Sessional_Paper_1896 — Page 896

[ XXI ]

6. There are always establishments in Chinese cities where tnoribund patients can be sent, as there are also establishments where coffins containing dead bodies hermetically sealed are kept sometimes for many years, and often at considerable cost, till it suits the convenience of relatives to inter them finally. In what is called the "City of the Dead" at Canton there can seldom be less than 1,000 bodies awaiting removal to their final resting-place.

7. I do not think it at all unnatural therefore that Chinese instinct and superstition should have endeavoured to establish a similiar institution in this City, containing as it does more than 100,000 Chinese. The intention to effect such an object does not, however, appear on the face of that which I now believe was the first attempt made in that direction, viz., the Chinese petition of January 1851, now before me, and in (See page which permission is asked merely to build a temple wherein the "ancestral tablets" of their countrymen dying in the Colony might be placed till their "fellow villagers or connections visiting Hongkong could carry them home."

8. A plot of ground was then granted them to hold rent free for that purpose so long as it was used solely as a temple." That condition, however, was not long observed, for soon after I came here the Surveyor General reported that coffins containing bodies were stowed away near the Temple. The Colonial Surgeon, however, in a minute now before me, reported that the coffins were solid, well closed, and in no way a nuisance, and that he had known the place for years. He also mentioned as a much greater nuisance the practice of the keeper to let out a few small contiguous rooms to the friends of poor people sent there to die so as to escape the expense and trouble of purifying their dwellings from the "uncleanness" brought by death.

9. Your Lordship thus perceives that Chinese usages were gradually forcing their way into our midst, and I specially drew the Surveyor General's (Mr. WILSON's) attention to that part of Dr. MURRAY'S Memo. as he had an Inspector of Buildings under his control. Either the supervision exercised by him was very inadequate or there was not much to complain of till last April when Mr. LISTER, the Acting Registrar General, reported that he had discovered a very disgusting case of neglect of the dying in the "I-Ts'z,” as the Temple was called, and described his having seen the dead and dying huddled together indiscriminately in small and filthy rooms attached to the Temple, under circumstances betokening most revolting neglect.

XVIL.)

(See page XVIII)

(See page

XIX.)

XXIV et seq.)

10. The Coroner seems to have made a searching inquiry into the matter and to (See pages have taken considerable pains, as shewn by the enclosed details and evidence adduced at the inquest even as curtailed in the report of one of the local journals. That evidence, however, shews that except in some rare cases of jaundice—which is a sort of yellow fever amongst the Chinese and inspires them with fear of contagion-no cases were ever sent to the "I-Ts'z" except those which were judged hopeless. One witness stated that his brother had been refused admittance there on the ground that "he was not in a dying state."

11. From the fact that an independent report was made as to the "I-Ts'z" by Inspector PETERSEN a short time after-indeed almost simultaneously with Mr. LISTER'S discovery of it-I agree with the latter in thinking it very unlikely that the extremely bad state of things reported by him could have existed long previously, and if an exceptional and perhaps sudden aggravation of the horrors-which are inseparable in the eyes of a European from places where the lower classes of the Chinese herd together→→→ has led to the reforms since achieved and those which, I hope, will soon be realized, I think the incidents have resulted in good.

12. At the same time from my own personal examination of the premises I can readily understand that a very good Inspector might have frequently visited the place without being aware of the disgusting filth and wretchedness so near him. It is, however, certain that attention was finally called to the matter by Mr. LISTER and also, though independently, by Inspector PETERSEN. Therefore but for the Officers of Government