96
18. Lieutenant Owen Lewis of the 19th. Bombay Infantry was appointed
segregation officer, in general charge of all the operations conducted under this
head. Segregation parties accompanied the search parties to remove the healthy
inmates of houses in which cases of plague were discovered. Much difficulty was
experienced in the performance of this work, as the other inmates of a house in
which there was a sick man soon adopted the method of absenting themselves at
the time of day when a visit from the segregating party might be expected.
19. Four segregation camps were erected, one for Muhamrnadans, one for
Parsis, one for the Cantonment, and a general camp. An attempt to induce
people to live in segregation camps by the offer of free food proved ineffectual.
Mr. Rand was at first not without hopes that compulsion would not be neces-
sary. He stated :
" When I arrived in Poona so much of the camp as was then in existence was open to any
of the inmates of infected houses that chose to come there. There was then no agency to
compel people to come to the camp, and hardly any came there of their own accord. After
my arrival and before the employment of The military on plague duty, I endeavoured to
attract the inhabitants of plague houses to the camp by offering one free meal a day to every
one in camp, and at the same time allowing the inmates to return to the city in the day-time
to follow their ordinary avocations. Even this inducement failed to bring any considerable
number of people to the camp, and I was forced to realise that a non-compulsory system of
segregation was impracticable in Poona."
20. In all 3,077 persons were detained in the camps, of whom 36 were
found to be suffering from plague. The persons detained in camp are said to
have improved in condition during their stay, no doubt owing to the healthy
conditions of the life in the open, combined with good and abundant food. Free
food was given, in practice, to almost all the inmates of the camps,
Search Parties.
21. The necessity of employing British soldiers on plague duty being
agreed on, the difficulty which the Plague Committee had to face was how to
minimise the annoyance which their employment would necessarily cause to the
people. The Hindus of Poona are notoriously conservative in their customs, and
Muhammadans everywhere resent any interference with their domestic privacy.
The only way by which the efficiency of the British soldier could be made use
of, and at the same time the prejudices of the native population conciliated, was
by inducing respectable natives to accompany the men on their rounds.
22. With this idea Mr. Rand called a meeting of the leading native gentle-
men on llth. March, and succeeded in enrolling 51 volunteers for this work.
The services of additional native gentlemen were also advertised for on
March 12th and 16th. They were required to point out to the British soldiers
the cook-rooms and god-rooms of the houses searched, to prevent the troops
through ignorance of the customs of the country unintentionally hurting the
susceptibilities of the natives in these matters. The case of purdah women was
met by attaching ladies to each party for the purpose of searching the women's
apartments. The work began on March 13th and ended on May 19th. The
details of the system are fully described in the report of the Chairman. His
general remarks on the working of the system were as follows :
" The attitude of the inhabitants of the city towards the search parties was on the whole
friendly, though people who had sick in their houses usually tried to conceal them. The
Brahmin community was the only one whose behaviour towards the troops employed was
generally unfriendly. In the Brahmin quarters the troops met with a good deal of obstruc-
tion, which, however, always stopped short of forcible resistance.
Of the native gentlemen who volunteered to accompany the search parties, the majority
did not attend regularly and some did not attend at all. Of the gentlemen who have rendered
the best service, the majority are retired native officers."
23. In all 218,124 houses were searched, and 338 plague cases and 64 corpses
were discovered. Every house in the city was searched on an average eleven
times, and even in his first report of progress Mr. Rand noted that the search
had the effect of making people report cases or remove them to hospital
voluntarily.