o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

SAKIS GEKAS
was suspended as a result of a multifaceted crisis with hunger, grain shortage due
to the Crimean War and cholera outbreaks. These events brought the agricultural
and subsequently the commercial economy to its knees. Chiotis describes the harsh
economic conditions in 1850s Corfu in the following way: ‘In 1855, the Islands were
in an appalling condition. Hunger was raging in the two big Islands of Zante and
Kefalonia, cholera was ravaging Corfu and Zante. The Crimean war prohibited the
grain production and trade. Hunger, destitution and disease were crushing the
Ionians. The Government revenue was short, the produce was reduced, the people
were starving….Landowners and tenants earned nothing, capitalists and merchants
lent nothing’ 69 . In a similar tone, the Ionian Bank report of 1852 noted: ‘The entire
failure of the oil crop and the depreciation of the staple product of the Island, were
of themselves sufficient to create commercial and monetary pressure’ 70 . The descriptions
above provide the context of the business failure many merchants experienced
until a few years before union with Greece, when the economy or parts of the economy
such as currant exports (but not Corfu’s commerce) had recovered but were
still about two-thirds of the value of currant exports during the 1830s and 1840s 71 .
Living conditions on the other hand did improve in the islands due to the management
and policy of public health. Preventive measures, including the quarantine
of ships for up to 15 days, were taken by the authorities, lazarettos were built and
improved, continuing the Venetian quarantine system of previous centuries. The
Ionian State collected and published information and news about the plague and
other epidemics in neighbouring areas in southern Italy and the Ottoman mainland.
The government sent medical officers to neighbouring areas to study the spread of
diseases, particularly cholera, when it appeared in the 1830s and did not spare the
Ionian Islands. The outbreak of cholera in Kefalonia in 1850 raised the alarm in
Corfu as well. Commissioner Ward paid a rare visit to Manduki, a suburb of Corfu,
where he witnessed appalling sanitary conditions. In an equally rare mention in a
speech to the Ionian Assembly he pledged £2,000 to be ‘distributed to the population’
for improvement of the sanitary conditions and sewage facilities in the suburb.
Sanitary conditions, Ward noted, were ‘as dangerous to the public health, as it is offensive
to public decency’ 72 . The situation in parts of the town was equally alarming.
The cholera epidemic of 1855 broke out in the orphanage in Manduki, highlighting
the failure of the Ionian government to provide decent sanitary conditions
to some of its most vulnerable citizens, orphan children. The government and the
Commissioner personally had failed to respond to the people in Manduki, who in
1851, years before the cholera outbreak, had complained about sanitary conditions
in their suburb and had requested improvements following the visit of Ward in
their district 73 .
69 Π. Χιώτου, Ιστορία του Ιονίου Κράτους, vol. 2, 1874, p. 347.
70 Annual Report 1852, Ionian Bank Archive 2/1, BLPES.
71 Ionian Islands Blue Books of Statistics, CO 136/1392-1426, National Archives, London.
72 IIGG, No. 101, 25 November/7 December 1850.
73 Petition 1076, 22 April 1851, CO 136/1045, National Archives, London.
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