PILGRIM CAMP

Under Article 21 of the Paris Convention of 1903 it was proposed in 1906 to set up a pilgrim [plague] camp in the Aden area for the segregation and observation of pilgrims. Aden itself was considered unsuitable due to the risk of spread of infection, being still mindful of an epidemic that had occurred there between December 1904 and March 1905 with over 1800 deaths in these four months, with another 50 plus fatalities in the months either side. The peak month was February 1905 with over 1000 deaths.

Perim was obviously a possible alternative location for the camp and in September 1906 an engineer officer was sent there to conduct a reconnaissance whilst the Senior Medical Officer (SMO) in Aden was doing his appreciation of the medical problems and requirements.

At the end of September the Acting 1st Assistant Resident, Captain Hancock, issued instructions for a camp to hold 1,200 pilgrims to be built, to be laid out in two divisions about 60 yards apart. The area selected by the engineer, advised by Major Schneider, the Assistant on Perim, was in the northern angle of False Bay in a flat and sandy valley 1,000 ft wide by 1,300 ft deep. Vessels could not anchor or offload their pilgrims in or off False Bay itself, due to its exposed position. They would have to anchor off Chevalier Point, or in Shand Bay where there was a small pier.

The camp was to be a substantial undertaking and its construction was put in the hands of a local Aden contractor who had worked well in the past. The Authorities in India were not slow to allocate staff and the camp medical officer for the 1906-07 pilgrim season, Captain O’Murphy, arrived at Perim on 4 October on the ship carrying the contractor, his work force of 60 men and the construction materials required for the task. Meanwhile in Bombay it had been decided that the camp should be issued with a Clayton machine for rat destruction. This was a machine for de-ratting ships. It weighed 3.5 tons, was 7 ft long, 5 ft wide and 5 ft high and needed to be powered by a steam boiler of not less than 4 HP. Since there was no suitable craft in the Aden Port Trust a steam launch would be hired from the Coal Company when one was needed. Perim was issued with a Machine Type C with a capacity of producing 60,000 cu ft of 3% sulphur gas per hour. The cost of sulphur was going to be quite considerable. The machine was tested on shore at Meyun in June 1907.

At the end of September 1906 Major Schneider referred Captain Hancock to Aden Residency Order No.26 of March 1900 in which the Assistant Resident Perim had been appointed as the Plague Authority for Perim. He asked for that to be better defined. He added that the anchorage for pilgrim ships would be Quarantine Bay. [This is assumed to be Shand Bay] where the coal Company had laid one mooring buoy suitable for ships up to 5,000 tons. The anchorage provided a depth of water of 19 ft at low tide.

Schneider asked for a ruling on whether the Port Health Officer would examine such ships and charge his fee of a guinea, or would the Medical Officer Pilgrimage Camp examine them. The anchorage would be just outside the Coal Company’s part of the harbour, but as a ship would have to enter the port between the entrance buoys it therefore would come under the jurisdiction of the Port Health Officer. Hancock then appointed the MO Pilgrim Camp as Port Health Officer at Perim in respect of pilgrim ships, but no fee to be paid to Dr Murphy as that was part of his job.

The contractor made remarkably quick progress but the pilgrim season was a relatively short one and in 1906-07 the last ship proceeding to the port for Mecca was due to pass Perim about the end of the first week in January; hence there was pressure from Government to have at least part of the camp working before the end of that season. Construction proceeded at a pace as this progress report dated 30 November shows. This report also gives some idea of the size of the camp:

• 6 Pendals for single men for 110 men in each: 2 completed, 1 under construction, 3 not yet begun

• 8 Pendals for single men for 54 men in each: 2 completed, 6 well under construction

• 4 Pendals for married men, 28 families in each: 2 completed, 2 under construction

• 4 Cookhouses: 1 completed, 2 under construction, 1 not yet begun

• 8 Latrines for men: 2 completed, 6 not yet begun

• 4 Bathrooms for men: 2 completed, 2 not yet begun

• 2 Latrines for women: 1 completed, 1 not yet begun

• 2 Bathrooms for women: 1 completed, 1 not yet begun

• 12 Infectious disease wards: 6 completed, 6 under construction

• 2 Latrines for infectious disease wards: 2 under construction

• 2 Hospitals for men: 1 under construction, 1 not yet started

• 2 Hospitals for women: 1 under construction, 1 not yet started

• 2 Latrines for hospitals: 2 not yet started

• Office, dispensary and storeroom: Under construction

• Also under construction were quarters for 8 servants and 4 sweepers,

Not yet begun were latrines for the servants and sweepers; quarters for senior and junior hospital assistants; the Assistant Surgeon’s quarters, cookhouse and servants’ quarters; accommodation and latrines for 25 Native Infantry and 12 police guards, and cells. The location of the camp can be seen on this map published in 1917.

To avoid the necessity for outsiders to come into the camp when there were cholera cases water tanks were built outside the boundary of the camp and the water piped down into the camp itself into a masonry cistern which fed troughs; in addition 50 lamp posts were put up around the camp.

The contract had specified that a camp for 600 pilgrims would be ready for use within three months, i.e. more or less coinciding with the end of that pilgrim season.

The female doctor provided for the last part of the 1906-07 pilgrim season was Miss Mildred Graham. On 17 January 1907 all the temporary staff of the pilgrim camp left Perim for Aden to catch the India Mail. The camp was closed the following year on 5 January 1908 the lady doctor having been Dr (Miss) Sherin of the High Commissariat, known to everyone as ‘Miss Commissariat’.

Unless there were cholera cases in the camp the two camp doctors lived at the fort, the Assistant Resident Perim having moved to establish a Residency in the Managing Agent’s former house above Murray Point. For the 1907-08 pilgrim season Dr Walsh occupied the officer’s quarters in the fort from 27 August 1907 to 7 January 1908, having two rooms. ‘Miss Commissariat’ had the third room. Their work was not onerous, a total of only 25 pilgrim ships calling at Perim for inspection: the first on 30 September; then six in October, nine in November and another nine in December, the last on Boxing Day. Dr Walsh reported that the James Bay landing stage could only be used at high and one and a half high tide and often not at all due to the swell. Meyun was often the only landing place which then involved pilgrims having a difficult road journey to the camp.

During the 1908-09 pilgrim season only three pilgrims were detained in the plague camp, out of 15,839 pilgrims being carried in 21 ships. None of the three were found to have an infection. In 1909-10 some 20 pilgrim ships carrying a total of 16,991 pilgrims were processed through Perim. A total of 62 people were detained, 61 with smallpox symptons and one plague. 31 of the smallpox cases died, as did one of two camp staff manning the smallpox ward.

The first and only time the pilgrim (plague) camp was used for a major epidemic was in 1911, and then not for pilgrims. On 21 January 1911 the Resident in Aden received a telegram from Captain R de W Waller, the Assistant Resident on Perim, to the effect that there were six suspected cases of cholera. As the Plague Hospital was not fit for occupation he asked for permission to use the Pilgrim Camp. (In 1899 a small isolation hospital had been opened on Chevalier Point but because it was not accessible from the sea it, the ‘Plague Hospital’, was moved to Shand Bay where it consisted of two sheds, each ten feet square, with latrines.

Permission to use the Pilgrim Camp was granted by return and the Aden Port Surgeon, Colonel Prall, was ordered to go to Perim as soon as possible. He arrived on 24 January. The outbreak was not amongst pilgrims but in the coolie lines, although it was suspected that it had been carried to Perim by a pilgrim from Jeddah. From the start the management of the Coal Company put up a very poor showing and came out of the whole affair very badly indeed. However the Assistant Resident appears to have been an excellent organiser and got things moving pretty quickly; luckily the Company’s doctor, Dr Spence, was very competent as well. Over a period of two days 520 coolies were taken by boat to the pilgrim camp and quartered there. The Assistant Resident moved down to the camp for the duration of the epidemic and was in effect Camp Commandant.

Colonel Prall found the coolie lines on Company Side to be in a terrible state, with an accumulation of years of rubbish, overcrowding of huts and very dirty latrines. The married quarters in the lines were just as bad and some of the 12 or so fatalities were amongst the families. Prall gave strict instructions to Dr Spence and the Assistant Resident as to what had to be done. The government lines in Fisherman’s Bay were also inspected and were found to be very clean. Mr Ayres, the managing agent of the Perim Coal Company who had been on Perim for 26 years, was most uncooperative and only visited the coolie lines when ordered to do so, and even then he only stayed a few minutes. Captain Waller found that only Dr Spence could be relied on to make sure that clearing up and disinfecting the lines was done properly.

On 5 February General Bell, the Aden Resident, arrived at Perim in the station ship, RIMS Dalhousie. However he did not go ashore himself but sent one of his staff Captain O’Brien, a previous Assistant Resident at Perim, to inspect the Pilgrim Camp and coolie lines. After O’Brien had reported back to the Resident the latter decided that the Port Health Officer (Dr Spence) must be under the orders of and responsible to the Assistant Resident rather than Mr Ayres as hitherto. The latter objected strongly to this decision and went on board the Dalhousie to remonstrate with General Bell, who however stuck by his decision. Over the next few weeks the Managing Agent wrote a succession of letters of protest to Captain Waller and to Aden, in particular objecting to many of the conditions and improvements that were imposed upon the Company to prevent a recurrence. On 9 February the coolie lines and married quarters were reported clean and disinfected and two days later all quarantine restrictions were removed and pilgrim ships were free to call again at Perim. That the epidemic had been brought under control so quickly was very largely due to the Assistant Resident.

The decrease in the number of pilgrim ships in 1914-15 was due to Turkey being an enemy during the 1st World War and Mecca being within the Turkish Empire. From 1915-16 to the end of the war pilgrims were processed through the Lanzerotte Camp on Kamaran. The Observation Camp on Perim, as it was being called by then, therefore remained closed for three seasons during which time many of the buildings fell into disrepair. After the end of the war it was decided not to reopen the camp and nearly all the huts in the camp were dismantled and sold to the Perim Coal Company for Rs2,000.

In addition to those landed carrying an infectious disease, in two of the years the camp was used to house about 1,000 pilgrims who had had to be put ashore. On 19th Novemeber 1911 the SS Fakhri was wrecked near Pirie Point. Her 1045 pilgrims were landed and housed in the camp for five and a half weeks. In 1913-14 the SS Theseus lost her propellor near Perim and her passengers were also lodged in the camp for three weeks until a replacement ship could collect them. Eight of these pilgrims from the Theseus died whilst they were in the camp, but none from an infectious disease. 13 extra police were sent to Aden to police the camp for the 1913 influx.

Despite being exposed to the wind and in a very sandy area, there are still signs of the Pilgrim Camp on Google Earth today.