he allegation about the low moral tone and insanitary habits of Indians, your Memorialists need hardly say anything: it simply shows to what extent prejudice has carried the promoters away. Your Memorialists would, however, crave leave to refer Her Majesty’s Government to Dr. Veale’s and other certificates of the same tenor, annexed to the petition with regard to the Transvaal Indian Arbitration, to the effect that class considered, the Indians live better and in better habitations than the Europeans.[6] If, however, the Indians do not attend to sanitation as well as the Europeans, the laws are there to see that they do not neglect the duty of observing the sanitary rules. Be that as it may, these meetings, the correspondence they gave rise to, and the statements made therein, without particular regard to accuracy, kept up and added to the excitement of the populace.
On the 18th of December came the two ill-fated steamers the Courland and the Naderi, the first named being owned by a local Indian firm and the second named by the Persian Steam Navigation Company of Bombay, which was under the agency of the owners of the Courland. In dealing with the events after the arrival of the two ships, your Memorialists disclaim any intention to ventilate a personal grievance. The question, as affecting Messrs Dada Abdulla & Company personally as owners and agents of the ships, your Memorialists would endeavour to avoid, except when it is necessary to refer to it in the interests of the Indian community as a whole. The bills of health received by the steamers at Bombay, at the time of departure, stated that there was a mild form of bubonic plague raging in certain districts of Bombay; the steamers, therefore, entered the bay flying the quarantine flag, although there was an absolutely clean bill of health during the voyage. (App. A and B.) The s.s. Naderi left the Prince’s Dock, Bombay, on the 28th, and the s.s. Courland on the 30th of November, 1896. The steamers, on their arrival, were placed in quarantine by the Health Officer “until 23 days had elapsed since leaving Bombay”. By a proclamation which appeared in a Government Gazette Extraordinary, on the 19th December, 1896, Bombay was declared to be an infected port. On the same day, the owners and agents wrote to the Health Officer, on the strength of a newspaper report, asking the cause of the ships being put in quarantine. (App. C.) No reply was sent to that communication. On the 21st of the same month, a telegram was sent by the owners’ solicitors, Messrs Goodricke,
