ABSTRACT
As the bubonic plague ravaged Bombay in the last years of the nineteenth century, the authorities became concerned about the threat to ‘public health’ posed by the squalid living conditions of the city’s working classes. ‘Sanitary disorder’ in the dwellings inhabited by the poor was perceived as the primary cause of the epidemic. Finding solutions to the problem of overcrowding and insanitary housing became of critical importance if Bombay was to continue functioning as a centre of imperial political and commercial power. One major consequence of this concern was the formation of the City of Bombay Improvement Trust in 1898 with the express aim of destroying ‘slums’, mitigating the abysmal living conditions of the urban poor, and restoring the ‘health’ of the city. Redressing the problem of ‘sanitary disorder’ posed by the ‘unintended city’ was part of an ambitious initiative to transform Bombay’s built environment. The Improvement Trust was entrusted with the work of ‘making new streets’, ‘opening out crowded localities’, and carrying out land reclamations ‘to provide room for the expansion of the city’.1 Significantly, the Trust was expected not only to carry out urgent sanitary improvements, but also to enhance its image as a centre of imperial and commercial power.
