Death and Disease in the Prisons of Colonial Burma

Over the half-century from 1890 to 1940, the death rate in Burma’s prisons was cut by more than half. This article first seeks to explain that reduction by examining the shifting incidence of the main diseases found in the province’s jails in this period―dysentery and diarrhea, smallpox, cholera, plague, malaria, pneumonia, tuberculosis―and the measures taken by the prison administration to contain them. It then critically examines the argument advanced in the 1920s, for example, that a prolonged term in a Burmese prison was likely to improve the inmate’s physical condition―that he would generally leave prison fitter, heavier and in better health. Finally, the article seeks to explain why the incidence of disease and the rate of mortality among the inmate population were apparently of such concern to the prison administration of colonial Burma.