A letter to the Right Honorable, the Secretary at War, on sickness and mortality in the West Indies; being a review of Captain Tullock's Statistical report / [Sir Andrew Halliday].

  • Halliday, Andrew, Sir, 1781-1839
Date:
1839
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter to the Right Honorable, the Secretary at War, on sickness and mortality in the West Indies; being a review of Captain Tullock's Statistical report / [Sir Andrew Halliday]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    they remained. The 93rd lost more men in twenty-two months at St. Lucia, (the eighth and ninth years of its service in the command,) than it did in nearly nine years that it was at other stations; and the mortality in the last year of its stay was not greater than during its first, which were both spent at Barbados. It, therefore, I repeat, depends far more upon the station occupied, than upon any other circumstances whatever, whether sickness and mortality prevail most at the commencement or at the end, or in any intermediate year of a regiment’s stay in the West Indies. One thing, however, is certain: if a regiment is sent to an unhealthy or sickly station, immediately on its arrival from Europe, the casualties will certainly be more numerous than if it had been sent to that station, after a year or two’s seasoning at some healthy station. In proof of this I would mention, that the 19th during the first year after its arrival from England lost 108 at Deme- rara; the 27th from Gibraltar lost in its first year seventy- eight at the same station; and the 65th from Ireland lost fifty-five at Berbice; while the 67th, after seasoning for three years at Barbados and St. Kitt’s, lost only thirty- three men during its first year in British Guiana; and the 69th, who had spent two months in Barbados, and three years in St. Vincent’s, lost only thirty-five men in the first year, and seventeen in the second of their resi¬ dence at Demerara. There are, however, years of sickness in healthy as well as in unhealthy Colonies, when no previous seasoning can withstand the virulence of the epidemic : but, as a genera] rule, a regiment should never be sent to British E