April 30, 1898.J
CONCEALMENT OF CASES OF PLAGUE.
CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT. given time, so that all the houses in the in- fected area may be cleansed in the course of a few days. Let the people be given to under- stand that if they don't cleanse their houses properly the Sanitary Board will do the work for them at their expense.
In conclusion, if the Bombay new plague rules, quoted by your correspondent Mr. Os borne, are applicable to this colony, I hope the Government will take them into favourable consideration.
Thanking you for the insertion of this letter and enclosing my card.-I remain, yours faith- fully,
Hongkong 24th April, 1898.
L. S. K.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE DAILY PRESS.
SIR,-In view of the fact that it is so difficult for the authorities to obtain information from the Chinese concerning the existence of cases of plague in their houses, would it not be advisable for the Government to consider the expediency of instituting a system of rewards for the giving of information regarding such cases? I believe that such an arrangement was in force during the epidemic of 1894 and it worked satisfactorily on the whole. There is, no doubt, one obvious objection to such a scheme, namely, the fact that many cases of fever would be erroneously reported as cases of plague, but, on the other hand, it would be very useful for the Govern- ment to be kept well informed as regards the general health of the community, and, more- over, early information concerning cases of plague might enable the Government to effectu- ally segregate the sick and thus prevent them from communicating the disease to their family or friends. I simply put forward this idea as a suggestion. The Government will doubtless be sunlight, over-crowding, and the filthy habits 1st.The causes of the plague are want of readily able to ascertain from those who directed of the poorer Chinese. There are probably over sanitary affairs here during the epidemic of thirty lanes within a radius of a quarter-of-a- 1894 whether the offering of rewards for in-mile into which are crowded every night from formation concerning plague cases was attended with useful results or not,-I am, sir, yours faithfully,
HENRY E. POLLOCK. ́
Hongkong, 23rd April, 1898.
PLAGUE MEASURES.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE
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TO THE EDITOR OF THE "DAILY PRESS." SIR,-After reading your excellent leader in this morning's issue my "troubled soul " forces me to write, although my talk will finally be probably consigned to the waste paper basket, or be pigeon-holed until the next plague epidemic comes round.
200 to 300 Chinese, and into which lanes the sun never shines from one year's end to another.
What is wanted to remedy this evil is the hearty interest of one or more of our local philanthropists, who would build, as an experi- ment, a block of model lodging houses with all necessary sanitary arrangements. The experi- ment has been tried most successfully in London, where a poor man can get a bed for a penny, a breakfast for a penny, a dinner for twopence, and tea or supper for a penny, or fivepence a day. I am strongly of opinion that the same results could be produced here for ten cents a day. And the most important feature would be habits of cleanliness. All Chinese labourers, chair coolies, cargo coolies, 'ricksha coolies, and such like, earn easily twenty to twenty-five cents per day, so there is no very great financial difficulty about this suggestion.'
DAILY PRESS." DEAR SIR,It is gratifying to note that the Sanitary Board has changed some of the its measures adopted to grapple with the plague; but it is to be hoped that the following measures which appear to inflict hardship on the people may be modified or done away with.
The medical inspection of vessels from infected ports should be discontinued, however clever the doctors may be they cannot say that a man suffers from plague before the disease has developed, and it takes six to nine days to show itself. Moreover, the doctors who
2nd-We are all agreed that what is wanted is conduct such medical inspection can be better
to inculcate social bahits of cleanliness amongst employed in looking after the sick and dying. the Chinese. Hence I would suggest to the Go- But if the Sanitary Board should think that
vernment that free public baths and free latrines any good will come of such medical inspection, for the Chinese should at once enter into their then let it be conducted in such a way as will policy. The question at once arises, how to ac not cause unnecessary delay to vessels and pass-complish this desirable object? As an experi. engers, as in the cases of the steamers Tai On and Hoi Tong.
At present those who die of plague are buried without any ceremony, at all. As a rule the Chinese respect the remains of their deceased relatives, so much so that even when their relatives die at such a long distance off as America, they go to the expense of sending the remains back to China for burial. Therefore to bury the bodies of the Chinese without observ- ing their religious rites is just as dreadful as to bury a Christian without reading the burial service over his grave. I think this is a matter that should engage the attention of the Sani- tary Board.
The Chinese have not the faintest idea what powers the officers of the Saintary Board have, and what they havn't, and so it would not be a bad idea to issue a proclamation, setting forth the duties and powers of these officers in con. nection with the cleansing or disinfecting of houses.
With regard to any furniture or fixtures which it may be found necessary to destroy. I would suggest that compensation should be made in cases where the people are poor and cannot afford to replace the property destroyed, and that the leading Chinese be encouraged to start a subscription for this purpose. The Chinese here are well known for their generosity and it was only the other day when they sub. scribed enormous sums of money to give cheap rice to the poor people in Canton, and I feel confident that if such a subscription as I suggest were started they would come forward readily.
There is one more point I wish to touch upon, and that is the cleansing of houses. As the oleansing gangs cannot cleanse many houses in a day, it would be far better to leave the Chinese to cleanse their own houses withia al
ment, engage a large godown somewhere in the most crowded district, purchase one hundred Soochow tubs and place them around the walls at reasonable distances, put a tap to each bath and allow the use of soap. If the bather wants hot water it could be easily sup- plied at say one cent a bucket, as at Shanghai, and each bather should bring his own towel and cloth with him. Suppose you allow half-an-hour to each bather--a very liberal time-that means nearly four thousand five hundred people being cleansed in twelve hours, Say you ultimately had ten bath houses, that means forty-five thousand baths in twelve hours. To each of these places I would establish a free public latrine. The starting of such a bath house would cer tainly cost less than a thousand dollars and the up-keep would certainly be less than one hundred dollars per month. It will be argued
that the Chinese would not visit these bath
houses. I think they would, if no objection- able regulations were attached. There was a man not so long ago I heard of taken to a medical missionary hospital away up the coast, supposed to be suffering from a loathsome skin disease. They put him in a hot bath and it was found to be nothing but filth and dirt. Any observant person will see on going along any side street the improved tendency there is amongst the Chinese to wash themselves. They squat on the side channels with a small tub of water containing about one pint ot water, dip & small cloth in the water, and rub themselves over. Now, if they were encouraged to have a proper bath free they would in my opinion very quickly revel in the luxury. The cleansing of their living and sleeping apartments would follow as & natural consequence.
3rd-One other item, which I think needs immediate attention, is that into the many drains
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and stench traps in the public streets, at least one bucket of water diluted with some disin. fectant should be poured every day. There are hundreds of these open brick stench traps on the footpaths of the colony into which no rain can ever run and into which no water is ever. poured; which give forth at times some of the vilest smells. No doubt in many there is no water at all, while in others it must have be- come stagnant and patrid. This duty could easily be delegated to the city scavenger.
Hoping these suggestions may lead to some practical results.-I am, &c.,
CLEANLINESS.
Hongkong, 25th April, 1898.
DAILY PRESS.
J
TO THE EDITOR OF THE 或者
SIB, Your correspondent who signs himself "Cleanliness" is to be complimented on his suggestion that the Government should place free public bath-houses and free latrines in various parts of the colony for the use of the native population. It would be much cheaper in the long run than inviting the plague by filth and then attempting in a spasmodic way
to root it out.
If the latrines were, as he suggested, attached to the bath-houses, being sunk into the ground so that the floors were at a lower level than the baths the water flowing out of the baths would flush the latrines and thus keep them clean and free from smell, the water thus doing double work.
I hope another year will see this reform given effect to.
RESIDENT.
Hongkong, 27th April, 1898.
THE DEFENCES OF HONGKONG.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "
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DAILY PRESS. SIR, I note that Sir William Robinson's frank statement as to the defencelessness of Hongkong to a representative of the Press has called down upon him the disapproval of the Secretary of State for the Colonies and apparently of a large following of the Govern- ment. Doubtless they would look upon it as a serious indiscretion on his part to acknowledge that successive governments had neglected to put the important colony of Hongkong into a fit state to repel an invading force, and as exposing our weakness to Powers inimical to Great Britain. From their point of view he had no business to make such an exposure of the weakness of Hongkong or to have embarrassed the Government by adding to the pressure which is being brought on them to reotify this glaring error of leaving Hongkong for years an easy pray to an attack in force either from the south, or still more so from the north
There is, however, another side to this ques- tion. Sir William Robinson has on more than one occasion pressed upon the Home Govern- ment the necessity of obtaining a strip of the colony to be placed in a position to repel territory on the mainland opposite to enable
an invader who might suddenly seize and fortify the Kowloon heights and occupy and fortify Mirs Bay, a course which would render Hong. kong untenable.
Did the Government act on his advice ? Apparently not, if the reported official denial that negotiations had been going on in Peking to that end last October was correct.
very much doubt if that denial was correct; neverthe. less the Government failed to press for the necessary cession of territory, for who can doubt that had the Government insisted on the cession or lease of a few square miles of hilly country the Chinese Government would have successfully opposed it. Goodness knows that we have never lacked for ample excuse for taking it, both on the score of constant breaches of treaties on the part of China and for the murder of many innocent missionaries in various parts of the country at the instigation of the gentry and the officials, crowned by the, dastardly murder of defenceless women and chil dren at Kucheng. Germany receives the cassion of one quarter of a province as compensation for the murder of two missionaries; Russia re- ceives an immense province merely because she wants it, and France a magnificent harbour and the adjacent country because she says she wants that to protect a colony more than a hundred miles away by land and three hundred miles
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