Sessional_Paper_1931 — Page 123

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For the calculation that the Committee wanted to make they should have taken, therefore, a figure of 8 ounces (=6 taels) as their divisor. They would then have arrived back at the original figure of a population of 650,000 (or a little more, allowing for wastage) and the whole Nightsoil Census fable would have collapsed at its source.

Whether this story consciously or unconsciously affected the minds of those responsible for making the estimates of the population during the intercensal period or not, very greatly increased estimates began to be made. Even in the 1924 report, the total for Victoria and the Peak already exceeded the total enumerated in 1931. The total for Kowloon, on the other hand, was never greatly exaggerated.

If not a case of conservative Conservancy figures leading to liberal population estimates, it may have been a case of wide generalisation from particular and pecu- liar districts. Reference to the table on page 22 shows that in one small district comprising a little over 8 acres, the density of population is 1,255 persons per acre, with 18 persons per house, which in this case really means 18 persons per tenement floor. Figures such as these, obtained from a few sample premises, may have been taken as average instead of particular and a much inflated total obtained.

Thus, in the report of the Director of Medical and Sanitary Services for the year 1929, there appears the statement that "the residential portion of the town where the masses live does not exceed 400 acres. In this space 500,000 in- dividuals find accommodation, giving a density of 1,250 per acre." It is true that such a density can be found, but only for a comparatively small area. There is no need for exaggeration as in a much larger area amounting to 211 acres the density is as high as 917 per acre, but in the remainder of the town on the upper levels etc. the density is very much less and the average density over the whole area is, there- fore, much lower.

The statement is repeated in the 1930 Report and the following also again appears. "Writing in 1882 when the population was 160,000, the area much the same as it is now and the density 400 per acre-Chadwick stated:-"Overcrowding of houses on the ground occurs to a serious extent and so does overcrowding of houses with humans." By 1901, when Chadwick again visited, the density harl risen to 700 per acre. It is true that the Census of 1881 disclosed a population of 160,402, but this was made up as follows:-

*

Non-Chinese :-

Resident Europeans & Americans....

3,040

Police, Military & Naval Establishments

3,890

Mercantile Marine, Foreign Men-of-War, Temporary Residents

and Prisoners

1,060

Goa, Manila & Indian Residents, Police &ilitary, Mercantile

Marine & Prisoners

1,722

Total Non-Chinese

9,712

Chinese:

Victoria

Villages and Kowloon

Boat Population & Mercantile Marine

104,067

16,606

30,017

Total Chinese

150,690

Total Population

160,402