Between 1896 and 1899, a deadly bubonic plague swept through the city of Bombay. The “native population,” wrote a British historian, “succumbed to a pestilence, as grievous as that which swept through Florence in 1348 or through old London in the time of Defoe.” It slayed “people like sheep” – 44,984 officially – and drove away more than half a million, in panic.
The most devastated were poorer neighbourhoods, and most who fled were the among the city’s working classes. The plague threatened the
