ENG-1952 — Page 243

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1952

of seeing that the Chinese population was accurately informed of the steps taken by Government, and that Government should be similarly informed of the views of the Chinese. The issue, in Chinese, of the Hong Kong Government Gazette was started in 1862, and efforts made to secure accuracy in translation culminated in the establishment of the Cadet Scheme, which pro- vided for the appointment of student-interpreters who would eventually be marked out for the most responsible administrative posts. At the same time, the office of the Registrar-General was made responsible for all questions relating to the Chinese. The problem of

public gaming houses was tackled, and after some attempt at control by licensing they were abolished, chiefly at the insistence of religious opinion at home and in the Colony, though the immediate result was merely to drive them over to the Chinese side of the border in Kowloon City. There was also the great social problem of overcrowding, with associated prob- lems of water supply and sanitation. In 1882, Oswald Chadwick was sent out to the Colony as Special Sanitary Commissioner, and as a result of his report a Sanitary Board was set up in 1883, its powers and duties being defined by a Sanitary Ordinance, though in fact it was not until the plague of 1894 that the problem of overcrowding was seriously tackled.

The growth of the Chinese population led in this period to great changes, and advances, in the field of education. A Board of Education had been estab- lished as early as 1845, composed chiefly of Protestant missionaries, and the establishment of schools with Christian teaching was one of its main objects. In 1865, there was a reversal of policy and a reorganiza- tion; the Board was abolished, and Christian teaching

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