P.S.
I send on other side an extract from Dr. Cleghorn's official note in the Blue Book on Plague in India, which you can compare with Dr. Thorne Thorne’s.
As to your query about "intemperance" as a cause of poverty crime, insanity, &c. I do not admit it. It is a result of the same conditions that bring about starvation, crime, & insanity. A century ago, intemperance was far more common among the Upper classes than now; but I never heard it suggested that insanity & crime were then more prevalent in those classes than now, but rather the reverse.
All those who know the poor most thoroughly agree in this view.
A.R.W. [signature]
Status: Draft transcription [Letter (WCP3748.3656)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Extracts from D[octo]r. Cleghorn’s Note to Indian Government. Jan[uary]. 16th 1897
"The Chawls may run up to seven stories, and the unit of construction is a long corridor with rooms on each side. The whole tenement is built up of a <congress> of these corridors and rooms, and contains 500 to 1000 individuals. The only space between each tenement is a gully sufficiently wide to admit a sweeper. In most of the corridors and rooms, either from the absence of openings, or from the obstruction of the existing ones, there is absolutely no light admitted and consequently no ventilation."
Rev. A Bowman's letter
"I have known the streets and lanes of Bombay intimately for the last five years, and I state... that such places do not exist... Last November I visited a number of these chawls and in only one did I find a single room where the sun could not enter."
Status: Draft transcription [Enclosure (WCP3748.3657)]
For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon
Please cite as “WCP3748,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 24 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP3748