'ANNUAL REPORT OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE BOMBAY PRESIDENCY, FOR THE YEAR 1862-63’ [‎82v] (160/266)

[ Bombay]
appendix to judicial report.
139 The above figures exhibit very unsatisfactory sanitary results The morta
lity among the Broach prisoners in the Surat Jail has already been notrced, and to this
cause is the increase to be attributed. Diarrhoea was very fatal to these prisoners, and
this disease as is well known, assumes during the prevalence of cholera, as was the case
at Surat an obstinate choleraic type very difficult of cure among prisoners m confine-
] 40 The increase in the other Jails may be attributed to the general unhealthiness
of the season-a fact amply demonstrated by this table, notwithstanding the sanitary
improvements that have been organised during the year.
141. In forming an opinion on the relative unhealthiness generally of the past year
one fact should be prominently noticed, viz. that the healthiest men were removed Irom
the Jails to form road gangs, and that those least physically fitted to withstand the ravages
of disease remained. This was specially the case in Poona, Nuggur, Sholapoor, Dhooha
Dharwar, Surat, Kaira, and Ahmedabad, which supplied large drafts of healthy men to
the gangs at Patus, Chalisgaum, Munmar, Devekope, and Gogo. i he results given
above do not therefore fairly represent the real state of the case. On the contrary they dis
close a very unfavourable rate of mortality which does not fairly belong to the Jails, and
which would not have existed had the Jail population been represented by the average ol
healthy and sickly men which during at least six months of the past year was not the
case.
142. I have in a previous paragraph brought to the notice of Government the great,
disadvantages, in a financial point of view, which have resulted from the removal of skilled
convicts from the different manufactures for the purposes of road labour, and I would
here impress the same fact as to the rates of mortality which, as already shown, have
been increased by denuding the Jails of their healthiest men, and in doing so I would
take this opportunity of very respectfully urging upon the consideration of Government
the suggestion contained in a former part of this report, regarding the establishment oi
a purely Public Works prison at Sudasewghur, from which alone the wants of the
public service should be supplied, and the advisability of carrying on in the other Jails
a course of strict intramural labour, by which alone, in my humble judgment, a sound
system of prison reform in all its bearings can be accomplished, and by which alone
also the sanitary and financial results can be fairly tested and compared with those of
other Jails in India, especially those of Bengal, the North-Western Provinces, and the
Punjaub, in which the labour is entirely intramural. I use this term in contradistinc
tion to the labour of convict gangs on the roads, such as are in force in this presidency The name given to each of the three divisions of the territory of the East India Company, and later the British Raj, on the Indian subcontinent. ,
and not in its strictly literal sense, as I am aware that in those parts of India to which
I allude prisoners work outside the walls in Jail gardens ; that they are employed, as I
have witnessed, in building the central prisons now in course of construction, and that
they perform other descriptions of labour not strictly intramural.
143. The six Jails enumerated on the opposite
page show a decrease in the rates of mortality from
cholera as contrasted with the averages of the past
nine years:—
Decrease of mortality from Cholera as
compared with the averages of the pre
ceding nine years.
34