24
people cleared out into the fields. They no doubt carried infection with them to the
camps in Vincent Eoad, especially the Wadalla people, and had also a great deal
of small-pox with them. The Plague cases used to be carried back to the village
from the camps at night and left there and in this way several people were taken-
and sent to hospital.
After the first out-break of Plague, the disease seems to have settled nowhere in
particular, but cropped up here and there all over the District, and in this respect
seems to have followed the same course as in former years.
Although the number of vagrants and starving people, which came into and
passed through this District, were enormous, still they appear to have added very
little to the Epidemic.
Central
District.
The course of the Epidemic in the Central District is described by
Captain Pritchard as follows :—
In Umarkhadi and Chakla, from June 1899 to November 1899, there was very
little Plague, but it began to increase thereafter and reached its worst stage in the
first week of April 1900. Since this it has been gradually declining. As in last
year, so in this, the Plague started in Mahomed Khan Pakhadi amongst the
low-caste Hindus, gradually spreading thence over the whole section. This locality
is well-known to be the most insanitary portion of these sections. A few dead rats
were met with in the course of disinfection work, but nothing remarkable has been
experienced through them in these sections. All the localities attacked last year
were re-infected and attacked this year, as also the communities inhabiting them,
bat Mahomed Khan Pakhadi was the central spot from which re-infection was
spread.
This year is noticeably different from previous epidemics, since there was no
panic, no flight of numbers of people, though the total mortality has been greater
than any previous years. The poor were again the heaviest sufferers,- and famine
refugees added considerably to the mortality, the number of road-side cases exceed-
ed those of former years, and they were almost all destitute beggars. In order to
aid the attempts that were made to send these refugees back to their country,
house-owners wore told not to receive them in their houses. Five or six deaths
monthly used to occur in those houses, where the beggars lived by hiring by
mutual subscription.
In 2nd Nagpada, the epidemic commenced in the middle of December 1899,
and attained its highest form on the loth March 1900. Since then there has been
a gradual decline. Dead rats were found to some extent in November and December
1899, in Kuzipura and Duncan Road. These localities were the worst places in last
year's epidemic and so again in the present year. But if large numbers had not
been inoculated the deaths from Plague would have been far more numerous.
Captuin Bolton reports in No. 158, Huzria Mohalla, inhabitants all Mahomedans, un-
inoculated, there were 7 cases discovered in one day on the top floor. The Munici-
pal hose was used to disinfect the house from top to bottom, and since then there
has not been a single case of Plague, though this is an extremely insanitary locality
where Plague has recurred every year.
The Plague started in Kazipnra, then went to 177 Grant Road, and then to
Duncan Road, all mostly inhabited by the poorer classes of Hindus. These people,
however, got themselves inoculated in large numbers, and the result was that deaths
from Plague became most frequent among Mahomedans and new-comers, In this
respect the year under report differs, from others..