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It has been thought advisable in the past to keep contacts
entirely separate from all other people : this could only be done by
stringent quarantine regulations. They were enforced, but their
stringency defeated their object, and practically no contacts
could be found to segregate. At the beginning of the year under
report, it was decided on account of this consideration to relax
these quarantine regulations almost entirely ; and practically
speaking contacts have been treated in precisely the same way as evicts.
They have been more rigorously disinfected, they have been quartered in
a separate portion of the camp, and district officers have been impressed
with the necessity of sending with them their household goods in order
that the camp master may have some control over them. They were
expected to sleep in camp, and roll-call was held to see whether they
did so, but during the day they were allowed to go to and from
camp with absolute freedom. The camp master had ramosis to assist
him, and almost the only check upon them was that they were not
allowed to take away their cooking pots and furniture till their time
was up. In almost all the few cases that were brought to notice of con-
tacts leaving camp, i.e., failing to sleep there, without permission, they
were traced and brought back to complete their time. The people in
camp were kept under close supervision in regard to their health ;
plague when it occurred among them was almost always detected in its
earliest stages ; the patient was at once sent off to hospital, his hut un-
roofed, disinfected and kept unoccupied for at least 10 days ; and these
precautions were so successful, that in none of the various Municipal camps,
crammed as they were with people from the most highly infected locali-
ties in Bombay, did plague ever appear in epidemic form : and it hardly
ever occurred that there was any suspicion that one person might have
got plague from another in camp. The people in camp were allowed to
go about their ordinary avocations ; but in the cases where, owing to the
sickness of the bread-winner, the distance of the camp from the place of
work, or other cause, the occupants were distressed, they were helped
from the Discretional Relief Fund in the hands of the district or other
officers. The same fund bore the expense of their removal to camp.
Ordinarily people were kept in camp for 10 days, but when the localities
they came from continued seriously infected, or their houses were not
ready for re-occupation, the period was extended ; and, on the other
hand, when at the height of the epidemic the pressure upon the available
accommodation became extreme, the officers in charge were authorised
to reduce the period, if absolutely necessary, to a minimum of 3 days.
The following further account of the camps in C Ward is given by
Lieutenant Warneford :—
" On arrival in camp the people's clothes, bedding, boxes and other furniture
" were thoroughly disinfected and then placed in the sun. This disinfection was
" carried out by a special gang which went round to each of the three camps once
" a day, and it was also the duty of this gang to disinfect all huts in the camps that
" had been vacated on the discharge of their occupants, so that the huts might be
" perfectly clean and healthy on the arrival of fresh occupants. The clothing and