Sessional_Paper_1901 — Page 533

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the evidence taken before the Commission and making a number of suggestions which, if adopted, would unquestionably tend largely to abate this surface- crowding. As a result of all this, a Bill was read for the first time in the Legislative Council on the 22nd day of November, 1898, but this Bill has not yet become law.

This Bill in an emasculated form eventually became law (Ordinance 34 of 1899) the more drastic remedies recommended by the Sanitary Board with a view to the betterment of the Sanitary Condition of the Colony having been deleted therefrom. The Medical fficer of Health, in his Annual Report for 1900, again referred to Surface Crowding as follows:—

Nos. 5 and 6 Health District, which are situated in the centre of the city, show acute surface crowding, while Districts 9, 4, 8, and 7 are almost as densely crowded. Owing to the conformation of the island, the only possible remedy for this acute congestion is the provision of more ready means of access to the outlying districts of the city, and it is to be hoped that the Government will see their way, at no distant date, to provide. or to encourage the provision of tramways to East Point and the Shaukiwan Road with nominal fares for work- men, thus offering au inducement to the Chinese to reside in these suburbs.

The density of population of the City of Victoria as a whole, that is to say, including all the outlying vacant lands and the villages in No. 1 Health District, the Public Gardens in No. 3 Health District, and all the unoccupied hill-side below the upper limit of the City Health Districts (ie about 450 feet above high-water mark) is 126 persons per acre. In 1898 the average density of population in the administrative County of London was 60 persons per acre, while in Glasgow it was 61. in Liverpool 50, and in Edinburgh 47 persous per acre - Glasgow being the most densely crowded of the thirty-six large towns of the United Kingdom.

24-In November 1900, the Sanitary Board recommended the Limewashing of the houses of the rural villages, to ensure cleanliness and thereby act as a precau- tionary measure against Plague. The proposed bye-law was, however, unanimously rejected by the Legislative Council sixteen cases of plague have occurred during the present epidemic amongst the limited population of three of these villages.

25.--One lamentable result of the long continued insanitary condition of long- kong was the outbreak of Bubonic Plague in 1894. The prediction of the late Dr. Ayres, made in 1873, and reiterated by him since, was fulfilled, twenty-one years later, and the disease has never been eradicated, and may not disappear until the most drastic sanitary reforms are effected. Mr. Chadwick likewise foretold a severe epidemic if the sanitation of the Colony was not improved, and his prophesy, so long unheeded by the Government, has come to pass. Since 1894, when most heroic efforts were made by members of the community to stamp out the disease, there have been up to the present nine thousand reported enses of Bubonic Plague with a mortality averaging from 89 to 96 per cent. It is believed on adequate grounds that the number of cases and deaths has been far in excess of these numbers. There is good reason to believe that had due heed been given to the warnings offered these epi lemics might not have occurred. The daily medical returns show that the epidemic is increasing in its ravages and residents aro confronted with the fact that the practical immunity which the Europeans appeared to possess from plague has passed away. The Government might not have been able to prevent the annual re- appearance of the disease, but your Petitioners believe, on good medical authority, that the recurring epidemics would have lessened in virulence and duration had the Government seriously applied itself to this very responsible task and not trifled with proposed measures of Sanitary Reform. In his very able report on