Cemeteries at Manoel Island

I read with interest Claudia Calleja’s report (The Sunday Times, October 31), regarding the graves in the crypt beneath San Antonio di Padova chapel inside Fort Manoel. Fondazzjoni Wirt Artna and its CEO, Mario Farrugia, have made a great contribution towards our heritage at Fort Tigné and Fort Manoel which can be vouched for by the Midi and AOM Partnership.

However, I find it a little odd that the bones referred to in the report are thought to have belonged to those who fell to the plague or some other epidemic while billeted at the fort. If so, these people must have been very high-ranking or important to be given such a privilege. From what I can understand from the report, there are remains of more than one person.

Although Manoel Island was acquired in 1643, the Isolotto (little island) as it was then known, had been used as a place of quarantine since the plague outbreak of 1592.

It was not until the plague of 1675-76 that the Lazzaretto was enlarged and modified by Grand Master Nicolò Cotoner, and again by Grand Masters Caraffa and Manoel de Vilhena.

Royal engineer maps drawn between 1858 and 1862 and survey sheets of the early 20th century show that at Lazzaretto and Manoel Island there was a cemetery behind the Quarantine Quarters (the Lazzaretto), a cemetery alongside the old plague hospital, and another at its rear by the main road. One of these cemeteries was for Roman Catholics, with its small chapel dedicated to St George built in 1813, and the second for other denominations.

During the 1837 cholera epidemic, nearly 9,000 were affected, of whom 4,200 died. Many of those infected were placed in the ditches around the fortifications and forts, and many were sent to Manoel Island and its fort.

Even during the Crimean War, when many of the French troop transporters and navy ships called at Malta on their way to Crimea, there was an outbreak of dysentery on board some of the ships, and many of their names feature in the burial register of one of the cemeteries of the Lazzaretto.

As late as World War I, the bodies of 13 Indian soldiers and seven men of the Indian Labour Corps, who died in Malta during the war, were cremated at the Lazzaretto Cemetery on Manoel Island.

I still remember back in the mid-1970s when one of the cemeteries just by the junction on the main road to the fort was converted into a yard for the storage of drill pipes and casing for the oil rigs.

Recently, I visited the lower cemetery just by the former hospital of which only the shell of the small chapel and some stone fragments from a few graves remain. These remains should be collected and along with the chapel, restored and converted into a memorial to all those who perished and were buried at the Lazzaretto.