USA > Tennessee > Shelby County > Memphis > A history of the yellow fever : the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, in Memphis, Tenn., embracing a complete list of the dead, the names of the doctors and nurses employed, names of all who contributed money or means, and the names and history of the Howards, together with other data, and lists of the dead elsewhere > Part 19
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Two of the saddest cases of fever reported were those of Mrs. John Dono- van and Mrs. Beno Hollenberg. The former, twelve hours after being taken. was delivered of a still-born babe, and the latter gave birth to a fine healthy child.
From the 1st of August to six o'clock on the 26th. 573 cases of yellow fever had been reported to the Board of Health, of which number 160 had died, and about forty had convalesred. leaving 373 still sick. Our only hope for an abatement of the disease lies in the ability of the city government to compel the people-white and black-who still remain to leave for the camps. We need more nurses and physicians. After dark, it was impossible to find. or. if found, to secure the services of a doctor. In addition to this, it was found alnost impossible to get medicine after night-fall.
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Among the new cases reported August 26th, were Sisters Veronica and Dominica, of La Salette Academy.
Little Jimmie Winters, aged six years, was found lying on a door-stop at the corner of Exchange and Front Streets, on the morning of August 26th, suffering with the fever. His story was, that he came in from the camp look- ing for his brother, whom he did not find. He was carried to the hospital.
Mrs. Bennett and her daughter, of the family of Charles Bennett, the bricklayer, at No. 101 Robeson Street, was stricken with the fever on the 26th of August. Mr. Bennett and his son left home a few days prior, the latter saying they were going to Cincinnati, and had not been heard from since.
A colored woman declared herself insulted, one day late in August, because an item of the rations awarded her at the commissary depot was, as she termed it, " nasty, ole, greasy bacon." She said : " Dey'se got some nice streak o' lean and streak o' fat dar, but dey gi me dat ole stuff, fat enough to kill a hog."
A citizen coming into the city, on Poplar Street, was nearly sickened by a. nauseating stench proceeding from a building near the bayon bridge, west of the market-house. He went into the building from which the stench proceeded. and bursting in the door of a room, he discovered the dead body of its ocen- pant lying on the bed, in a decomposed condition, where it had, evidently. heen laving for four or five days. It was the body of a barber, who formerly ocen- pied the lower floor as a barber-shop. The room presented a sickening sight. The remains were wrapped in a sheet, encoffined, and interred the same day.
The fate of the Donovan family occasioned much comment, in which Mr. Donovan, who was formerly held in high esteem and exercised considerable influence, politically and socially in this community, was severely censured for positively refusing to return to his family when notified that his wife and chil- dren were stricken down with the fever. Mrs. Donovan gave birth to a still- born child, and, soon after, died herself; one of her children died the same day. Mr. Donovan was notified by telegraph, but coolly responded with in- structions concerning the burial of the corpses, but still remained away. An- other of the children died, but Mr. Donovan remained at Brownsville, fifty miles away.
Annie Cook, who kept the noted demi-monde establishment, the Mansion- house, di-charged all her female inmates, and taking yellow-fever patients in her elegantly furnished rooms-being herself an expert in the management of the discase-she personally superintended the nursing of all the patients.
Avalanche, August 28th .-- " It is blue, very blue. The record of yesterday shows only a passage from bad to worse. The plagne is as great a gourmand as ever, and was only gorged by ninety-six new cases in the city. Total deaths in the city, thirty-two."
The Appeal of August 28th .- " Ninety-six new cases and thirty-two deaths from yellow fever are the appalling reports from the books of the Board of Health. The close, damp, disagreeable weather is increasing its ray- ages, and the scareity of nurses and physicians is leaving the cases entirely at the merey of the disease. Several of the nurses have been stricken down already. It is blood-curdling to listen to the details of the heart-rending inci- dents encountered by the visiting nurses in various parts of the city. To-day the nurses reported at the Board of Health office, two, three, and four corpses in one house, the undertakers not being able to bury them. One of the remarkable features of the disease, as it prevails now. is, that whole families have been swept out of existence-father, mother. and children have followed each other in rapid succession to the grave. and in some in- stances several members of a family are lying dead at the same time, hav- ing died almost within the same hour. This was the case in several instances in what was known as the 'infected district.'"
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The labors of Butler P. Anderson, at Grenada, were without a parallel in the history of epidemies. He not only nursed cases himself, but supervised all the philanthropie laborers, and, for a time, actually administered the affairs of the plague-stricken town. A hero among heroes, he carried hope and comfort to a people without either, and, from the chaos and confusion incident to so fearful a visitation, brought the order and system to which the few who sur- vive the fever owe their lives. Like many another brave soldier, he was, at last, beaten by the enemy, and stricken with the fever.
Mr. Denie, by direction of the Board of Health, threw five hundred barrel- of unslacked Eme into the bayou, which he reported to be in a condition filthy beyond belief. He stated that the negro men he employed to do the work threatened to leave him, so horrible was the stench created by stirring up the foul vater. He, however, prevailed upon them to keep on.
Of the 119 new cases of yellow fever reported in the twenty-four hours end- ing at six ecook, August 28th, thirty were colored people, and yet negroes were to be seen at any and all hours of the day, in the alleys and back-ways, gorging themselves with watermelons and all sorts of unwholesome trash.
The absence of funeral processions, which contributed much to the horror of the epidemic of 1873, was noted. The dead were conveyed to the various burying places as quietly as possible, and the public were thus relieved of the one harrowing exhibition of sorrow.
The fever record of August 29th was one to make the stoutest heart quail. Briefly stated. it was 140 new cases-forty of them colored -- and seventy deaths, twenty-four of them colored. This surpassed the worst of the terrible days of 1873, the deaths being fifteen in number more than was announced on the tenth of October, the worst day of that year. When it is remembered that the white population was less than that during the epidemic of 1873, by perhaps 5,000, and that at least 2,000 negroes had left the city, these figures became truly appalling.
Avalanche, August 30th, written midnight, 29th .- " We are doomed. It is hard, as we write in this dark, dismal night of death, not to realize the full meaning of that brief sentence. . Scarcely any are left, but those who are crowding down personal care, in the noble purposes of others' good. . . To die for man is to imitate the greatest event in the history of our globe, it is to imitate the death of the Savior of the world. Seventy dead and one hundred and forty new cases! God help us! If hope were not worn to a skeleton, if she had not taken herself to prayer, we might find a spark to kindle a weak glow of light in this impenetrable darkness, and expect that the heavy shower of to-day would wash from the air, from the gutter, and from the bayou a part of the foul pestilential air which is breeding death. The horrors of the hour can not be told, even if the heart did not sicken at the task !"
It is believed that the sudden breaking out of the fever in the jail was caused by the incarceration of infected prisoners, and not from any lack of attention to the rigid sanitary regulations which characterized the management of that institution.
Mrs. Newman, of 128 Washington Street, died Angust 30th, and willed all her worldly goods to the children of a friend, and was buried by the county undertaker, at her own request.
Great sympathy was expressed for General W. J. Smith, First Vice-Pres- ident of the Howard Association, in the loss of his son, a bereavement which adds to his trials and makes his burden heavy indeed.
The illness of Chief of Police Athy, which occurred on the last day of August, was a severe blow in those critical times.
Among the number of shocking incidents of daily occurrence, that of the
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fate of Dr. K. P. Watson, was perhaps the most horrible. Dr. Watson was an efficient worker, both as physician and nurse, during the epidemic of 1873; and when the fever broke out in 1878, he entered the field again, and devoted himself and his talents to the work of staying the ravages of the disease. He made no boast of the work he was doing, nor stopped to discuss the nature of the pestilence, but wherever he found suffering he worked with all his clergy to alleviate it. Finally he was missed, but it was thought that he had followed the spread of the disease into other quarters of the city. Sergrant MeElroy, of the Signal Service, who worked like a Trojan, doing all in his power to help the sick and distressed, happened to be passing by No. 563 Second Street, and was told that there was something wrong there; that in all probability a dead body lay in there. Without hesitation he kicked the door in, when he bebell a sickening sight. There lay the corpse of Dr. Watson, on an old mattress on the floor, no bedstead or other furniture except a single chair and a table. Being personally acquainted with Dr. Watson, he thought be recognized his features, and a closer examination confirmed his first impressions. Diligent inquiry in the neighborhood failed to clicit any information as to when or why he came there, how long ago, or any thing that could give a clue to his myste- rious death. The condition of the corpse and surrounding circumstances told the story too truly. He had been seized with a violent attack of the fever, and during the attendant delirium, he had crept into the place, where he may have lingered for days, or it may have been only for hours, finally dying unattended by nurse or physician, not even a friend to smooth his dying pillow. Ilis name appeared among the interments of August 31st .*
A man named Myers kept a second-hand clothing and dyeing establishment on Washington Street, between Main and Second Streets. Some one entered his place August 31st. and found him lying dead on the floor; no one coubl find out how long he had been in that condition. He bore evident marks of having died with the fever, without any attention whatever.
A poor woman was found on Main Street, near the Louisville Depot. in a miserable hut, sitting stiff, stark dead in a chair, with a dead child hanging by the nipple of her left breast on which it had closed its little gums as it breathed its last. Another child was lying in a pallet just breathing, and died a few mio- ments after the entrance of the Howard visitor, who said the walls, floor and every thing in the room was covered with black vomit and excreta, the sight as well as smell being sickening in the extreme. Mother and children were buried in the same box.
On Poplar Street the remains of an old woman were found so far gone that they were gathered-putrid water and festering flesh-into the carpet on which they were lying, and so lifted into a box, in which she was buried in potter's field.
Another of the noble Howards was buried on Sunday, September Ist : Ed. Mansford, who, in 1873, and through the last epidemie, until two days before he died, was conspicuous for his untiring energy in a work but for which the poor would have no succor, passed away peacefully as Sunday morning dawned. His work was done. He had fought the good fight; henceforth there was for him the crown of martyrdom. He came out from the ranks of the people a
* This was subsequently contradicted, but the person who originally made the report adhered to it until he died. Sergeant MeFirmy, signal service officer at this station, was the person. A more hon- orable or with!url soldier never served his country. He muned the sick and bravai all the perils of the times, doing all that a man could to mitigate the sorrow and trouble that surrounded him. He fought in the regular arany, all through the civil war, had encountered the Indians on the plains many times. and passed through one epidemic of yellow fever in New Orleans, but his last campaign the epidemic;, he assured the writer, combined the horrors of them all.
*Since the first edition of this book was printed, the author has been fully satisfied. from testimony In possession of Mrs. Dr. Watson, that Sergeant Me Elroy was mistaken. It was not the body of Dr. Watson that was found. as above devecibul, but that of an unknown person.
Dr. Purnell. Dr. Syni, and Dr. T. J. Tyner, who visited Dr. Watson during his illness, all positively declare. and the burial certificates are in proof, that he was carefully attended to and was decently buried by his friends.
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mere private, he went to his grave acknowledged as a leader among those who were not afraid to die that others might live.
Aralenche, September 1st .- " The King of Terrors continues to snatch vie-
tims with fearful rapidity. But three short weeks ago our city was active with business of all classes, our people were happy and prosperous ... Now our streets are deserted, our stores and residences empty, and out of a population of more than fifty thousand, barely five thousand remain, and of those nearly five hundred are in the grave, and perhaps double that number lie suffering with racking pains and burning fever -. "
Appeul. September 1st. - " We believe the new cases of yesterday will reach two Mordred (reported one hundred and fifty-two). The region of the city known as the ' infected district' is now so nearly depopulated by death and desertion, that but few cases are being reported from that quarter, but the great increase in numbers from the Ninth Ward (northern part of the city, called Chelsea shows that the contagion has taken a firmer grasp in that lo- eality. The Seventh Ward (south-east part) is also rolling up considerable numbers of new cases, as is also the Fifth Ward (north of the Seventh), where it is making frightful havoc among the colored people. There is still great need of physicians."
The name of N. D. Menkin, who passed away September 2d, will never be forgotten by the people of Memphis. He died at his post, a noble example of zeal and courage on a field where many brave men had fallen before him. ITe might, like many others of his class, have sought safety in flight, bat he pre- ferred to share the lot of the people to whom he was known as an honorable. enterprising merchant, whose money seconded every suggestion he ever made in the public interest. Early in the fight he saw that few of the public men or noted merchants would remain to lead the small company who proposed to do the good Samaritan work of nursing the sick. burying the dead, and caring for the impoverished ; he therefore volunteered, and first, as the leader of a little band of his co-religionists, and afterward as a Howard, he went about, day and night, doing good, carrying comfort to sick-rooms, provisions to the destitute. and surpervising with all the energy of his nature the work of a district where the fever was raging at its worst.
A colored man was prostrated, September 2d, on the corner of Fifth and Saffarans Streets, in Chelsea. He was seen to fall by Captain A. T. Lacey, who went to him and found him insensible. Captain Lacey reported the case to the health office, and an ambulance was sent for him, but he was dead when it got there.
Innumerable complaints were made at the health office, September 24. about corpses lying unburied, some of them having been dead thirty-six and forty-eight hours. Undertaker Walsh declared his inability to get material for coffins, or laborers to dig graves.
Avalanche, September 3d .-- " The fever has spread rapidly to the southern part of the city. Fort Pickering is full of it. Chelsea (northern part , is covered with sick people. There is now no part of the corporate limits of the city not thoroughly infected with the fever poison. All of Sunday and vesterdav hearses followed each other at a trot to the cemetery, unattended by any but the drivers. Even this was not fast enough, and corpses accumu- laited in various parts of the city, until the fearful stench became alarmingly offensive."
Rev. Dr. A. Thomas, pastor of the German Free Protestant Church, of this city, died, September 3d, of' yellow fever, after a very short illness. Dr. Thomas was one of the noble army of martyrs, and since the breaking out of the fever had devoted himself entirely to the sick and afflicted of his parish. None were more earnest and self-denying than he, and his death was a severe
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loss to the city, as well as to the religious community of which he was the light. and guide.
The death of Mr. R. A. Thompson, one of the editors and proprietors of the Aralanche, and postmaster of the city, occurred September 3d. and was the result of an attack of yellow fever. Mr. Thompson came to Memphis toward the close of the war, and was first engaged on the Bulletin as local, and subse- quently as commercial, editor. In 1866, he was offered the position of com- inercial editor of the dealanche, which be accepted, and has ever since been identified with the fortunes of that paper. In 1875, he became one of the proprietors, and, a few months before his death, was confirmed postmaster. He possessed and was guided by a great many of the intuitions which are prized hy the true journalist, was useful in every branch of the profession. was a good business man, and fully justified the good opinion of a large circle of friends, by whom his death was regretted and his memory cherished.
Henry Stillman, at one time connected with the Ledger office, as engineer, was found dead in a residence on Broadway Street. in South Memphis, Septem- ber 3d. He had probably been dead three or four days.
Butler Anderson's death was announced in the Appeal in these terms: No nobler spirit over went out through death to life than that of Butler P. An- derson. He was of the stuff of which heroes are made. Large, open. gerer- ous, and self-sacrificing, intelligent as to the risks he ran, but counting them nothing when compared with the magnitude and character of the work to be done, he went down to Grenada when the call was first made upon us for help, and before we had even tasted of the sorrow with which our cup has been filled to overflowing many times since. He went cheerfully and willingly to the people of that once happy little town, and for them, during five weeks of almost unparalleled misery, he was as father-and brother and husband. till- ing all places of relationship, and of social or political influence, the one de- pendence of a people dazed in presence of the awful fact of the yellow fever. His labors were incessant, but he performed them with an alacrity that was an in- spiration to all those about him. and, while thus burdened. be went his rounds. carrying judicions advice for the sick, hearing cheering hope to the despondent. and inspiring those who, nerveless from despair, were giving way under the gloom which had settled over a once beautiful town. He was every thing to the Grenadians, and his must be to them the one specially cherished name above all others, bright and luminous as that of a hero who dies for his fellow- men. Hore. where he was tried in 1873, and where he grew to proportion- in the public esteem from which he never afterward fell away, we deeply deplore his loss.
The dead body of a negro woman was found at No. 13 Commerce Street, September 3d. her living babe trying to nurse from her putrid breast.
Visitor Anderson, of the Howards. September 4th, found J. Riviere in a dy- ing condition at No. 81 Main Street. He was alone, stark naked, and literally covered with flies.
The Ledger, of September 4th, has the following : " We regret to learn that our brethren of the press of this city are sorely pressed for help. Our after- noon contemporary has been obliged to suspend altogether. Mr. J. M. Keat- ing, assisted by Mr. W. S. Brooks, has all the labor and responsibility of run- ning the Appeal on his own shoulders. Mr. Henry White has charge of the business department, as usual. Of the Arulanche editorial force only Captain W. L. Trask remains. He is assisted, at night, by Mr. R. R. Catron, the as- siduous, accurate. and untiring agent of the Associated Press, who has like- wise, in his spare moments, befriended the Ledger with his services. Mr. F. S. Nichols, one of the proprietors, looks after the business of the Avalanche. The typographical force of these papers is reduced correspondingly. These
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gentlemen are steady to their posts, with noble fidelity to duty and the public good."
Avalanche, September 5th .-- " Great God! How his murderous work has increased! Those that are left are busy burying their dead; those that are left may be taken to-morrow. Impotence lies at the feet of Omnipo- tence, and grovels there in the dust. Yesterday's record is run up, and in all its blackness lifts its death's head and defies the best plague that ever did a job of slaying among the children of men. Who has the heart to use the multiplication table in the arithmetic of sorrow, and figure out the hearts broken, the lives embittered, the houses desolated? Surely our cup of sorrow must be full. Black as the dead list is, to-day, in our city, it fails to represent all those ready for burial yesterday. The county under- taker has four furniture wagons busy all day. Upon each the coffins were piled as high as safety from falling would permit. These four great vehicles, doing the wholesale burial business, failed to take to the potter's field all of the indigent dead. At the time the officer made his report sixty bodies were awaiting interment .. The plague's course is surely and quickly toward the south. In the suburbs cases have appeared on every avenne almost, in many places deemed spots of perfeet safety."
September 5th, Annie Cook, the keeper of a bagnio on Gayoso Street, who had most heroically devoted herself to the care of the sick since the fever set in. was down with a bad case of the fever.
September 5th, owing to the fact that Mrs. Brooks, wife of Mr. W. S. Brooks, of the Apprid editorial staff, had been taken down with the fever, Mr. J. M. Keating was alone on duty. Captain Fred. Brennan, city editor, was still lying in a precarious condition. All but one of the printers of the Ap- peul were absent or down with the fever. The one present was Mr. Henry Moode, who, besides setting type, had to assist Mr. Richard Smith in superin- tending the printers' infirmary, and was, consequently, absent a good deal dur- ing working hours.
September 5th, Mrs. Butler P. Anderson was taken down with fever. It had been hoped that she would have been spared to her children. The noble wife of a noble husband, she has the sympathies of the people of Memphis.
A man named Charles Gibson, who officiated as a nmise, was called to at- tend a family on Hernando Street, all stricken with the fever. The mother was found dying, with a babe at her breast, the father in a comatose condition, and three children sick, all in the same room. One child, being well, was sent to the orphan asylum. The father, mother, and two of the children, in- cluding the sucking babe, died during the day, and the third child it was ex- pected would die during the night, having had the black vomit. The next morning Howard visitors came, and upon inquiry learned that the child was convalescing. The next day he got up, and recovered.
. Dr. Pritchard was called upon to visit a negro in Fort Pickering, who was said to be very low. On reaching the dying man, he found him prone on the earthen floor of a mud cabin, in a comatose state, his extremities cold, and evi- dently in the last pangs of dissolution. His wife and mother were dead in the room, and it seemed almost inevitable that the husband and son must soon fol- low. The doctor, however, took hold of his case, and in three days he was out. He is now a roistering roustabout on the river.
While the largest proportion of those who died fell by disease, this was not the sole cause of the immense death rate. The constant nervous strain im- posed, the uninterrupted labors to which the well were subjected, and the con- tinned apprehension felt, were powerful causes in increasing the daily lists. To these can be added the negligence, inattention, and inebriety of nurses who were prompted in their labors by the hope of reward alone.
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