February 6, 1895.1
THE PROPERTY OWNERS AND THE INSANITARY DWELLINGS ORDINANCE.
The following memorial has been forwarded to the Secretary of State for the Colonies:-
Hongkong, January 28th 1895,
CHÍNA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
Council and by this last mentioned Ordinance certain lots of the land in the Taipingshan district of the City of Vistoria were resumed by the Government of the colony and revested in the Crown as from the 1st day of June, 1894. and it was provided that full and fair compen- sation should be paid to the owners of the pre- To the Right Honourable The Marquess of mises resumed and to all persons having any Ripon, K.G., G.C.S.I., C.I.E., or Ma-right or interest therein, such compensation to jesty's Principal Secretary of State for the be determined by a Board of Arbitrators as mon- Colonies.
tioned in the Ordinance, and all sums of money The Humble Memorial of the undersigned awarded by the Board as compensation are owners of or persons interested in las hold to bear interest at the rate of 7 per cent. mises in the colony of Hongkong showeth as from 1st June, 1894. until payment by the follows:-
Government to the parties entitled thereto or 1.Your Memorialists are leaseholders and under certain circumstances until payment into mortgagees of or are otherwise interestal in the Supreme Court. I landed property in Hongkong and include in their number the owner of the houses men- tioned in the 1st and 2nd Schedules attached to a Hongkong Ordinauce known as The Closed Houses and Insanitary Dwellings Ordinance,
1894.!
2―This Ordinanca was passed by the Legis. lative Council of Hongkong upon the 29th day of December, 1894, by the votes of the six official members of the Legislative Council against the protests and the votes of the four anofficial members of that Council, and the interests of your Memorialists are peculiarly affected by the
said Ordinance.
3-Your Memorialists desire to direct your Lordship's special attention to the 16th Section of the above-mentioned Ordinance which vides as follows:-
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with the
..99
Government should itself take over the liability that has been incurred by the Sanitary Board, and that the whole colony, for whose benefit and in whos interests the mombers of the Sanitary Board are considered to have been acting, shoull share equally with the individual owners of the premises closed the damages that have been suffered.
12.-Your Lordship will probably have been furnished with a report of the meeting of the Legislative Council at which The Closed Houses and Insanitary Dwellings Ordinance, 1894," was passed, but as your Memorialists cousi der the remarks made by the learned Attorney. General when moving the second reading of the Bill as calculated to mislead those who are not intimately acquainted with the colony and with 7. The owners of the premises situate outside the conditions upon which property in the city of the area resumed by the Government under of Victoria is held, they trust your Lordship will the Taipingshan lesu aption Ordinance cannot pardon them if they quote a few of the phrases claim compensation under that Ordinance, but made use of by the Attorney-General and at- the houses directly affected by The Closed tempt to explain how they are calculated to un- Honses aud Insanitary Dwollings Ordinance of fairly prejudice the bolders of the closed premises. 1891" have been taken out of the hands of the The Attorney-General is reported to have said: owners by the Permanent Committee of the "And I take it no one will gainsay that this Sanitary Board for the benefit of the Colour Council has a perfect right in its legislative and as regards the premises mentioned in the capacity to say to any man in the colony: You 1st Schedule to the last mentioned Ordinance have no right to us your property in such a man- tho owners were not permitted to occupy their nor as to endanger the lives and safety of your premises until the 5th January, 185, although, fellow colonists; you have no right so to use your as will be hereafter pointed out, the said premises place as to make it a hot-bed in which the germs were declared to have been disinfected and to be of disease and plague which may be brought in in a sauitary condition many months before that
from another place my thrive until they bɔ- date. pro-
come a very dangerous thing to the colony 8.-The houses montioned in "The Closed and until we have the plague rampant in No Suit or Action shall be commenced or lie, Houses and Insanitary Dwellings Ordinance, our midst, and this Council has a right in its or if commenced be continued against the Sani. 1894, were all built in, compliance with the pro, legislative capacity to say we will take that tary Board or its officers or the Permanent Come visions of The Public Health Oddinane 1887," proporty away from you temporarily until you mittee thereof or any person acting under the and of The Building Ordinace No 15 of havo restored it to a proper condition and that it authority of the Sanitary Board or the: Perma-188," or in compliance
Ordi- shall be handed back to you iu sneh a state that. neut Committee for any loss or damage incurred | nances
for the time bing in force, and it will not be a public danger. For any mau to by or rasulting to any person by reason-
upon completion
the owners received the say, Compeus de mo for having done so is ab- (a) Of the removal of the occupants of any necessary cftificates from the authorised Ex-surd." With reference to the foregoing extract house mentioned in the 1st and 2nd Sehe- amining Officer and from the Surveyor-General your Memorialists would remark that the owners dules hereto.
or other official whose duty it was to grant such of the closed houses have never asked to be com certificates, but the houses word closed by the
pensated because their property was taken from Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board them for the purpose of being put into a sanitary during the plagus epidemic last year, the condition. They only ask that they should b Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board
compensated for the losses they have sustained claiming to have power to do so under the by through the absolutely illegal action of the Saoi laws made by them upon the 11th May and 31st tary Board in refusing to return their property May, 1894.
after it had been disinfected and cleaued. A stranger to the colony might naturally conclude that the promises mentioned in the schedules to this Ordinauce were the only premises cleaned and disinfected by the order of the Permanent Com- mittee. whereas nothing would be more incorrect, To say nothing of the 343 houses in Taipingshan which wore closed and have been forcibly re- sumed, the Genoral Post Office, the Land Office, and other Government buildings, as well as numerous business offices and stores in the contre of the city, were cleaned and disinfected for very cogent reasons and possession was at once given up by the Permanent Committee as soon as the disinfecting was completed, but be- cause the Permanent Committe apparently considered that the Public Health Ordinance then in force was not sufficiently stringent as regards dwelling honsus, they sought to make the owners of the closed houses personally under- take duties which were not laid upon them by law and which it was absolutely out of their power to properly give effect to.
(b) of the shutting up or closing of any such
house or any part thereof. (c) of the destruction or removal of or of the damage to any buildings, walls, furniturs, mezzanine floors, cocklofts, partitions or articles in any such honse or curtilage closed or disinfected by orders of the Sanitary Board, provided such destruction, reinoval, or damage occurred during the prevalence of the bubonic plague or during any operations which were necessary or domed necessary by the Board for the cleansing and disinfecting of any such houses, or, (d) of any loss of rent whatever in respect of
any such house, or, (e) of the continued possession of any such house and cartilage or any part thereof by the Sanitary Board or the Permanent Com mittee thereof pending the carrying out of the provisions of this Ordinance in respect thereof.
4.As your Memorialists are well aware that your Lordship has been made fully acquainted with the facts connected with the visitation of bubonic plague with which this colony was un- happily afflicted last year, they do not purpose setting out the facts at any length, more especially as they were fully described in a despatch from His Excellency Governor Sir William Robinson addressed to your Lordship upon the 20th day of Juno last and which was published in Hongkong on the 1st of September last
9-Your Memorialists are advised that such by-laws were not strictly in accordance with law, and that the subsequent action of the Por manent Committee in turning out the tenauts, destroying all the internal fittings, and closing the premises was illegal, but Ordinance No. 5 of 1894 was afterwards passed to remove doubts as to the validity of these by-laws and your Memorialists are by no means desirous of seeing any purely technical objection_raised to the action of the Sanitary Board in taking possession of and disinfecting the premises at a time when the colony was being devastated by the plague and when prompt measures had to be taken to prevent its further spread in the colony
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10.-The complaint that your Memorialists have to make with reference to the Permanent Committee is not that they improperly or acting ultra vires took possession of the above-men- tioned premises, but that afterwards, when the premises referred to had been thoroughly cleaned and disinfected and when the colony was free from plague, they refused to return them to the The Attorney-General further on, in address owners until the latter had agreed to give under-ing the Council, is reported to have said: "It takings in writing as to the future occupation of such premises, which undertakings the Per- 3-As, however, certain dates may be of im- manent Committee had no right whatever to portance when considering the statements of demand, and which they have now by their your Memorialists hereinafter set out, they would action practically admitted to have been illegal, respectfully remind your Lordship that the first and with respect to which Section 16 of The official proclamatiou made under the Health Closed Houses and Insanitary Dwellings Ordin- Ordinance of 1887 with reference to the plaguance 1894," has now been passell. was issued upon the 10th May, 1894, and that 11-Your Memoralists are advised that but this proclamation was revoked upon the 3rd for the protection afforded to the Sanitary Board September, 1894, while the Ordinance with re-by the above mentioned Section 16 the owners of ference to which your Memorialists are now the closed houses would undoubtedly have a legal addressing your Lordship was passed on the 29th | claim against the members of that body for the December, 1894, and it was only on the 5th damages they have sustained in consequence of January, 1895, that the Chairman of the Per- their illegal action in refusing to allow them to manent Committee of the Sanitary Board notireoccupy the premises after they had been cleaned fied the owners of houses mentioned in the 1st and disinfected and were in a fit condition to Schedulo to Ordinance 15 of 1894 that they be again inhabited, and they humbly submit to could obtain possession of their houses by apply ing to the Captain Superintendent of Police.
6-Upou the 26th September, 189, an Or dinance known as The Taipingshan Resumption Ordinance, 1894," was passed by the Legislative'
your Lordship that if the Colonial Government wishes to protect the members of the Sanitary Board from legal proceedings being taken against them by those who have suffered serions loss through their high-handed proceedings, the
is possible that in some instances the Sanitary Board may have gone, I do not know that it has doue so, a little beyond what they would have done if they had had more time, But without emolument, in a time of great danger, the Sani- tary Board, after being lethargic for I do not know how long, suddenly awoke and rose to a sense of its duty and did some admirable work and closed all the honses which are in the schedules, and I shall ask you when the Bill comes before the Committee to say that, having done their best for the benefit of the community in a time of great emergency, they should be pre- vented from being attacked by the lawyers ou every legal or technical point it is possible for lawyers to take in regard to their conduct, and shall have to point out to you the clauses which will protect the Sanitary Board later on,'
Subsequently, referring to overcrowding, the Attorney-General said: "If you had a man here who could inspect these houses and stop this stato of matters it would be a different thing, Bat there is no such being in existence, and as long
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