37
as a matter of fact it was impossible to carry this out strictly. In the
first place a number of the inmates would almost certainly be absent at
the time of inoculation, and in the second place it was an almost inva-
riable request that at least one member of the family might be exempted
from inoculation to look after and cook for the rest, while they were
down with fever. There were also a certain number of weaklings and
the extremely old and extremely young, whom it was not considered
advisable to inoculate. To have sent these to camp by themselves
would have been impossible.
Captain Cuppage writes on the subject as follows :—
" In deciding whether an infected house or chawl has to be partly or wholly
" vacated, so many varying circumstances have to be taken into consideration and
" weighed on their merits, such as the past or present Plague history of the house or
" chawl, the nature of its inhabitants,—particularly the cleanliness or otherwise of their
" habits,—its construction from a sanitary point of view, the virulence of the epide-
li mic, the sanitary condition of the dwellings in its immediate neighbourhood, the
" number of people residing in it, &c., that it is not easy to lay down fixed rules.
" As a general rule, however, I insisted on partial if not total evacuation of a build-
" ing in which there had been, within a short space of time, three or more deaths of
" such a suspicious nature as justified me in attributing them to Plague. There were a
" few instances in which houses were vacated wholly, though only one or two deaths
" of a suspicious nature had been discovered in them, but the circumstances under
" which this was done were very exceptional. During the latter portion of the epide-
" mic Kolbhatwadi, part of the Dhobi Talao section, off Kalbadevi Road, became
" very highly infected. The houses are miserable hovels, densely packed together
*' and overcrowded to an incredible degree. Moreover, they are tenanted by poor
" people, whose habits are not of the cleanest. I evacuated houses wholesale in
" this locality, and in one case there had been only one death of a suspicious kind ;
" but as the house adjoined another in which there had been several deaths, I deemed
" it advisable to vacate it. The people made no opposition whatever. I am happy
" to say the results were highly satisfactory. Upwards of 6 to 700 people were moved
" out of a highly infected area and kept for a month to six weeks in the health
''camp. I venture to think my action, in this particular case, was instrumental in
" saving many lives. The landlords, of course, raised an objection, but I reasoned
" with them."
" On the whole, evacuation of infected houses has not been carried out to the
" same extent that it was during the last epidemic. I had considerable difficulty in
* inducing some Parsis to leave a house in Dhunji Street which had had only two
" suspicious cases. Thanks to Khan BahadurFakirjiJiwaji and Dr. Bomanji Master's
" assistance, they acted upon my advice. Dhunji Street though, strange to say,
" comparatively free this year, had a very bad history last epidemic, and, knowing
" how rapidly it spreads once it takes a hold of this locality, I departed from what I had
" laid down as a general rule for such cases. Difficulty was also experienced with
" the Mahommedans in Islampura, but thanks to Lieutenant Browne's firmness, com-
" bined with tact, there was no serious disturbance of any kind. Liberal concessions
" were made with regard to evacuation of infected houses, the inhabitants of which
" submitted to inoculation, and as a greater part of the inoculations performed in
" Kumbarwada were confined to contacts and people who would otherwise have
" become evicts, it was chiefly due to inoculation that evacuation of houses was
" carried out on a much smaller scale during the last epidemic in Kumbarwada."
Captain Lock found his principal difficulty with the bhayas and
landlords, who were anxious about their rent. He got over it by