Read Online The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, The Epidemic That Shaped Our Nation by Molly Caldwell Crosby - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Molly Caldwell Crosby
Ads: Link
plague were everywhere. Across the street from the marble fountain of Court Square stood a white, clapboard building flanked by two staircases. It was the headquarters for the Memphis Board of Health. In front of it, wagons filled with disinfectant held shovels protruding out of the flatbed like broken limbs. On a trip through the city the shovels would empty the chalky chemical as downy as falling snow; on the return trip, the shovels picked up badly decomposed bodies.
The carriage pulled away from the downtown train station, up Poplar Street past the empty courthouse on Main. It moved slowly through the streets, navigating the huge sinkholes and corroded paving. The smell of the Gayoso Bayou and all its decay was heavy in the air. A hot breeze lifted the treetops and, already, the leaves began to burn at the edges. In spite of temperatures that hovered around 100 degrees, residents had been advised to keep fires burning within their homes to cleanse the air, and windows were boarded shut against the pestilence.
As the sisters entered the infected district, yellow pieces of cardboard marked the doorways of the ill. On many porch fronts, black replaced the yellow cardboard with white chalk scrawled across it— Coffin Needed —and the dimensions for a man, woman or child.
It was a pitiful parting in a time of extravagant mourning. Under normal circumstances, the dying family member would have had the opportunity to say good-bye to all loved ones as they gathered bedside to hear the last words. The family would then have drawn the blinds, covered mirrors in black crepe and stopped all of the clocks. Strands of the deceased’s hair might be cut and woven into shapes like a cross to display in a glass case in the parlor. Even the children and babies would take part in the mourning, wearing a touch of black. The body would be packed in ice if it was summer and laid out in the parlor—a tradition that with time would dwindle, and the term parlor would be replaced by the living room. Finally, the women would stay behind in the home, while pallbearers in black gloves carried the coffin to its place of burial, where it would be draped with fresh flowers. Formal announcementsof death would be mailed. And the widow would forgo any gold or silver jewelry, wearing a dark veil during the following year and black garments for the next two and a half years.
During the epidemic, however, families prepared their own for burial, cleaning the bodies when there was time, placing the corpse in a pine box with a mixture of tar and acid before bolting the lid closed. They would listen. At some point during the day, in the suffocating silence, a team of six horses pulling a wagon would come up the block and announce, “Bring out your dead!”
The infected district started with the river. From there it spread through the lowland just underneath the bluffs and Front Street known as Happy Hollow. At Happy Hollow the Wolf River joined the muddy Mississippi, creating a rich stew of bog land and river brush. Happy Hollow had been the primary dump for downtown citizens who still relied on the bucket-and-cart system for emptying their privies. The mixture of refuse, rainwater and mud created a landfill where poor immigrants could build makeshift homes out of boat scraps and sheet metal perched on stilts above the fetid mud and froth. The accommodations were both rent free and tax free.
For two decades, railcars and steamboats had transported more than goods to Memphis, they delivered immigrants looking for work. Around New Orleans, yellow fever, the “stranger’s disease,” regularly fed off these newly arrived, nonimmune immigrants. In the 1870s, a large influx of immigrants moved into Memphis and settled around the river in Happy Hollow and the Pinch District. To a virus preying upon populations of nonimmunes, they provided ample supply.
From Happy Hollow and the river, the infected district spread across Front Street into the Pinch,
The carriage pulled away from the downtown train station, up Poplar Street past the empty courthouse on Main. It moved slowly through the streets, navigating the huge sinkholes and corroded paving. The smell of the Gayoso Bayou and all its decay was heavy in the air. A hot breeze lifted the treetops and, already, the leaves began to burn at the edges. In spite of temperatures that hovered around 100 degrees, residents had been advised to keep fires burning within their homes to cleanse the air, and windows were boarded shut against the pestilence.
As the sisters entered the infected district, yellow pieces of cardboard marked the doorways of the ill. On many porch fronts, black replaced the yellow cardboard with white chalk scrawled across it— Coffin Needed —and the dimensions for a man, woman or child.
It was a pitiful parting in a time of extravagant mourning. Under normal circumstances, the dying family member would have had the opportunity to say good-bye to all loved ones as they gathered bedside to hear the last words. The family would then have drawn the blinds, covered mirrors in black crepe and stopped all of the clocks. Strands of the deceased’s hair might be cut and woven into shapes like a cross to display in a glass case in the parlor. Even the children and babies would take part in the mourning, wearing a touch of black. The body would be packed in ice if it was summer and laid out in the parlor—a tradition that with time would dwindle, and the term parlor would be replaced by the living room. Finally, the women would stay behind in the home, while pallbearers in black gloves carried the coffin to its place of burial, where it would be draped with fresh flowers. Formal announcementsof death would be mailed. And the widow would forgo any gold or silver jewelry, wearing a dark veil during the following year and black garments for the next two and a half years.
During the epidemic, however, families prepared their own for burial, cleaning the bodies when there was time, placing the corpse in a pine box with a mixture of tar and acid before bolting the lid closed. They would listen. At some point during the day, in the suffocating silence, a team of six horses pulling a wagon would come up the block and announce, “Bring out your dead!”
The infected district started with the river. From there it spread through the lowland just underneath the bluffs and Front Street known as Happy Hollow. At Happy Hollow the Wolf River joined the muddy Mississippi, creating a rich stew of bog land and river brush. Happy Hollow had been the primary dump for downtown citizens who still relied on the bucket-and-cart system for emptying their privies. The mixture of refuse, rainwater and mud created a landfill where poor immigrants could build makeshift homes out of boat scraps and sheet metal perched on stilts above the fetid mud and froth. The accommodations were both rent free and tax free.
For two decades, railcars and steamboats had transported more than goods to Memphis, they delivered immigrants looking for work. Around New Orleans, yellow fever, the “stranger’s disease,” regularly fed off these newly arrived, nonimmune immigrants. In the 1870s, a large influx of immigrants moved into Memphis and settled around the river in Happy Hollow and the Pinch District. To a virus preying upon populations of nonimmunes, they provided ample supply.
From Happy Hollow and the river, the infected district spread across Front Street into the Pinch,
Similar Books
