Blake Garden

Since Hong Kong opened its port in 1841,the colonial government implied their jurisdiction by dividing the living places of Westerners and the Chinese, therefore, majority of Chinese people were moved to the Tai Ping Shan districts and the Westerners dwelled in the north-coast of Hong Kong Island, which was present-day Central (Chan, 2019) .With the congested and unhygienic living environment, such as handled the sewage and disposal of garbage in improper ways, Tai Ping Shan district was bore the brunt of the outbreak of bubonic plague in 1984 and most of the infected patients were the underprivileged Chinese residents from that district. Owing to the in-depth investigations on the root causes of the plague which were intimately tied with the crowd and insanitary living conditions in Tai Ping Shan by the medical departments and suggestions of dismantling the whole districts raised by the sanitary board and medical experts, Tai Ping Shan was criticized as “a source of grave danger to public health” (Hong Kong Telegraph, 1894). Meanwhile, A. J Leach, who was the Acting Attorney General, pointed out that the unhygienic condition was undesirable to reside, and the only way to keep the district clean was to devastate all 384 housings there (Hong Kong Hansard, 1894). The government consequently adopted the Tai Ping Shan Resumption Ordinance to compel the removal of residents, demolish all the tenants and decontaminate the soils proposed by Dr. James Alfred Lowson, he deemed that the soils and materials underneath of Ta Ping Shan were infected by the bacteria, to prevent the spread and relapse of bubonic plague (Cheng, 2019).

Moreover, to prevent Chinese people’s residential, the government razed the district to the ground of Tai Ping Shan (Law, 2018) and redeveloped the peripheral area nearby Tai Ping Shan market (Po Hing Fong) as a park and engaged with afforestation for children that beneficial to the residential area beneath Tai Ping Shan street in 1903 (Report of the Medical Officer of Health, the Sanitary Surveyor, and the Colonial Veterinary Surgeon, for the year 1903, 1904).In October 1904, the park was named as Blake Garden to commemorate Sir Henry Arthur Blake, who was the 12th Governor of Hong Kong (The Hong Kong Government Gazette, 1904).

Reference:

鄭宏泰: 《永泰家族：亦政亦商亦逍遙的不同選擇》(香港 : 中華書局，2020年）。
楊祥銀：《殖民權力與醫療空間：香港東華三院與中西醫服務變遷（1894-1941年）》（北京：社會科學文獻出版社，2018年）。
陳天權: 《城市地標：殖民地時代的西式建築》(香港 : 中華書局(香港)有限公司，2019年）。
羅婉嫻：《香港西醫發展史》（香港：中華書局，2018年）。