35
spect of a severe epidemic, it was felt that something must be done
to further improve matters. The weak points of the system then
in operation have been indicated above and the lines along which im-
provement might be looked for were clear. The police required to be
stimulated, and the people had in some way to be induced to give
information themselves. After much consideration the following scheme
was introduced :—Every policeman on duty in the City was provided
with a small book of tickets in foil and counterfoil ; whenever he heard
of a death in his beat he was to verify the address and offer a ticket
to a member of the funeral party ; and at the time of reporting the
matter the Recording Officer was to initial the counterfoil in token
of the information having been registered and passed on to the District
Officer. For every ticket issued the constable was to get annas 2.
The Officers on duty at the various cemeteries were at the same time
instructed to ask for the ticket whenever a body was brought for disposal,
unless a certificate from a volunteer or some other satisfactory document
indicating the address was forthcoming, and at the principal cemeteries
a small staff of messengers was organised under the supervision of a few
reliable men who were to return with the funeral party and verify
the address in every case where a ticket or other satisfactory certificate
was not forthcoming. This scheme, thanks to the co-operation of the
Commissioner of Police, Mr. H. Kennedy, was introduced at the begin-
ning of February. The people readily fell in with the idea of obtaining
tickets from the police and the work of the police considerably improved.
The people in the few cases when they came to the cemeteries unprovided
with the necessary ticket or certificate made no difficulty about taking
a messenger back with them to indicate the house from which they came,
and the number of untraceable deaths fell from about 10 to about 6
or 7 per cent.
This system might have continued to work satisfactorily, but on the
one hand the reward of two annas was not a very great one to the man,
though it might amount up to considerable sum for the Municipality
to pay. One case came to notice where a policeman issued a ticket
to a relation (whose wife died of plague) without registering the address.
He lost 2 annas for the ticket, but his object was to save his friends
any trouble in the way of disinfection, &c., and it was only by chance
that the District Officer found out the circumstances. The Police also
had other duties to perform ; and while for one reason or another
they missed a few deaths or gave wrong addresses in a certain number
of cases, it was impossible to hold such failure to be a dereliction of duty
or to demand their punishment. On the other hand the work was alien
to their proper duties which occasionally suffered in consequence of the
registration work, and the Police Commissioner not unnaturally, as soon
as the mortality approached the normal, pressed that his men might be
relieved of all connection with death registration. The system was also
somewhat cumbrous inasmuch as the. police force as a body are not able
to read and write, and while the interposition of Recording Officers was