PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
EPEPEC.O. 882
сл
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH—NOT TO
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held on 12th March 1889, I request you to state the names and residences of the persons who died of starvation. Although Mr. Salmon quotes a definite number, not giving merely a round number, it is difficult to believe that he is correct.
I am, &c.
R. W. D. MOIR,
Government Agent.
The Hon. the GOVERNMENT AGENT, Kandy, to the ASSISTANT Government Agent, Nuwara Eliya.
No. 609. SIR,
Kandy Kachchéri, June 22, 1889. ADVERTING to my letter, No. 569, of the 12th instant, I have the honour to state that I requested Mr. Geo. Wall, editor of the " Ceylon Mail," on whose authority Mr. C. S. Salmon appears to have written his letter to the "Manchester Guardian," to inform me how this information reached him, in order that I might ascertain precisely the names and residences of the 1,048 villagers, said to have died of starvation conse- quent upon their eviction from their land.
2. Mr. Wall, in reply, states that he finds it stated in the Administration Report on the Nuwara Eliya District for 1887, that "between 1882 and 1885, 2,889 paddy fields were sold for default of payment of the paddy tax," and "that the case of the fields so sold, 1,048 of the late owners had died." He also makes reference to your opening paragraph of an appeal on behalf of the Bódi-ela scheme.
3. I request you will favour me with your early reply to my letter above quoted.
I am, &c.
R. W. D. MOIR,
Government Agent.
The ASSISTANT Government AgeNT, Nuwara Eliya, to the GOVERNment Agent, Kandy. SIR,
Walapane (on Circuit), June 17, 1889.
I HAVE the honour to return the paper annexed to your letter, No. 569, of 12th June 1889, and to submit the following remarks in reference thereto :--
2. It would appear that Mr. Salmon is quoting from some statement in the "Ceylon Mail," which I have not had the advantage of perusing, and am unable, therefore, to criticise.
3. Possibly the figures are based on certain statistics given in my Administration Reports for 1886 and 1887, in which, amongst other matters, I stated that of the original owners of fields sold for default, 1,048 were dead.
4. These statistics were obtained for the information of his Excellency the Governor, and that they should be as accurate as possible, I detached a special officer to go through all the villages in the Nuwara Eliya district in which sales had taken place, to ascertain what fields were then cultivated and what not, what the population of these villages then was, and what had become of the original owners, &c.
5. The statistics given in my Administration Report, 1886, were the results of that officer's work; but I regret to say that the lists drawn up by him with great care after months of patient and laborious inquiry are not now forthcoming.
6. They should be in the charge of W. Gunaratne, my Kachchéri interpreter, to whom they were handed to be kept with the sale lists themselves, but they have somehow disappeared.
7. Mr. Gunaratne states that they were given by him to the late record keeper, and that that officer lost them; a statement that I am inclined to doubt.
8. Be thin, however, as it may, the lists have disappeared, and I am not, therefore, in a position to give the actual instances on which my then statements were based.
9. I am however now engaged in collecting anew such information as will substantiate all I have said on the subject. This will, of course, take time to complete, but for the present I annexa list of individual cases where death has resulted after the sale of the fields of the family from starvation, want, and destitution, and the diseases arising therefrom, in Walapane alone.
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10. This list is only a preliminary one, hurriedly compiled during the few days I have been on circuit in Walapane since the receipt of your letter under reference.
11. I am having careful and accurate lists made, and these I will send hereafter. 12. In the meanwhile, as further substantiating my remarks at the Bodi-cla meeting held on 12th March 1889, I annex copy of the following documents :-
13. Report from the District Medical Officer, Mr. E. D. Kretzer, to the Assistant Government Agent, dated 26th September 1884 :—
SIR,
I AM directed by the Principal Civil Medical Officer to bring to your notice the complaints as to the alleged scarcity of food among the villagers in the Walapane district. Besides the letters received by me from the headmen and villagers to this effect, I was personally able to observe during my visits to the villages to inspect the fever patients, the extreme weak and emaciated condition of many of the villagers, from whom on inquiry I learned that there was a great scarcity of food, and that many of them had barely a meal a day; and this meal in one case I examined and found it to consist of different kinds of fruits and leaves. My attention was also directed to three individuals in an isolated hut-husband, wife, and child-all of whom were quite prostrate and so feeble as to be hardly able to speak. On inquiry I found that none of them had eaten anything for two days. As all these three were extremely low and dying for want of food, I afforded them such temporary relief as I was able."
14. Report from the Ratémahatmayá of Walapane, No. 211, of 9th October 1884:-- * SIB,
REFERRING to your order No. 1,230, I beg to forward list of persons who are in a state of starvation in Uda, Meda, and Yatipaláta kóralés. I have received no report from Oyapaláta in the matter."
[Shows 878 persons in a state of starvation in three out of four kóralés.] 15. Report from the Ratémahatmaya of Walapane, No. 225, of 13th October 1884 :- " SIR,
WITH reference to your order No. 1,230/196, I beg to forward a list of persons who are in want of food in Oyapaláta.”
[Shows 449 persons in want of food in Oyapaláta.]
There are numberless reports of the same nature from Walapane and Uda Héwaheta all through the years of 1883, 1884, and 1885, showing want and destitution amongst hundreds of the villagers of these two districts.
17. Extract from Mr. Baumgartner's diary, dated 11th February 1885 :---- "After this a crowd of women and children came forward and complained of want of food. Their appearance is clear proof of the truth of their complaint. I was not aware that such destitution existed in this part of Uda Hówáheta; and the Ratémahatmayá says he did not know of it. The people are from the villages in the valley of the Bilbul-oya, and they seem to have sunk gradually into their present state of poverty. I made detailed inquiry into most of the cases of the people who were present. They are mostly without any land, having lost what they had by debt or default of tax. Many of them are women whose husbands have died or disappeared, and in most of the cases now brought to notice there are large families of small children. Where there is a man at the head of the family, the complaint is that the country is so poor that no work could be got."
18. Extract from Mr. Baumgartner's diary, dated 12th February 1885 :---
"On the way passed the houses of several families who appeared to be in great destitution. These are the villages from which most of the people yesterday came, but many did not come, as I now find. In two cases I found women with large families of small children without clothes to cover them decently, and so reduced through want of proper food as hardly to be able to crawl out of the house."
19. Extract from Mr. Baumgartner's diary, dated 19th April 1885:- "Discussed with the Rat mahatmays the state of distress and destitution into which so many of the population in this division have sunk, and inquired particular of the cause.
"Most of the distressed are without land.
Some of these people have lost it either
by voluntary sales to meet their debts or by forced sales brought about by their creditors or by Government for default of tax. Others have never possessed lands.
"People without land have, up to recent years, been able to procure work in the fields and gardens of their neighbours; but this source of employment is now very much reduced owing to the reduced meaus of even the landed classes.
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