Dead House, Kennedy Town [????-????]

To get an idea of what this building might have been used for, we'll look at an older building in Hong Kong, the I Tsz.

Elizabeth Sinn's book Power and Charity - A Chinese Merchant Elite in Colonial Hong Kong explains on p.18-19 that in the 1850s and 1860s the I Tsz had several functions related to the dead and dying among the Chinese population:

1. A community hall to house death tablets.

This was the I Tz's original purpose, also acting as a temporary holding site until a person's death tablet could be returned to their hometown.

2. A temporary holding area for the remains of dead people.

Those remains should be returned to their hometown for burial. In the late 19th century, few of the Chinese residents had been born in Hong Kong, so their hometown was likely somewhere across the border in southern China. As it would take some time to arrange the transport of the remains, they'd need to be stored somewhere in the meantime and the I Tsz provided that service.

3. Short-term accommodation for critically ill people who were about to die.

Quoting Elizabeth Sinn, the I Tsz had "[...] six or eight small rooms at the back of the I-ts'z were let out to dying people. [...] Some of the I-tsz's inmates did survive, but its main purpose was to house the dying. In fact patients who were considered not ill enough were sometimes turned away. [,,,] Underlying this phenomenon was the peculiar Chinese attitude toward sickness and death. It was considered unclean to have someone die in the house."

I'm not sure which of these roles the Dead House in Kennedy Town performed, but I'll make some guesses about the conditions around the start of the 20th century:

1. The I Tsz still holds death tablets today, so it would have at that time too.
2. There was a continued and growing need to house the remains of dead people until they could be shipped home.
3. The Tung Wah hospital had replaced the I Tsz as the organisation looking after the dying.

So if the I Tsz was taking care of the death tablets and the Tung Wah Hospital was looking after the dying in their hospital buildings, I'll guess the Dead House was handling #2.

There's a possible confirmation in this note about the Tung Wah Coffin Home:

The Tung Wah Coffin Home has its origins in the Slaughter House Coffin Home, which was built next to the Slaughter House Cemetery in Kennedy Town in 1875 with funds from Man Mo Temple and which was initially run by the temple’s general committee, but later brought under the management of Tung Wah Hospital with the public’s overwhelming backing. In 1899, Tung Wah received the support of the government in relocating the facility to its current site in Sandy Bay, at the same time renaming it the Tung Wah Coffin Home.

So was this Dead House the "Slaughter House Coffin Home" mentioned above? I think so - it was certainly close to the Slaughter House (Abbattoir) - but there are a couple of uncertainties:

• This building first appears on maps in the 1890s, not the 1875 date given above.
• This building continues to be labelled "Dead House" on maps for several years after the coffin home in Sandy Bay opens.

So I think it was very likely the Slaughter House Coffin Home, but it will need some more investigation. 

Hi Thomas, thanks for letting me know. I won't be able to read them unfortunately, but do they mention anything about when this building was built?

Carl Smith card 174901 notes a 17 Dec 1875 article in the Daily Press that mentions "a shed at Belcher's Bay used for depositing bodies in coffins when brought from San Francisco." I don't think it's likely to have been the same building as the Dead House, but it may have been its predecessor.

Thanks Lawrence, the old building you remember for its breeze certainly sounds like a match for this building. Roughly what year would that have been?