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GENERAL SANITARY CONDITION.
The provisions of the Public Health Ordinance (No. 24 of 1887) and of the Insanitary Properties Ordinance (No. 15 of 1894) have been steadily enforced throughout the year, and it cannot be denied that the sanitary condition of the three or four hundred new houses which have been erected during the year shows a vast improvement upon that of the buildings which were erected prior to the passing of the latter Ordinance, but I regret to say that the laws of this Colony still permit of the erection of back to back houses, which are universally admitted to be unhealthy, and the prohibition of the further erection of which was so strongly urged by Mr. OSBERT CHADWICK, as far back as 1882, and by many others since that date. The provision of open spaces in the rear of buildings is an absolute necessity to render them suitable as human habitations and yet the whole city of Victoria, with the exception of the Taipingshan resumed area and the Praya Reclamation, might, under the existing laws, be rebuilt without a single backyard, area or open space attached to any house, and although the Architects do their best, I know, to persuade property owners to provide these open areas, yet it not infrequently hap- pens that a penurious landowner insists upon the whole of his land being covered by bricks and mortar, and a roof, to the great detriment, not only of his own, but also of his neighbour's property, and to the great injury to the health of all future occupants. The Model Bye-laws which were drawn up by the Local Government Board many years ago, and which have been very generally adopted by Sanitary Author- ities at home, require a minimum open space, exclusively belonging to each house, of 150 square feet in area, and although I am quite willing to admit that there are special circumstances connected with the erection of domestic buildings for Chinese which would render this requirement excessive in some cases, yet there can be no doubt that legislation is urgently needed to secure some provision of this nature in respect of all houses that may be erected in the future.
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The compulsory provision of open spaces in connection with existing dwellings is a somewhat more difficult problem. but I have no hesitation in saying that most of the Chinese dwellings in the city of Victoria would, if they existed at home, be at once condemned as unfit for human habitation" under the Housing of the Working Classes Act, and it is only necessary to quote the opening paragraph of the Report of the Insanitary Properties Commission, issued last year, to show how urgent is the necessity for some definite and prompt action on the part of the Government.
This paragraph reads-
We
e regret to have to report that there are many insanitary properties in the Colony and dwellings "which, in their present condition, are unfit for human habitation. The back portions of a number of "the houses visited by us are dark, ill-ventilated, extremely dirty and in some cases mere dens of filth. "The interior of the cubicles or sub-divisons of the living rooms was such that in the great majority of
cases their contents could be seen only by the aid of an artificial light."
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It is hardly necessary to argue that if dwelling rooms, occupied by Chinese of the coolie class, are dark, it is impossible for any staff of Inspectors to ensure their being kept in a cleanly condition, and although the present state of the dwellings in the city compares most favourably with that which obtained only some four or five years ago, yet it is indeed an almost hopeless task to seek for cleanliness with a bull's eye lantern in the almost Cimmerian darkness of the typical Chinese tenement dwelling.
There is still most urgent necessity throughout the Colony, and especially in the City of Victoria, for many additional free public latrines and urinals; provision was, I believe, made for the erection of two additional latrines in the city during the ensuing year; these would not, however, have sufficed even to keep pace with the rapid increase in the population, so that the city would have been no better off than heretofore, but unfortunately the expenditure upon these has been disallowed, so that the condition of the city in this respect is rapidly becoming worse.
No provision whatever has been made for the erection of additional urinals, either for Europeans or for Chinese, although only three public urinals at present exist in the city for a male population of about 125,000. Many are the complaints of the offensive smell of urine in the side and back lanes, and from the gully traps in the streets throughout the city, but so long as no provision is made, in this respect, for the thousands of coolies who daily traverse these streets, I fail to see what other result can be expected, or in what way this undoubted nuisance can be prevented.
POPULATION.
The population of the Colony at the Census taken in 1891 was found to be 221,441 while the census taken in 1897 showed a population of 246,880.
The following is the estimated population of the Colony to the middle of 1898:
Non-Chinese Civil Population,...
City of Victoria, including Peak and Stonecutters' Island,....... Chinese Population, Villages in Hongkong and Kowloon,....
Army, Navy,
8,732
165,900
39,940
Floating Population,
33,370
Total,
239,210
3,073
3,385
Total Population of the Colony,...................................
254,400
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