To the Editor of the "Nortu-Curna Datty News."
Sm,—As letters to both the Health Office and the Police do not bring even a reply, let alone any redress. may I beg space in your columns in the hope that this may catch the eye of someone on the Council, or at least someone in a position to alter the state of affairs.
I am one of many living in the Wayside district (for the simple reason I cannot live elsewhere) paying rental and rates on foreign house property, and faced and practically surrounded, by filthy native slum property. On my left is a native market place which opens up at 3 a.m., continues to about midday, when' it is cleaned out and all garbage dumped on the waste ground facing my dining room window. A fruit market has now grown up after market hours on the public footpath outside, and the noisy shouting of the sellers goes on to near midnight. On complaint I am informed, "These fruit sellers pay $1 per night for the pitch so must remain'! Filthy coolies arrive at the market during the evening, each with his straw mat bed. They proceed to knock out the contents of the bed on the market stalls, select a pitch, and settle down for the night, this at times after a noisy fight over pinching each other's pitches!
I wonder if such a state of affairs would be tolerated in the Western district? I rather think not. We "Fast-enders" get a very different treatment in all ways. Why? Oh, the joys of life amongst our native friends in this model Foreign Settlement (7) Three hours' rest per night, and even this broken by the noise of chow pedlars ete. often feel like taking the law in my own hands. Surely we are justly entitled to rest and quiet for more than three hours per night. More than one person in Wayside is seriously considering—withholding payment of rates until at least something in the way of improvement comes about, and I think they are justified.
T am, ete., Shanghai. July 26.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.