2020: DAY 28
SMH, p10
[Note: it is the weekend after Easter, the Bubonic Plague cases have fallen and reporting in the SMH has slipped back to page 10 & instead of whole columns, it is only a few column inches.]
BUBONIC PLAGUE
CASES YESTERDAY
NEW QUARANTINED AREAS PROCLAIMED
- 243 rats cremated
PUBLIC MEETING OF CITIZENS
A VIGILANCE COMMITTEE FORMED
SPEECHES BY MESSRS WISE AND REID
- several hundred attended
- new Building Act called for.
- committee's function "to urge reforms"
’The Chairman announced the object of the meeting and said that experience had taught that wherever the plague had manifested itself it had been found very difficult to eradicate, and had also played great havoc with human life. They were also aware that the only way to cops with it efficiently was not to rely alone on the authorities, but to invoke the assistance and co-operation of individual citizens. (Hear, hear.) The meeting was not of a political character*; it was called to enlist the co-operation of everyone. No particular person could be blamed for the occurrence of the plague ; it had come from over-sea, and had occurred in India, in Hongkong, in New Caledonia, in South Africa, and in many other places in the world….
J.S. Brunton: ‘They had now an opportunity of demolishing unhealthy tenements and insanitary localities, and he hoped and trusted that this would be done, and that once and for all they would provide for the reclamation .of the foreshores of Sydney Harbour. (Cheers.) The outbreak of plague had had the effect of strangling the trade of Sydney ; trade in fact had been diverted to the other colonies, because Sydney was declared to be an infected port ; and they could not blame the people of other places for seeking to protect themselves against the introduction of such a disease as was now in ounr midst, (Hear, hear.)
{*Not strictly true: the majority of the eminent men attending were associated with the Free Trade Party]
MEETING OF RESIDENTS AT ASHFIELD
PADDINGTON VIGILANCE COMMITTEE
Huddart Parker’s Wharf, Sydney 1900 - Source: State Library of nSW