Military recruits’ families briefly followed them as camp shanty-towns before being excluded

Evidence

So long as the soldiers were in Egypt their wives and children were allowed to follow them from camp to camp and to build shanty-towns close to the training camp, living as best as they could by sharing the meager rations of the soldiers. An estimated 22,000 women and children, for example, are supposed to have lived on the outskirts of the Hankah camp near Abū Za‘bal. Ultimately, however, and mainly for health reasons, this practice was stopped, the shanty-towns appended to the camps were dismantled, and strict regulations were enforced preventing the soldiers from having access to their families. — Khaled Fahmy, All the Pasha_s Men_ Mehmed Ali, his…, 657

Categorization

• QUESTION: The ‘health reasons’ rationale for dismantling family shanty-towns deserves probing — was it genuine hygiene concern or a tool of isolation?