Reference no: EM133530753

Cholera Strikes Railway Workers in India

Official Report to the British Government (c. 1889)

Regions of active industrial development, such as railroad construction sites, became breeding grounds for the spread of disease because of crowding and deficiencies in sanitation due to rapid population growth. Medical observations and attempts at disease control were growing functions of imperial expansion, in large part to protect European officials and soldiers. Western officials, whether in Europe or in regions being colonized, sent reports of disease and general well-being to ensure progress on projects such as railroad building. Often these reports described horrendous conditions, as in the report on the spread of cholera and other illnesses in India.

All the year round the whole country is very feverish, the months of January and February being slightly less so. The "Lanias" who come down from "Purtabgarh," "Jownpur" and other adjacent districts in Oudh die in great numbers from fever, dysentery and ulcers. These latter are caused by the slightest abrasion of the skin from a flying stone or other slight cause, and in a few days whatever the reason may be, the part becomes a foul ulcer which unless treated at once takes months to cure, if indeed they do not prove incurable. Men may be seen with their legs or arms almost rotting off with these sores. Between the months of March and July the water-supply fails almost entirely for miles, the streams either dry up or become so foul from rotting vegetation that the water is undrinkable. The rainfall of 1888 was much less than the average and the water-supply failed in April; hence in May cholera broke out at "Pali" and spread over the whole length of the district, the mortality being terrible, some 2500 or 3000 labourers and petty contractors being carried off by it; the scare was such that people hurrying away at the first sign of its approach were left by their relatives to die all along the line, giving the staff (the Assistant Engineers having in dozens of instances to drag the bodies away themselves, make the funeral piles and light them with their own hands) as much as they could do and more to keep the road clear. None of the natives, with but the rarest exceptions, would touch the corpses or go within fifty yards of them. (It may be mentioned as a curious fact that during the outbreak of cholera no vultures, the usual useful scavengers, were to be seen either at their work or on the wing.) In one gang of 30 men employed breaking ballast, 14 were carried off in two days, also Sub-Overseer. At the Gorchetta Bridge on which the girder erection was going on at the time some 50 men were carried off; the contractor himself was taken ill, but ultimately recoved [sic]. The whole line was deserted throughout the district. Mr Thomason, Assistant Engineer, after giving medicine &c., to a number of his men who were down at Anukpur, where the foundations were being taken for a bridge, himself succumbed in about six hours before any of his brother officers could reach him. Even now, nearly three months after the cholera has practically ceased, on pulling down the little grass shelters erected by the coolies [menial laborers, often Asians], numbers of skeletons have been found. The greatest difficulty was experienced in procuring provisions as all the petty villages within 5 or six miles of the line were closed to outsiders, the villagers declining to allow even a European inside, and ready even to use their axes and latties [a tool] to prevent it. One village or rather hovel containing originally eighty people all told, now contains 28; the rest are dead.

Examining the Evidence

1. What specific conditions does the official note in his report?

2. What attitudes does the official display in his description of villagers and the cholera epidemic?

3. How did the changes brought about by industrialization affect health and well-being?

4. What conclusions can you draw from this description of villagers about the Indians' actual attitudes and behaviors?