Police Court. It was, however, again found impracticable to bring the inmates, of establishments intended for the use of Chinese only, under periodical medical examination. Moreover, it was now found impossible to carry out this vigorous policy effectively without extensive employment of paid informers, and this proved in after years to be a serious flaw in the system. Public feeling on the subject of C. D. Acts was by this time undergoing a change in England, where the conviction of the necessity of extending the powers of the Imperial Act, on which the Hongkong Ordinance of 1867 had been founded, was steadily gaining ground. In Hongkong there was at this time, amongst those who interested themselves in public affairs, no general feeling for or against the working of Sir Richard's new Ordinance, but the magisterial functions now exercised, as it were in secret, by the Registrar General, were looked upon by some of the unofficial Members of Council as a source of mischief. Dr. R. Young, in charge of the Lock Hospital with a daily average of 34 in-patients, reported favourably on the working of the Ordinance (10 of 1867). That the type of disease had gradually become more amenable to treatment, appeared from the fact that the average number of days, during which patients were detained in hospital, was reduced in 1871 to a shorter period than had ever been reached during the 14 years of the hospital's existence. Surgeons, well qualified to give an opinion, testified in 1871 that at this time there was no place in the East so free from syphilitic disease as Hongkong.
During the interregnum of the Hon. W. T. Mercer some important events took place in the sphere of education. The premature death of Miss Baxter (June 30, 1865) was a great loss for Hongkong, but the Baxter Schools were continued, first by Miss Oxlad and then by Miss Johnstone, on whom Miss Baxter's mantle had evidently fallen. The establishment, by Bishop Raimondi, of a large and distinctly commercial School (St. Saviour's College) brought into play a healthy emulation between the principal local schools, and this competition acted thenceforth as a prominent factor in the educational movement
