3-086-306 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Scenes in Plague-Stricken Bombay: unloading van from a plague hospital, Mahalakshmi burning-ground, 1898. 'The first announcement of the outbreak...occasioned a tremendous exodus - chiefly of women and children - but the public mind is now considerably reassured. What the native Indian fears almost more than the plague is segregation, so the Lieutenant-General's assurance that there would be no separation of husband and wife, and respect shown to the purdah system, may possibly account for the considerable decrease in the number of fugitives...Plague riots are happily subsiding...These riots have been, of course, occasioned by the abhorrence of all castes alike to the publicity and supposed disgrace of the hospital system And as long as that abhorrence is as wide-spread and as inherent in the most fundamental ideals of native life as it now is, the utmost energy and zeal of Plague Committees will be powerless finally to stamp out the fell disease which so continually counts its victims by the thousand. That the enemy can be kept at bay by the splendid work of the sanitary authorities has, however, been proved in the past and is at the present moment being proved afresh.' From "Illustrated London News", 1898.