3
dealt with, in Poona City. The advisability of employing British soldiers to
make house-to-house inspection in the cantonment as well as in the city was
brought to the notice of Government in the Collector's No. 2465 of 28th
February 1897. In that letter Mr. Lamb expressed the following opinion :—
" The aid of the soldiers is needed because the men are available, they are disciplined,
they can be relied on to be thorough and honest in their inspection, while no native agency
is available, or could be relied on if it were."
7. It was finally decided that volunteers should bo called for from the
British and Native armies to assist in the work of stamping out the plague, and
a Committee was appointed by Government Resolution No. 1275/765P of 9th March
1897 for the parpóse of carrying out under the orders of Government the
measures to be taken to suppress and prevent the spread of bubonic plague
within the limits of the City and Suburban Municipalities of Poona and the
Poona Cantonment. Powers to enable the Committee to perform the duties
entrusted to it were conferred by the same rules. Additions to and modifica-
tions in these rules have been subsequently made by Government Resolutions
Nos. 1810/120IP of 2nd April, 2190/1629P of 24th April, 2396/1861P of 3rd May and 2591/1388A.P of 12th
May 1897. The Committee as constituted on March 9th consisted of myself as
Chairman, and Lieutenant-Colonel C. R. Phillipps, I.S.O., and Surgeon-Captain
W. W. O. Beveridge, A. M. S., as members. On June 3rd, 1897, Lieutenant-
Colonel Phillipps who had been obliged by ill-health to take leave to England,
ceased to be a member of the Committee (vide Government Resolution No. 308/22931
of 3rd June 1897).
8. Prior to the appointment of the Plague Committee a General Plague
Hospital had been erected at the Sangarn to which the plague patients at the
Sassoon Hospital had been removed. Considerable progress had been made in the
construction of a General Segregation Camp on the Shankarshet Road and sanc-
tion had been accorded to the construction of Plague Hospitals by members of
the Hindu and Musalman communities, and in the case of the latter commu-
nity of a segregation camp as well. Surgeon-Major J. P. Barry, who had been
appointed by Government Resolution No. 876/ 346P- of 17th February 1897, to do duty
in the city of Poona, had arrived on the 27th of that month and had been placed
by me in charge of the general conservancy of the city and also entrusted with
the supervision of segregation camps and plague hospitals.
9. As already stated the Plague Committee was invested with authority
over Poona City, Poona Suburban Municipal district and Poona Cantonment.
The area and population of each of these is given below :—·
Name of District.
Poona City ...
Poona Suburban limits ...
Poona Cantonment...
Total ...
Area in square miles.
4-9
3-75
4.25
12.9
Population (by
Census of 1891).
118,790
7,506
35,094
161,390
Remarks.
Includes persons travel-
ling by rail.
In the accompanying map (Appendix 1) the boundaries of these three dis-
tricts are shown, and the situations of the principal places connected with the
operations are indicated.
II.—THE PLAN OF CAMPAIGN.
Before describing the measures taken by the Plague Committee to perform
its appointed task, measures which were perhaps the most drastic that had ever
been taken in British India to stamp out an epidemic, it is advisable to give
some account of the circumstances which in the Committee's opinion rendered
them necessary.
2. By the end of February 1897 the bubonic plague had got a firm hold
of the city of Poona. Spreading from Bombay where it had originated in