'WARE PLAGUE!

Lyttelton Times, Volume CIII, Issue 12194, 5 May 1900, Page 6

'WARE PLAGUE!

The plague may yet prove a blessing in disguise to many Australasian cities, and, indeed, Sydney seems to. be buying wisdom rather cheaply than otherwise just now, considering the price which London paid for that commodity in the seventeenth century. But while it is imperative that, in face of an undoubted danger, we should cleanse our towns thoroughly, there is just a danger l that we may allow the cry for cleanliness to give visitors an entirely fake impression. When we call “ ’Ware plague.!” and “ Stale fish !” we may even call too loud and be believed. Thus, we find a journal published in the town which Mr Kipling describes ae “last, loneliest, loveliest, exquisite, apart,” referring to “dirty, distracted, discredited and drainless Auckland,” and declaring that “ the stench of its streets has grown mere and more weird, wonderful, and ostentatiously offensive, and its disease-breeding dust clouds denser and yet more dense.” It is just from picturesque general statements like this that the harm may ecme. To say that in Auckland, or in any other of our towns, there are foul spots is one thing, bub to give the impression that as a whole they are abnormally pestilential is quite another matter. Sydney is an extreme case of the mischief done by exaggeration. The removal of tors of filth and the evil state c-f its shuns led to most unwarrantable comparisons of its normal condition to that of the worst Asiatic cities. The “ Sydney Morning Herald” makes a. strong protest against such misleading comparisons. For twenty years Sydney has had a magnificent sewage system, and its death-rate is actually lower than that of any other city in the world. Even' with the plague in its midst there has nob been sufficient mortality to justify the exaggerated picture winch has gone abroad, to the detriment of its trade and general prosperity. The statistics of mortality in various towns in the world should bo particularly useful just now in allaying anything like an unreasonable panic. Sydney stands lowest with a death-rate of between': 12 and 13 per 1000, then comes Wellington with 13.95, while in Melbourne the rate has risen-to 17.77, and in Hobart to 20,95. None of the large cities of England have anything like so favourable a mortality ; in Liverpool it is 26.70, in Dublin 27.10, and in Glasgow' 25,50, while even London, where science and art have established so elaborate a sanitary system, the death-rate is 21.10 per 1000. The American cities, too,

are far behind the colonies, the death-rate rising in [Montreal to 57.20, and in New York to 26.20. Europe, again, compares very unfavourably with Australasia, Rome having a death-rate of 26.80, Vienna 29, Madrid 57.40, while in St Petersburg it is four times as high as in Sydney, being 51.40. Even with the plague mortality, Sydney still-holds an exceptionally good record among the cities of the world. So, again, in New Zealand, Auckland is said o be the cleanest port, while even Wellington boasts of a good drainage system and. a rubbish-destructor. We may compare these places ■with towns that are really filthy through and through, as Santiago de Cuba was before the Americans cleansed it. It was some time before the workers could attend to houses or yards, so piled up were the streets themselves with accumulations of refuse; while the harbour of Havana, haunted by fever, was foul and reeking with the filth that drained into it. The nursery of the bubonic plague that is now so near upon us has been Hongkong and Bombay. From the report on the Chinese - tenements in Wellington, we can imagine what the habits of the Celestials are like when -they congregate by thousands in a town in their native country. Of Bombay we have an admirable picture from the pen of the late Mr G. W. Steevens. " Along the sea-front,” he wrote, “ one splendid public building follows another; at their feet huddle flimsy huts of matting, thatched with leaves, which a day's rain would reduce to mud and pulp. You sib in a marble-paved club and look out towards choking alleys, where half-naked idolaters ■ herd by -families together, and filth runs down gullies to fester in the sunken street.” Mr Steevens visited one of the “teeming native tenements which lend themselves to picturesqueness and plague,” and found- the cause of. the disease “ sheer piggery, dirt and darkness, foul air and rabbit-warren overcrowding.” Two minutes in the native quarter, and you saw and; smelt and tasted it; but walk in, and what you see surpasses everything European. On stamped-earth floors, between earth walls, by the dimness of one tiny window, you see shapes grruatting like monkeys. They stir, lithe, but always languid, and presently you see that they are human. Babies, naked children, young women and youths, mothers and fathers, shrivelled grandsires and granddams—whole families stifle together in the thick darkness, breeji, and take in lodgers. In the room' where there is scarcely space to move they sleep and work-at trades, and cook their food with' pungent cakes of cowdung. The lower rooms are worn beneath the level of the street and of the -drains; (he upper are holes where a man cannot stand upright. On the storeys between these are dens, lighted only from the dark corridor. Two, four, six, ten men and women are sitting motionless against the wall. They neither speak nor stir —- just sit and ripen for pestilence. For your own part you wonder that anybody in the poisonous lair is left alive.” Such a picture as this is enough by itself to show that our towns do- not bear the faintest shadow of resemblance to Asiatic haunts of the plague; and visitors may be reminded that, even with a mild outbreak like that of Sydney, they would still bo healthier, not only than Oriental, but also than most European towns. At the same time, this general healthfulness does not make the existence of special plague spots any more excusable in contrast withour clean, wide streets, swept by winds and bright with sunshine, with their numbers of fresh, newly-built houses and shops. Ode plague spot will foul the healthiest city in tlie world. The fact is that cclcnials have the highest standard of civic cleanliness on earth, and no language, is too- strong to- condemn those who try, on a- small scale, to reduce us to the Oriental level of filthiness. With health, as with morality, the offence varies according to the advance in civilisation, and what may be a- venial fault among barbarians becomes a.crime among British men and women.