i38
The other day a German steamer chartered by Chinese was found with 112 passengers on board in excess of the certified number, and the case was dismissed. There was no innocence about that.
Carried.
the
[Angust 21, 1895.
the need for reform (especially municipal reform) and the very great need of a Municipal Council to save the colony from destruction. All sorts of wild theories are promulgated and beautiful plays are acted for the benefit of the gallery oc- oupied by the reporters of the public press, who furnish the papers with jesting and oaustic reports of the discussions to the great amusement of the public, and subject those members desirous of doing the worked for which they were appointed to unlimited chaff; the reports of the Board's meetings being looked forward to as a source of amusement in these dull times. -
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND necessitated his being ont and about the greater part of the day and doing his office work at night. The necessity of a Medical Officer of Health then began to dawn upon them generally and was fully recognized when the plague began. In Committee the ATTORNEY-GENERAL, in an- Long wordy, windy, desultory, rambling dis- swer to Hon. A. McConachie, said a master's liabi.cussions are held by the Board at their fort lities commenced the moment he weighed anchor nightly meetings ending in nothing being done. and it would be a very good thing for a master, Sub-Committee's reports, called for in many if he found after starting that he had got an cases as a means of delaying action. and in excess of passengers on board, to be able to stop abortive attempts at action, as in the case his ship and communicate with the police in of the sub-Committee's report on overorowd-
When the plague began a small and Per- harbour, and 80 get rid of the ing when threats of riots and strike, amongst
tone of the manent Committee of the Sanitary Board was excess passengers. A new principle was not the Chinese, moderated the being introduced; it was only a question of prov. majority of the Board, when it appeared that appointed to see necessary things done to stamp ing the case without the inconvenience of the mercantile community and the general out its invasion. The meetings were held daily calling people from Singapore and so that the public would be seriously inconvenienced, and and in the beginning were rather of a stormy There was no gallery, I mean no law should not be a dead letter owing to that things were relegated to the future for further character. inconvenience.
consideration; as in the case of the sub-Com-reporters, but the majority meant business and would recognize no rights but the public welfare, and landlords and lessees who had fattened on the profits of the disgusting and filthy dens for years had to submit to forego those profits Many houses have been for the future. taken away from them altogether and the Land Resumption Ordinance put in force; scores of other houses have been closed as unfit for human habitation until the required altera- tions necessary to render them fit are made; hundreds of others have had a definito period fixed to put them in order with the threat of closure unless those orders are obeyed. it has been shown very definitely that a great deal could be done in a very short time when necessity that knows no law required it.
ADJOURNMENT.
Bill went through all its stages and passed.mittee appointed to enquire into the Fat-Boiling Nuisance to which I referred in my annual re- port for 1893, whose report although referring to the condition of filth and general insanitation of the houses in which this business was con- ducted, situated in First, Second, Third, and High Streets, some of those being houses the insanitary condition of which I mentioned in my
His EXCELLENCY-I am very glad to be able to announce that owing to the kind assistance I have received from unofficial members I can again adjourn the Council sine die.
THE COLONIAL SURGEON "ON THE report of the 15th April, 1874, were situated to
RAMPAGE.”
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A SLATING FOR THE SANITARY BOARD. The report for 1894 of Dr. Ayres, Colonial Surgeon, was laid before the Legislative Council on Friday. The earlier portion of it is of the usual routine order, and the writer then proceeds to deal with the question of sanitation and the cou- stitution of the Sanitary Board. Having briefly described the state of things existing in the earlier period of his tenure of office, Dr. Ayres proceeds as follows:-
And
The Chinese have received a very necessary and salutory lesson that riots and strikes will no longer be permitted to override the law, and I desire to protest against their being permitted any interference in or control over hospitals for epidemic disease in the future after our ex- perience of the past year,
The
the
was
the west of the hospital in High, First, Second, and Third Streets. Mr. Ede and Mr. Humphreys, unofficial members of the Board, the sub-Com- mittee appointed, inspected these premises and sent in a report in which they said:"Nearly the whole of the houses are in a most dilapidated condition. The floors were recking with filth. The drainage was very bad, smell abominable. In some of the houses were dark holes in which there were quantities of decomposing and putrid meat, fat and bones, and one of them filled with maggots. The stench from these places was By Mr. Chadwick's recommendation a Sanitary unbearable." I inspected these houses also and Board was appointed in 1882, relieving me of a found them in the same condition I had reported burden which I had borne for eleven years. In twenty years ago; fat-boiling was going on there, I deprecate any accommodation being sanc- 1887 Mr. Chadwick was again sent out and ex- but, with the assistance of the Registrar-General, tioned by Government for plague patients not pressed much surprise at the little that had I had them cleared out and suppressed that under European supervision in the immediate of the colony future. been done in the six years since his previous business in the neighbourhood of the hospital. neighbourhood
condition of things existing at visit, and by his advice the Sanitary Board was It had begun again of late years and I have often
Laichikok Hospital and cemetery reconstituted and enlarged, the Public Health reported them before with result that the
medical described by the correctly Ordinance revised and enlarged as regards its nuisanco has abated for a time! When this powers, as also the Building Ordinance; and report was read before the Board I stated staff employed by the Government in their letter since that many other amendments have been that these houses were in as disgusting a dated July 2nd, 1894. The reports given by other medical men at the request of Government. made with accompanying by-laws and a Land condition as many of the worse slums of the Resumption Ordinance sanctioned, and others central district of Taipingshan, independently dated July 8th, 1894, although the hospital had in connection with sanitation, water supply, of the fat-boiling, that many other houses in the been specially cleansel and prepared with sup- drainage, &c.
streets where no fat-boiling was done were plies of disinfectants for their reception, con- in the same filthy and insanitary condition, and firmed the danger to the colony of this institu that these houses were, in my opinion, unfit for tion, for they said-"The whole number of human habitation. The Board then recom-patients under treatment was $58. mended-"That the tenants should be called upon this number about one third were suffering from to abate the nuisance," which was done. The plague and less than half came from Hong- Board also recommended-"That the landlords kong. The plague patients were scattered pro- should be notified to put these houses in promiscuously amongst the others." This was while per order." That the notices were served is proved by the papers attached to the do- onents which had been before the Board, but there is no record, to show that the land- lords paid any attention to the notification, and no further steps appear to have been taken in the matter and it ended in nothing being done. The houses in these streets, next to the walled up portion of Taipingshun, were the worst cen. tres of the plagde-stricken districts; scores of them were closed as unfit for human habitation and remain so to this day.
The water supply has been nearly completed, but the quantity is found to be insufficent; the quality of the supply has been proved by monthly analysis to be superior to that of most English towns.
The main drainage is nearly completed, but as regards house drainage is still far from com- plote.
The Building Ordinance refers only to new buildings and existing buildings previous to this Ordinance remain the same.
The Land Resumption Ordinance until 1894 remained a dead letter.
same
The Sanitary Board as reconstituted meets fortnightly and at times of alarm, as in the case of the small-pox epidemio and the oholera scare, holds frequent emergency meetings. Volumi nous reports have been made, and some of them published, by sub-Committees, the Superinten- dent and Secretary of the Board, Mr. McCallum, Reports of the Board's Sanitary Surveyor on the Sanitary Surveyor, Mr. Crook, the Veteri- houses requiring re-draining are continually nary Surgeon, Mr. Ladds, under whom are the being referred back for further report in the markets, slaughter-houses and cattle depôts interest of the landlords or the tenants whose and lairs, and by the Board Inspectors. The rights must not be infringed upon, or only Board's officers have had some praise sparingly sanctioned conditionally, or refused sanction given, but one and all have been severely and at altogether on account of insufficient water supply times censured in no measured terms by some rendering ro-draining incompatible, in the members of the Board for having in their zeal opinion of some members, with the necessities for the service done things required im. of the case. mediate attention and common sense sanctioned The powers given to the Board to act are not being done, and on being reported at the next used because they are insufficient, because they Board meeting received the censure as their re-interfere with the rights of the landlord, the ward for doing things without the previous
sanction of the Board.
The official members of the Board in their several capacities have had metaphorical missiles thrown at them in unstinted supplies.
+
The want of a Medical Health Officer as Superintendent, many times insisted on by me from the beginning as an absolute necessity, but from economical motives ignored till Mr McCallum's health broke down completely from the overwork of doing the double duty which
tenant, or the public. Action is deprecated in every possible way. The Board's legal members are great in explaining what the Board cannot do in consequence of the want of sufficient powers and but little light is afforded to the Board by them as to what can be done with the limited powers the Board possesses. Every care was taken to hamper the Board in doing any. thing, and every opportunity to declaim on the iniquity of the water supply not being in the hands of the Board, the want of powers to act,
Of
we were doing our best in the colony to single out plague patients, and these other patients were daily being dismissed from the hospital to spread the infection they had contracted in the hospital over the Kowloon peninsula. That they did so was fully proved by the fact that only a few isolated cases appeared on the Kowloon-peninsula before the troops had thoroughly cleansed and white- washed all the houses, yec after this had been.done and when the plague was fast dying out in Hong- kong in the latter part of July the plague cases were steadily increasing on the Kowloon penin- sula and it continued there to the last. The any latest case occurred in October, long after case occurred in Hongkong and the youth" died in hospital three days after.
Moreover a patient, that had been deported from the Tungwah Plagne Hospital in the Cattle depôt by Government orders to Laichikok Hospital, left that hospital of his own accord, came through Kowloon across in one of the Chi- nese ferries, wandered through the City of Vic- toria back to the Cattle depót hospital, where he died twenty-fours after:
The letter written by Dr, Molyneux, dated July 12th, on the condition of the Laichikok graveyard and its dangers was, in every parti cular, correct. The show graves of fairly decent depth, described by the medical officers who reported at the request of Government on the 8th of July, remained empty, although other interments had been made in the graveyard only a few inches deep. On July 17th Mr. Francis, the President of the Permanent Committee of the Sanitary Board, and myself visited the Lai- chikok graveyard and confirmed Dr. Moly-
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