Taste of Life: How a river carried cholera into Yerwada Jail

On May 27, 1875, a cholera patient from Yerwada Jail was admitted to the jail hospital in a state of collapse. By noon the next day, 20 more cases had been reported

Etiology of an illness refers to the studies to determine one or more factors that come together to cause it. Contaminated water and unsafe food have long driven epidemics such as cholera and typhoid, shaping sanitation, urban planning, and public health policy across the world. Social conditions, including poverty, unequal access to clean water, and environmental degradation, have determined who faces the greatest risk. Seen this way, the history of food and water is also a history of how societies have understood, neglected, or addressed the causes of health and disease.

Fom Yerwada Jail’s central tower, the Moola River could be seen winding to either side for nearly a mile, its blue line marking the boundaries of the peninsula on which the jail stood. (HT)

Dr Henry Blanc, MD, MRCP, surgeon-major in Her Majesty’s Indian Army, was the superintendent of the Yerwada Central Jail. His investigative paper titled ‘A Fact Bearing on the Etiology of Cholera’, published in the prestigious journal ‘The Lancet’ on August 21, 1875, is a fine example of exhaustive etiological investigation carried out in the 19th century Poona.

On May 27, 1875, a cholera patient from Yerwada Jail was admitted to the jail hospital in a state of collapse. By noon the next day, 20 more cases had been reported. These patients came from nine different barracks, giving the initial impression of a general outbreak. Closer investigation, however, revealed that the epidemic was confined to a specific group of prisoners who had recently been employed in building a new road from the jail towards the Moola River to connect with the Poona road. Only two cases occurred among prisoners who were not part of the road-building group.

Yerwada Central Jail stood about 1,865 feet above mean sea level and roughly four miles from the town and military camp of Poona. It was built on a gently undulating plateau composed mainly of trap rock, with largely barren surroundings. The site was naturally well drained, the nearest village lay about a mile away, and from the jail’s central tower, the Moola River could be seen winding to either side for nearly a mile, its blue line marking the boundaries of the peninsula on which the jail stood.

Several large wells and tanks, originally quarried pits, existed near the jail but were used only for agriculture and construction. From 1872 onward, the jail’s water supply was brought by iron pipes from a lake near Poona. Before this, prisoners’ drinking water was drawn from the Moola River before its southward bend, upstream of the pollution caused by the towns of Kirkee and Poona.

The summer of 1875 was unusually severe and marked by extreme dryness. Despite these conditions, the season was not unhealthy, with hospital admissions falling below the average. Cases of mild fever caused by sun exposure and minor surgical ailments did not exceed levels seen in previous years.

When cholera appeared, measures to contain its spread were implemented swiftly, proving largely effective. The first case emerged on the night of May 26-27 among working prisoners, taking officials by surprise and spreading before patients could be isolated. The man was thought to have been infected through contact with contaminated waste near the night privy. A second case involved a prisoner who had tended to cholera patients, eaten near the cholera ward, and drunk standing water there, making direct infection highly likely.

Between May 27 and June 1, 24 prisoners were affected by cholera; 16 recovered, and eight died.

Among 1,279 prisoners, who otherwise lived under nearly identical conditions, sharing the same diet, clothing, housing, and general environment, about 554 prisoners worked indoors and remained largely unaffected, while cholera broke out mainly among the remaining 724 men engaged in outdoor or physically demanding labour. These included masonry, dragging heavy water carts, road work, ploughing, gardening, watering and rolling roads, and handling night-soil outside the jail. None of these occupations, Blanc noted, was inherently more “cholera-producing” than others, yet illness clustered among this group.

Because all prisoners were equally exposed to general environmental conditions such as air, soil, and climate, the uneven spread of disease could not be explained by theories such as miasma or atmospheric influence. Blanc, therefore, suspected that the cause lay elsewhere.

All the prisoners, whether engaged in intra- or extra-mural labour, were provided water taken from the Moola River before it reached Poona; “the only exception occurred among the prisoners engaged in road work, who drank water taken from the bed of the Moola River below the dam”.

On May 25 and 26, the “road gang” was considerably increased; the road had already been metalled, and the extra hands were required to water and roll the road, so that it might not be damaged by the daily expected heavy rains.

The road gang was supplied with a fixed number of barrels and water carts, with drinking water brought separately from the dam. In addition, five water carts were assigned to sprinkle the road during rolling work. These carts, however, were filled from the nearest available source, namely, stagnant pools in the nearly dry riverbed near the Poona end of the road under construction.

The prisoners acknowledged drinking the water freely, both while filling the carts and while washing before returning to the jail at the end of the workday. All the cholera patients questioned stated without hesitation that they had consumed this water. Their accounts were further supported by the warden responsible for the water carts, who noted that on May 25 and 26, he had supplied less water than on previous days, even though nearly three times as many prisoners were working on the roads.

On the morning of May 29, the jailer, Mr Taylor, and Blanc visited the site from which water for road-watering had been drawn, the exact spot was pointed out by the wardens. About 600 to 700 yards upstream, the river was blocked by a dam built to ensure a steady water supply for Poona, as the river usually ran nearly dry in the hot season. Below the dam, little water remained in the riverbed, which was broken into large semi-stagnant pools, separated by boulders and moss-covered volcanic rock islets and linked by slow-moving trickles of water.

In the riverbed, several washermen were at work. Men and women washed themselves, and cattle were roaming about. The riverbed between the dam and the place from which water had been taken for watering the road was contaminated by excreta of all kinds.

At the time, cholera was widespread across the province, including Poona and nearby villages. Riverbeds near large towns were commonly used by travellers for bathing, and washermen worked there regularly.

On May 22, two fatal cholera cases had occurred in Yerwada, opposite the dam. That evening, the bodies were washed and cremated, and the clothes worn during the illness were cleaned about 20 yards upstream from the spot where most of the road gang later drank water, with deadly consequences.

The Yerwada cholera outbreak offered a stark illustration of etiological reasoning at a time when germ theory was gaining some credibility. By tracing water supply, labour, and daily practice, Blanc showed that disease spread along lines shaped by human activity rather than chance. Cholera emerged from contaminated river water already polluted by urban use and waste, revealing how vulnerability was structured by work, access, and infrastructure. The episode underscored that public health failures were often social and infrastructural in origin, not natural inevitabilities.