fc..

Colonial Secretary, &C.,

&c.

PH. B. C. AYRES, Colonial Surgeon.