Sessional_Paper_1896 — Page 912

[ XXXVII ]

Acting Registrar General of the Colony (Mr. LISTER), came to verify the Inspector's report of that visit, there would probably have been no inquest in the present case and therefore no disclosure. Yet the Local Ordinances impose the most minute obligations in those respects and provide an ample machinery for enforcing them, even to the extent of empowering domiciliary visits by day and by night.

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2. The “I-Ts'z” is said by Mr. CALDWELL to have been built in Governor Sir GEORGE BONHAM's time for the purpose of receiving dead bodies which by an order then made were

no longer to be exposed upon the hillside. He (CALDWELL) never regarded it as a hospital. In like manner until the inquest, the then Colonial Surgeon, Dr. MURRAY, says that he too had always supposed it to be a Chinese "City of the Dead." But unlike Dr. MURRAY Mr. CALDWELL, ever since he has engaged in the coolie trade, has been, he admits, in the habit of treating it as a hospital to the extent of sending thither at least the incurable cases from his "Kwong Kee" and other Emigration Depôts. He also admits a knowledge of upwards of two hundred inmates of the “I-Ts'z” annually and having seen there as many as eight at one time. Finally, he con- fesses to having paid the burial charges of persons dying there. But it is clear from the evidence of the keeper as well as from that of other witnesses that the sick charges were also included in those payments, that the white-washing, &c. were also done by Mr. CALDWELL's order and at his charge (one remarkable instance being that of the work done in the interval between detection and the inquest), and in short that the whole expenditure of the place was defrayed or managed by that same individual.

3. It further results from the facts in evidence that in the " Kwong Kee" and the various Emigration Depôts of Hongkong all the sick amongst great numbers of China- men almost all being persons brought by whatsoever methods from the neighbouring Empire into that Colony are tended or treated by Mr. CALDWELL and those in charge pretty much at their discretion; that cases pronounced by them to be incurable are sent off to the dead house called the "I-Ts'z" Hospital and that the ratio of mortality there is such as to exclude almost the chance of any one coming out alive.

.4. What that ratio may be, does not exactly appear, the jury not having found the totals of admissions, discharges and deaths during any given period, but at least 75 per cent. of the emigrants received appear to have perished within its walls; and of the sum of mortality a notion may be found not only from what has been said already but also from a coffin-maker's evidence (the only coffin-maker examined) who acknow- ledges a continuous employment there to the extent of from one to four coffins daily.

5. If your Lordship can have any doubt that this frightful mortality is chiefly, or rather entirely, due to the circumstances, above detailed of the unfeeling, sordid, and revolting neglect and abandonment of those poor creatures by their foreign holders or owners, the positive testimony of the medical gentlemen, Dr. MURRAY and Dr. COCHRANE, of the Inspector of Brothels and of the other official witnesses will remove that doubt. It would be improper for the Association to reproduce the foul details of the annexed report in those particulars, and they gladly forbear. If the argument a cognito ad ignotum is ever to be permitted it is permissible after reading that part of the report. Those witnesses saw the dying and the dead wallowing together in floods of filth and covered with vermin in their beds, shut in and in their narrow locked cells without egress. They had to arouse the former from their stupor before they could determine whether they were alive. In one instance at least where, according to the keeper's report, the whole mass of corrupting bodies had ceased to contain vitality, that report was disproved by a dying wretch whom they roused into strength and who lived to inform them of his own sufferings and wrongs.

6. Your Lordship will not fail to perceive that it is universally admitted or proved (nay, that even Mr. CALDWELL does not deny) the want of inedical attendance, of any attendance at all, of ventilation, of cleanliness, and even of food at this "I-Ts'z" Hos- pital, and the only excuse offered is that at some unspecified time Mr. CALDWELL has seen worse places in some (unspecified) Chinese villages in respect of cleanliness.