98
Municipality. He gives the following table from which an approximate estimate
can be obtained of the true plague mortality. The population of Poona City is
118,790 with.a density of 24,242 persons to the square mile:
Month.
December
January
February
March
April 1st to 20th
Add — reported plague deaths down
to May 20th, from April 2lst
Quinquennial
average.
261
261
225
244
178
Actual.
270
497
1,009
1,656
534
...
Total Estimated Plague Mortality
Difference,
9
236
784
1,412
356
104
2,901
30. On these figures Mr. Rand remarks :
" The estimate of the total plague mortality thus arrived at is probably too low rather
than too high. In the first place it has to be remembered that the general health, apart from
plague, was good throughout the epidemic. Another cause that operated to keep down
mortality during the period the military search parties were employed was the removal of
sick persons from the city into the surrounding villages. I believe that this practice did
much to lower the general mortality of the city, and it certainly accounts to a great extent
for the exceptional lowness of the mortality from causes other than plague during the period
from April 21st to May 20th."
31. A fact which Mr. Band omitted to take into consideration would lend
additional strength to his argument for placing the plague mortality so far above
the recorded deaths from plague. Even before the house-to-house inspections had
begun, he had himself reported that fear of the plague itself was driving numbers
of people away from the city. The experience of Bombay was that the period of
the greatest exodus corresponded,not with the period (March) of the most vigorous
measures for its suppression, but with the period (January) of the greatest
severity of the epidemic. The Collector of Ahmednagar also reports that as
early as the third week of February, the city of Ahmednagar was being flooded
with increasing numbers of fugitives from Poona. The actual population of Poona
City during the latter half of February up to the end of the fine season was
certainly far below the census population, on which the average death-rate was
calculated,
Compensation.
32. In the month of May the attention of the Government of India was
attracted by a statement in the Press that the granting of compensation for articles
destroyed during the plague operations in Poona City was not conducted on
such liberal terms as in Bombay. The Chairman of the Poona Plague Committee
being asked to report on the system actually followed, replied on May 14th as
follows :
" Of the rules sanctioned for Poona City in Government Resolution No. 1272—765-p. of
March 9th, 1897, No. 9 empowers-the Committee to destroy articles found in infected,
insanitary or overcrowded buildings, while No. 13 provides that no compensation shall
be payable to the owner for property destroyed under Rule 9.
The soldiers, who enter private houses in the performance of their duties in connection
with the operations, belong either to search, fumigation, or limewashing'parties.
Search parties are forbidden by the orders of the Plague Committee to destroy any
property except the mats or bedding of plague patients. The mats or bedding are in
practice destroyed in the presence of the Medical officer who accompanies the search
division. The Medical officers are supplied with cash for the purpose of enabling- them to
pay compensation on the spot for articles destroyed, Fumigation parties are forbidden to
destroy any property whatever. Limewashing parties are instructed to burn all rubbish
found in the houses which they limewash, but are forbidden to destroy property of any
value to the inmates except under the orders of a Medical officer. In order to guard
against any undue destruction of property as rubbish officers commanding limewashing
divisions have been ordered to visit as far as possible all houses which are limewashed and