1905: TST takes off

I've read before about the rapid growth of Tsim Sha Tsui (TST)  at the start of the 20th Century, and that certainly shows up in the Jurors Lists.

Here's how the number of jurors with a Kowloon address grows from 1896 to 1905:

While I've got the spreadsheets open, let's check a few more hunches. It seemed the latest (1905) list is a lot more accurate. To see if that's true, here's a breakdown of the Kowloon jurors by whether their address just shows "Kowloon", or also gives a building and / or street name:

There's more of an improvement than I expected in the middle years, but 1905 is when there's the big jump in quality. Whoever was responsible for the 1905 list took a lot more care about collecting a full address.

Can we also track how building progressed across the peninsula?

Here are addresses broken down by street:

We can see which are the early roads to be lived in - There's Middle Road, near the old shoreline, and Canton Road near the wharves. Kimberley Road was also an early and popular choice, as it runs along a ridge giving residents a good view across to the island, and the chance of a breeze.  And there's Haiphong Road, whose main source of Jurors is the Kowloon Hotel.

The smaller, "filling-in" roads start appearing through the decade, but really take off in 1904-5.

So, no great revelations, but another way at looking at the development of Kowloon.

Regards, David

Notes:

1. In the last table, several street names have changed since 1905. Where that's happened, I show the older, 1905 name first in italics. That's the name you'll see in the jurors lists. The second name shows what the streetname was changed to in 1909. There are couple of cases (Sainam Avenue and Wuchow Terrace) where the name must have been changed again since. Does anyone know their present-day names?
2. For that last table, where an address only gave a building name I've included it in the count for the nearest street. If I can't identify the building's location (ie Bay View, Eranee Bungalow, Holyrood, Holywood, Gas works, Roseneak, Roseneath, Seymour Villas), I've included it in the 'other' count. The Gas Works is also included in the 'other' line, as it was up on Jordan Road, out of our area of interest.