Distribution of and Mortality from Plague during 1897—Bombay Presidency 1898 map

'Sketch Map to Illustrate the Distribution of, and Comparative Mortality from Plague in the Different Districts of the Presidency of Bombay During the Year 1897' An arresting official epidemiological map of western India, issued at the height of the Bombay plague crisis. The map records the “distribution of, and comparative mortality from plague” across the districts of the Bombay Presidency during 1897, using coloured district outlines, mortality circles and statistical tables to translate epidemic catastrophe into administrative geography. Printed by the Government Photozinco Office, Poona, in 1898, it belongs to the early official mapping of bubonic plague after the disease’s emergence in Bombay in 1896 and its rapid spread through the Presidency. The inset tables give death-rates and district statistics, including Bombay City, Poona, Surat, Thana and Karachi. A compelling medical-history map, combining colonial public-health surveillance, statistical cartography and the human geography of one of British India’s most consequential epidemics.