JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR - MONDAY MARCH 26TH, 1900

BUBONIC PLAGUE


ACTION BY THE PREMIER AND THE MAYOR


THE INFECTED AREA


NOTICES TO CLEAN AND DISINFECT PREMISES
- Premier and Mayor part of board to deal with plague; also on board - Ashburton-Thompson, Chief Medical Officer; Mr Blackwell, City Engineer; Mr RRP Hickson, Under-Sec. to Works Dept. (Mr Getting, Health Dept. Sanitary inspector appointed next day to replace Ashburton-Thompson who was too busy) Disinfecting to be carried out under supervision of McCredie, under direction of Ashburton-Thompson 


A WALK ROUND THE QUARANTINE AREA


SOME OF THE SANITARY ARRANGEMENTS
- people walked to quarantine area to have a look across the barrier. Novelty, good spirits. Two restaurants had been taken over by govt., dispensing free meals. Three squads of police (120 in all) stationed in area.
- Detailed description of sanitary arrangements from WSB report on 57 houses.
- Smell of disinfectants pronounced
- able-bodied men in quarantine area to be offered work cleansing wharfs and premises.
- Abstracts of Board of Health 's inspection: In 2 days (Thurs, Fri, last week) 197 premises inspected. Defective ventilation 103 cases; 67 houses were damp, 39 dirty; 30 had no sanitary accommodation; in 45, sanitary accommodation was defective in construction and flushing; 116 - trap arrangements obsolete; 85 drains had no outlets to pipes; 124 - no flushing arrangements or inlets at all; 37 premises had no yards; 27 yards - very dirty; in 35 there were "signs of rats"
Inoculation of Rats
- 3 kinds of substances used for inoculations: 
1. Haffkine's - preventative - from India. (but if patient already infected Haffkine's could be fatal)
2. Yersin - remedial - from Pasteur Institute (administered to patients with plague.
3. one for killing rats; on order.


REFERENCES IN THE CHURCHES


THE PLAGUE AND ITS VICTIMS
- Rev. J Fordyce M.A. - spoke of "visitation" that had come to city and need for "calmness and sanity" and the duty of trusting God. Spoke to young men of sudden call to their comrade (parishioner who had died of plague) comparing it to death on battlefield. Urged young men to regard life as moral discipline to live it seriously and be prepared for death.
- Archbishop of Sydney issued instructions to clergy authorising them to use a Prayer for a time of common sickness - as well as making special efforts to stop spread by taking precautions and by attention to sanitary arrangements.


SMALLPOX AND PLAGUE IN MANILLA
How it is combated.
- Interview with Dr Ffoulkes (Govt H.O. in Manilla):
"Your people know the value of cleanliness, ours did not, and didn't want to. We issued orders requiring them to remove filth; they did not do it; we imposed fines and put them in prison, still they would not do it, and then we called in the soldiers and made them do it. Now we see that they keep the place clean. We have house-to-house visitations...Soldiers are taken with the inspectors and if they find a house that has not been disinfected they leave the soldiers there to make the people do it..."
"Of course your work in Sydney is easier than we have in Manilla; your people are more intelligent and your soil is not saturated with filth as ours is, therefore I think you will get rid of the plague pretty easily."

JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR - SATURDAY MARCH 24TH, 1900

Sydney, 1900. On January 25th, the Sydney Morning Herald carries a report about a suspected case of Bubonic Plague, discovered in The Rocks, Sydney - not far from Circular Quay, where today large cruise ships disembark passengers. The family is quarantined, and as this is the first case, they are treated well, their house is cleansed and effectively renovated while they are at the Quarantine Station. Arthur Payne, the first case, recovers. The medical system is all ready, waiting for them, wanting to test out its preparedness, since it has been getting ready for this for several years.  A colonial health system is testing out its preparedness also for nation-state status, which will arrive the following year. But in 1900, the future of these colonies is uncertain and the outbreak serves as a kind of symbolic ‘war of independence’ in the absence of an actual struggle (though in 1900, Australian colonial troops are going to South Africa to fight in the Boer Wars, but that is far from the thoughts of Sydneysiders.) Subsequently 303 people contract the plague and 103 people die. I can tell you the names of everyone of them, it was such a small outbreak - unlike the pandemic of plague that raged through India and China in the 1890s in which millions of people died.

By coincidence, 120 years later,, January 25th 2020 is also the day that the first confirmed case of coronavirus is detected in Australia. So I thought, in self-isolation, I would start to look at other parallels with this earlier quarantine period and see what rhythms exist in periods of lockdown.

Will it turn out, as it did in 1900, that initial panic subsides and people become used to living in a state of siege? Will it be that by June, things calm down and by July, there is no more news to be made from the outbreak? In 1900 attention then turns to the passing of the Commonwealth Bill through the House of Commons, setting up the possibility of Federation and to the situation in China, where the Qing Dynasty is in the continuous crisis of its last years.

I’m using the notes I made between 1986 and 1991 from newspaper reports and from official documents - fragments, incomplete: my research notes from a PhD; I was just on the verge of throwing out this material..

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SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, Saturday March 24th, 1900 (4 columns)


Decisive Action by the Government


Special Meeting of the Executive Council


A large Area Isolated


Inner Area Quarantined


Disinfection on a Wholesale Scale


One thousand Men to be Employed


Fumigation of Coasting Vessels


Proclamation Issued
- people who live in quarantined area have option of going to North Head at Government cost or remaining confined in area.  Tradesmen can carry out their account books but no other property. (my note: account books are not infectious; trade must not be interrupted)
- "Infected Area" surrounds the quarantined area. Here "the people will be under surveillance, but generally speaking, not in such a manner as to cause them much inconvenience.." unless plague occurs, when the restrictions imposed may be found "irksome" - 500 men to be immediately employed and to stay in quarantined area. Prophylactic ordered from India and from Pasteur Institute in Paris; health authorities also intend to manufacture their own.
- people gathered in streets, waiting to be quarantined. When will it happen, they asked all evening. Then at 10.30, 40 police arrived.


Suggestion for Plague Eradication
Burning Barrels of Pitch and Tar
- from O'Sullivan, Minister for Works. Great Plague of London - 6000/week killed. Great Fire stopped it all; We can't afford to burn area but pitch and tar would destroy all germs. And it would only cost £300.
(My note - 2020: We’ve already had our Great Fire – it happened over summer 2019-2020!)

A Prejudice Against Oysters
- assurance that oysters on sale don't come from Sydney Harbour but from Port Macquarie and Wallis Lake.
- 

Letter from George R. Dibbs saying fill in Darling Harbour
- 

Letter From Henry Priestley, produce agent in Sussex St complaining of having been kept waiting two days for inoculation.

THE HOUSING QUESTION - ABM, Madrid, Oct 26th, 2019

Another special event, showing The Housing Question in Vallecas. ABM, a special artist-run space. Extra special for this installation we also showed documentaries about the Saharawi camps, featuring the singer, the late Mariem Hassan, whose music scores the Madrid section of The Housing Question. In the course of working on this project we discovered that it is the case of the Saharawi people in a 1975 International Court of Justice Advisory that precisely raised the question of terra nullius in Indigenous land rights cases. This is the concept that has been so influential in the land rights movement in Australia. So, the landscape of our continent has been transformed indirectly by the plight of the Saharawi people in a former Spanish colony in the Western Sahara - something we hadn’t known when we started our project. Music is a weapon. We met people at the screening who work with Saharawi refugees, fostering children from the camps over summer when the desert temperature is 50 degrees C.

THE HOUSING QUESTION - Madrid, October 25th, 2019

A one-night only installation in Casa Huarte - one of the houses in which we worked for our project. A special moment - to show the families of both the architects and the owners what we had done. Somehow it got around that the house would be open for the occasion and a great crowd turned up, though it wasn’t advertised. The most surreal moment happened when a group of people appeared and walked through on an architectural tour as if we were merely ghosts in the space. We didn’t know where they came from, but it’s so rare to see this legendary house that rumour must have spread.

The Housing Question - opening night, June 22

Winter Solstice - Great to see so many old friends!

THE HOUSING QUESTION

22 June – 25 August, 2019

Helen Grace, Narelle Jubelin and Sherre DeLys
Penrith Regional Gallery - home of the Lewers Bequest, Winter Exhibition Suite 2019

We’ve been working on this project for years & finally, it is happening! We’re taking over the whole site - the Main Gallery, Lewers House & Ancher House, to show a selection of new works & some old favourites!

DRAW-IN

Factory 49, Sydney, 28 November - 8 December 2018

Group Show: Lisa Andrew, Linden Braye, Sue Callanan. Maryanne Coutts, Elizabeth Day, Rox DeLuca, Nichelle Elliot, Nicole Ellis, Helen Grace, Barbara Hanan, Annelies Jahn, Michelle Le Bain, Margaret Roberts

She was haunted by the task of the struggle against ruin

State of the Union

24thJuly – 28th October, 2018

The Ian Potter Museum of Art, University of Melbourne, Victoria, 3010, Australia

http://www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au/exhibitions/future-exhibitions/exhib-date/2018-07-24/exhib/state-of-the-union

Curated by Jacqueline Doughty

State of the Union explores the relationship of artists to political engagement through a focus on the labour movement and trade unions.

The exhibition presents artworks that investigate industrial action and labour issues alongside the work of artists who draw upon the traditional visual strategies of protest, such as banners, posters, and collaborative actions. In addition to artworks that take trade unionism as a subject matter, the exhibition includes a consideration of artists whose practices are a form of cultural activism through which they advocate for fair working conditions, including those of artworkers.

State of the Union also considers the reciprocal commitment of Australian trade unions to art and cultural production through the establishment of theatre groups, film units, libraries, and artist residencies, and via their long-standing appreciation of the power of visual communication through their use of banners, posters and murals.

Alongside a selection of recent contemporary artworks, the exhibition highlights two periods in Australia when interactions between artists and the labour movement were particularly rich: the Depression era of the 1930s and 40s when the political convictions of social realist artists were reflected in artworks depicting the hardships faced by workers and their families; and the 1970s and 80s, when the introduction of community arts funding nurtured a flowering of cultural activity within trade unions and trades councils, in the form of banner and mural painting, factory festivals and artist-in-the-workplace residencies.

Exhibition Review:

Benison Kilby, State of the Union, Memo Review, October, 2018

Mem Capp, Visual Arts Hub, August 2018

This project premiered at the Workers Health Centre in Lidcombe, NSW in 1984. Made in collaboration with Julie Donaldson, Warwick Pearse, and panels designed by Ruth Waller, it was great to see that these panels still looked so fresh after more than thirty years.