3
19. In March plague broke out amongst the Mhárs of Choin village, who
behaved in the sanie way, but they had two or three cases afterwards in their
camps.
20. In the Mhár hamlet of the Khar village there was no case of plague
at all, and they were never moved out.
21. Dánda requires a chapter almost to itself. This place gave me more
trouble and work than the whole of the rest of Bándra.
22. Plague did not break out in Dánda till about the 12th February. The
villagers kept a cordon round their village, and only allowed a few of their
number to go outside to sell their fish, and to bring in all that was required.
The plague gradually moved north, and at last came to Dánda. When it did
come it spread very quickly. Several boat-loads of villagers went off to Alibág,
many went οff to Jejuri, Tárápur and Poona, including the Patel.
23. I remember one of the chief objections raised by the village priest to
the hospital was that Mhárs would come there and would touch the sick and
dead. 1 often thought of this afterwards when these villagers used to entreat
me to send Mhárs to remove their dead relatives, and utterly refused even to
touch their own dead parents, leaving the Mhárs to carry out the cremation.
Caste goes to the wind on these occasions.
24. Most of the Danda people camped in the fields round the village, whilst
a considerable number camped at Santa Cruz. Some refused to go out at all,
and some who did go oui came back again by the order, they said, of their village
god. I ordered every one to leave the village and camp outside. My orders were
not obeyed, but when 1 went back in the evening to see if the people had
gone, I found the men standing about with sticks in their hands. I called them
together and told them that on the morrow every soul would have to go, even
if I had to call out a regiment to enforce my order. I got some armed police
on the morrow and a company of the 22nd Native Infantry marched through
the village. The people then saw I was in earnest and obeyed. I had trouble
with them thereafter, it is true, but my orders were always obeyed though
reluctantly.
25. Only one man remained in .Dánda, and he was a blind man whom I
allowed to stay behind.
26. I allowed the Dánda sick to remain in the village with one or two
relatives until the hospital at Khar was ready. In some cases the sick were
put in little temporary huts just outside the village. Very often their relatives
did not tend them. The dead were abandoned sometimes. Children were left
with the dead and dying. Great inhumanity was shown by the Dánda people
generally to their caste people, and I regret to say by the Christians too in some
cases. They appeared to think it was the duty of the Municipality to remove
and cremate the dead, to tend the sick, and to take care of and feed the children
of the sick. I had three Police Sepoys to assist me for Danda only. Two of
them died of plague, the third I sent away for fear he should die also.
27. The Municipal Inspectors had great trouble in getting the dead re-
moved and buried or cremated. The Mhárs had just as much objection to touch-
ing the corpses of those who had died from plague as had others, although they
were liberally paid for the work. In fact they were often pressed for this work
and made to do it, no other alternative remained open when the relatives refused
to remove the dead and could not be found.
28. The Bándra Municipality were very fortunate in their Inspectors.
The Head Inspector is Mr. Newman, a pensioned Sergeant, R. A. He did ex-
cellent work and was fully occupied. He never shirked plague work, and in fact,
as he often told me, he" defied the plague." The second Inspector under him
was Mr. Pestonji, who did excellent work too, but alas ! he died of plague about
the middle of March. A third Inspector, a Hindu named Baila Narayan, also
did excellent work. Mr. Brewer, who was appointed a Special Inspector under
me, also did good work in this respect.
29. The hospital sheds at Dánda were not ready till about the same time
as the Khar Hospital, so that I could not properly segregate the sick until these