The wreck of the Preussen : a critical examination of the statistics of smallpox on the voyage of the S.S. Preussen, 1886-7 / by Alfred Milnes.

  • Alfred Milnes
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The wreck of the Preussen : a critical examination of the statistics of smallpox on the voyage of the S.S. Preussen, 1886-7 / by Alfred Milnes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    embarkation. At Melbourne she arrived on the 22nd of December, and here some calf-lymph was procured, and the whole crew was again re-vacci- nated. The Melbourne passengers were landed into quarantine to the number of 260, and one assistant engineer succeeded in deserting. Pro- ceeding thence to Sydney, the remaining passen- gers, 312 in number, were landed into quarantine there together with the crew, 117 hands, and three stewardesses. So that we can now estimate the real number of “ persons on board this vessel,” stated by Mr. Thorne, in his above-quoted evi- dence, as 312. For we have— At Adelaide— Landed 20 Died ; 1 At Melbourne— Landed 260 Deserted 1 At Sydney— Landed passengers .... 312 „ crew 117 „ stewardesses .. 3 Total 723 From this table we can learn the real number of those mysterious cabin passengers who joined at Southampton ; since, having already accounted for 707 passengers of the other classes, there must have been sixteen of these to make up the total. And we learn, also, the origin of Mr. Thorne’s absurd error in speaking of the total number as 312. He has taken the number of the Sydney passengers alone as the total of living souls on board. The truth is just double of his statement with a hundred to spare. This is sufficiently near for a case in which the Local Government Board “ took some pains to get the figures,” and quite good enough for Mr. Thorne. We have now to follow the fate of the various groups thus landed.