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 B
Authors: Molly Caldwell Crosby
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then Second and Third streets.
It stretched south into Exchange, Poplar, Washington and Adams streets. Deep within these neighborhoods stood the Memphis Courthouse, Calvary Church, Grace Church, a synagogue, City Hall and an elaborately expensive prison. Of all the dwellings, the prison would report the fewest cases of yellow fever.
As Constance and Thecla made their way through the infected district, they crossed the Gayoso Bayou, and at last, reached Alabama Street where St. Mary’s Cathedral stood, a wooden, Gothic church with a large rose window over the entrance. Petals of purple, blue and gold shone light into the dark wood interior where a tall, arc-like nave gave the feel of a ship turned inside out. The church, now a bishop’s cathedral, had been built in the 1850s as a branch of Calvary Episcopal Church and St. Lazarus-Grace Church. It had been constructed on the very edge of town where Poplar intersected Alabama Street and Orleans with instructions for a steeple that could be seen from Main Street. At a time when other churches charged fees for their pews, St. Mary’s did not, hoping to be open to all people, those in the city and those in the country, the ones who could afford it and those who could not.
The conditions at St. Mary’s were not much better than those of the town. Already home to a girl’s school and church orphanage, the Citizen’s Relief Committee then appealed to the sisters of St. Mary’s to take care of the Canfield Asylum, a home for black children, as well. Hundreds of children orphaned by the epidemic took residence at Canfield, one of the last disease-free havens in the city—far from the Mississippi River unfurling the pestilence from its banks.
“What we’ve decided to do is have you sleep in the country, out of the infected atmosphere,” explained one of the sisters from St. Mary’s. “You can work in town during the day.”
Constance and Thecla refused. “We cannot listen to such a plan; it would never do; we are going to nurse day and night; we must be at our post.”
Both sisters had survived the previous yellow fever epidemic in 1873. No sooner had they arrived in Memphis to open a boarding and day school for girls than the epidemic began. Women trained to be teachers found themselves to be nurses, cooks, care-takers. One sister at St. Mary’s would later write: “That epidemic of 1873 seems now like a faint foreshadowing of the one through which we have just passed. The distressing scenes witnessed in the first were replaced by overwhelming sorrows in the second, while the pain and sadness of the one were intensified into most bitter suffering and anguish in the other.”
When a scourge of this magnitude strikes, the minds of people, against all rational thought, look for a reason. Modern-day epidemic psychologists have described a total collapse of conventional order—fear pervades, the sick go uncared for, people are persecuted and moral controversies arise. Memphians became almost medieval in their divine conclusions. Protestants and Catholics fought over who deserted and who stayed to look after their flocks. It was suggested by some in the North that an all-wise Providence created the plague to bring a divided nation together. Clergy warned that New Orleans and Memphis suffered yellow fever because of their heathen Mardi Gras celebrations. The fever, it was reported, “was fatal to those whose energies had been exhausted by debauchery.” It made it harder to explain the many who perished from selfless sacrifice. “The nuns died,” as one newspaper column read, “in numbers sufficient to give rise to the belief that they were specially marked by the destroyer.”
Constance served as sister superior at St. Mary’s. Caroline Louise Darling, as she was named at birth, was accomplished for the time period: educated, talented, well mannered, a good leader to the band of women at St. Mary’s. She was described as “a woman of exquisite grace, tenderness,
It stretched south into Exchange, Poplar, Washington and Adams streets. Deep within these neighborhoods stood the Memphis Courthouse, Calvary Church, Grace Church, a synagogue, City Hall and an elaborately expensive prison. Of all the dwellings, the prison would report the fewest cases of yellow fever.
As Constance and Thecla made their way through the infected district, they crossed the Gayoso Bayou, and at last, reached Alabama Street where St. Mary’s Cathedral stood, a wooden, Gothic church with a large rose window over the entrance. Petals of purple, blue and gold shone light into the dark wood interior where a tall, arc-like nave gave the feel of a ship turned inside out. The church, now a bishop’s cathedral, had been built in the 1850s as a branch of Calvary Episcopal Church and St. Lazarus-Grace Church. It had been constructed on the very edge of town where Poplar intersected Alabama Street and Orleans with instructions for a steeple that could be seen from Main Street. At a time when other churches charged fees for their pews, St. Mary’s did not, hoping to be open to all people, those in the city and those in the country, the ones who could afford it and those who could not.
The conditions at St. Mary’s were not much better than those of the town. Already home to a girl’s school and church orphanage, the Citizen’s Relief Committee then appealed to the sisters of St. Mary’s to take care of the Canfield Asylum, a home for black children, as well. Hundreds of children orphaned by the epidemic took residence at Canfield, one of the last disease-free havens in the city—far from the Mississippi River unfurling the pestilence from its banks.
“What we’ve decided to do is have you sleep in the country, out of the infected atmosphere,” explained one of the sisters from St. Mary’s. “You can work in town during the day.”
Constance and Thecla refused. “We cannot listen to such a plan; it would never do; we are going to nurse day and night; we must be at our post.”
Both sisters had survived the previous yellow fever epidemic in 1873. No sooner had they arrived in Memphis to open a boarding and day school for girls than the epidemic began. Women trained to be teachers found themselves to be nurses, cooks, care-takers. One sister at St. Mary’s would later write: “That epidemic of 1873 seems now like a faint foreshadowing of the one through which we have just passed. The distressing scenes witnessed in the first were replaced by overwhelming sorrows in the second, while the pain and sadness of the one were intensified into most bitter suffering and anguish in the other.”
When a scourge of this magnitude strikes, the minds of people, against all rational thought, look for a reason. Modern-day epidemic psychologists have described a total collapse of conventional order—fear pervades, the sick go uncared for, people are persecuted and moral controversies arise. Memphians became almost medieval in their divine conclusions. Protestants and Catholics fought over who deserted and who stayed to look after their flocks. It was suggested by some in the North that an all-wise Providence created the plague to bring a divided nation together. Clergy warned that New Orleans and Memphis suffered yellow fever because of their heathen Mardi Gras celebrations. The fever, it was reported, “was fatal to those whose energies had been exhausted by debauchery.” It made it harder to explain the many who perished from selfless sacrifice. “The nuns died,” as one newspaper column read, “in numbers sufficient to give rise to the belief that they were specially marked by the destroyer.”
Constance served as sister superior at St. Mary’s. Caroline Louise Darling, as she was named at birth, was accomplished for the time period: educated, talented, well mannered, a good leader to the band of women at St. Mary’s. She was described as “a woman of exquisite grace, tenderness,
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