Read Online The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our Nation by Molly Caldwell Crosby - Free Book Online
Authors: Molly Caldwell Crosby
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The people gathered on a hilltop a mile away and watched as the men, women and children released from the train cars ran toward the provisions. Then, guards with shotguns herded the Memphians back into the suffocating train cars. Those were the lucky ones. Left behind in the ruined city were the poor, the sick and the dead.
Immediately, a Citizen’s Relief Committee, headed by Charles G. Fisher, convened in the Memphis opera house. Since most wealthy city officials had fled, ordinary citizens took up the call. Their first priority: to get the poor out of the city and organized in refugee camps. Already, families sought out chicken shacks and abandoned slave quarters throughout the countryside. The committee turned every stall and booth of the county fairgrounds into shelters. It was said that the flutter of canvas could be seen on every grove in Memphis.
The Howard Association, formed specifically for yellow fever epidemics in New Orleans and Memphis, organized nurses and doctors. They asked Dr. Robert Mitchell, newly resigned from the Board of Health, to be medical director. He accepted the position in what must have been a state of despair. Mitchell had known this would happen; he had seen it coming and could do nothing to stop it. His fate, it seemed, would be fixed to this fever.
Amid shimmering light and supple breezes on August 23, the Board of Health finally declared a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis. It was two months after Mitchell’s ill-fated battle for quarantine; one month after the fever’s first victim.
CHAPTER 4
A City of Corpses
Dust from the lime blew in the air, bone colored and sifted fine as flour. There was no traffic to stir it up. No horses to kick dirt beneath their hooves. It rose and fell of its own energy, occasionally accompanied by the pitch of a mosquito’s wings.
Only six months after the lavish Mardi Gras celebration, Memphis was a city of corpses. Streets, white with disinfectant, were deserted. Once lined with cotton bales and parade bleachers, Main Street now held piles of coffins, stacked one on top of another, so that walking the thoroughfare felt like entering a tomb. Instead of pageant masks, the occasional pedestrian would hurry by with a sponge tied across his nose to cover the smell. Where 3,000 horsemen had paraded, only death wagons now clattered by in pairs: One wagon of empty coffins, the other of full ones. The smell of cologne and rosewater, sprinkled on the bedclothes of the dying, seeped from doorways disguising the peculiar, pungent odor of illness. The sweet scent of blossoms had been replaced by the saccharine stench of death.
Wilkerson Drugs had closed, as had most other apothecaries, their colorful show globes void of light. Prescriptions could not be filled. McLaughlin’s grocery and Barnaby’s shop were boarded shut. Vegetable carts had long since closed, and the milk wagon had ceased its rounds weeks ago. Banks opened for only one hour a day. Memphis, having been quarantined from the rest of the country, became a colony left to burn. One journalist wrote: “A stranger in Memphis might believe he was in hell.”
City officials wired President Rutherford B. Hayes for help; little was given. Hayes wrote in a personal letter on August 19, “I suspect the Memphis sorrow (yellow fever epidemic) is greatly exaggerated by the panic-stricken people. We do all we can for their relief.” On September 2, Mayor Flippin again telegraphed the president for assistance, but it was the last of such correspondence. Four days later, the mayor was down with the fever.
Even the lime could not cover the smell of death as Constance stepped off the train platform on August 20, 1878. The wind carried the odor for three miles outside of the city. Sister Constance and Sister Thecla returned from a vacation on the Hudson as soon as they heard the news of the fever; the sisters were the only ones traveling into Memphis.
As they made their way through the town, signs of
Immediately, a Citizen’s Relief Committee, headed by Charles G. Fisher, convened in the Memphis opera house. Since most wealthy city officials had fled, ordinary citizens took up the call. Their first priority: to get the poor out of the city and organized in refugee camps. Already, families sought out chicken shacks and abandoned slave quarters throughout the countryside. The committee turned every stall and booth of the county fairgrounds into shelters. It was said that the flutter of canvas could be seen on every grove in Memphis.
The Howard Association, formed specifically for yellow fever epidemics in New Orleans and Memphis, organized nurses and doctors. They asked Dr. Robert Mitchell, newly resigned from the Board of Health, to be medical director. He accepted the position in what must have been a state of despair. Mitchell had known this would happen; he had seen it coming and could do nothing to stop it. His fate, it seemed, would be fixed to this fever.
Amid shimmering light and supple breezes on August 23, the Board of Health finally declared a yellow fever epidemic in Memphis. It was two months after Mitchell’s ill-fated battle for quarantine; one month after the fever’s first victim.
CHAPTER 4
A City of Corpses
Dust from the lime blew in the air, bone colored and sifted fine as flour. There was no traffic to stir it up. No horses to kick dirt beneath their hooves. It rose and fell of its own energy, occasionally accompanied by the pitch of a mosquito’s wings.
Only six months after the lavish Mardi Gras celebration, Memphis was a city of corpses. Streets, white with disinfectant, were deserted. Once lined with cotton bales and parade bleachers, Main Street now held piles of coffins, stacked one on top of another, so that walking the thoroughfare felt like entering a tomb. Instead of pageant masks, the occasional pedestrian would hurry by with a sponge tied across his nose to cover the smell. Where 3,000 horsemen had paraded, only death wagons now clattered by in pairs: One wagon of empty coffins, the other of full ones. The smell of cologne and rosewater, sprinkled on the bedclothes of the dying, seeped from doorways disguising the peculiar, pungent odor of illness. The sweet scent of blossoms had been replaced by the saccharine stench of death.
Wilkerson Drugs had closed, as had most other apothecaries, their colorful show globes void of light. Prescriptions could not be filled. McLaughlin’s grocery and Barnaby’s shop were boarded shut. Vegetable carts had long since closed, and the milk wagon had ceased its rounds weeks ago. Banks opened for only one hour a day. Memphis, having been quarantined from the rest of the country, became a colony left to burn. One journalist wrote: “A stranger in Memphis might believe he was in hell.”
City officials wired President Rutherford B. Hayes for help; little was given. Hayes wrote in a personal letter on August 19, “I suspect the Memphis sorrow (yellow fever epidemic) is greatly exaggerated by the panic-stricken people. We do all we can for their relief.” On September 2, Mayor Flippin again telegraphed the president for assistance, but it was the last of such correspondence. Four days later, the mayor was down with the fever.
Even the lime could not cover the smell of death as Constance stepped off the train platform on August 20, 1878. The wind carried the odor for three miles outside of the city. Sister Constance and Sister Thecla returned from a vacation on the Hudson as soon as they heard the news of the fever; the sisters were the only ones traveling into Memphis.
As they made their way through the town, signs of
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