On the train to Memphis, Schuyler received word that Parsons had died. He arrived in Memphis on Sunday, September 8, one day after Charles Parsons was buried, and went directly to St. Mary’s to find Sister Constance and Sister Thecla; the nuns had been without a priest or services for a full week. He was struck with the news that both were down with the fever.
A sister at St. Mary’s found Constance resting on the sofa several days before; she was dictating letters and insisted that she was healthy. She had felt the chill come on that morning, but worked for another five hours settling matters, knowing that when she fell many more would follow in her footsteps from neglect and starvation. Constance kept all correspondence, distributed the money, managed what little provisions they had and gave orders to the nuns and nurses.
“It is only a slight headache,” Constance persisted when Dr. Armstrong arrived. “I have not the fever, it is only a bad headache; it will go off at sunset.” He pulled out his pocket watch to measure her sluggish pulse and stroked his hand against her burning face, then insisted that the nuns give her a cool bath and put her to bed. The sisters made up their finest mattress with fresh linens, but Constance asked for another bed. “It is the only one you have in the house, and if I have the fever, you will have to burn it.”
Within the hour, Sister Thecla returned from the deathbed of a patient. Pale and perspiring, she began to shake. “I am sorry, Sister,” she said calmly, “but I have the fever. Give me a cup of tea, and then I shall go to bed.”
Neither Constance nor Thecla knew of the other’s illness, though they lay in rooms next door to one another. Finally, when they kept asking to see the other, the nurses had to tell them the truth: The fever had struck them both and on the same day.
Sister Constance soon slipped into unconsciousness and remained so for most of her illness, waking at one point only to say, “I shall never get up from my bed.” By then, 200 new cases of the fever appeared each day in Memphis, and the sister attending Constance wrote, “All the world seemed passing away; the earth sinking from under our feet.”
As Dr. Armstrong left St. Mary’s late that evening, one of the sisters ran after him and handed him a note. He thanked her and walked out into the night. The carbolic acid dumped into the Gayoso Bayou had killed the fish, and their odor cloaked the neighborhood, burning his eyes. With the sun deep beneath the horizon, the air felt suffocating and the neighborhood deserted. In the distance, two blocks away, the towers and rooflines of the Victorian mansions of Adams Street could be seen like barbed etchings against the indigo sky. When Armstrong returned to his silent house, he lit the lamp and pulled the envelope from his pocket to find a note wrapped around two fifty-dollar bills: “An expression of the affection and gratitude of the sisters.” Armstrong sat down at his desk to write his wife, promising that should he survive the epidemic he would repay the sisters. “Sister Constance is dying tonight,” he wrote, “and I now think Sister Thecla will get well.”
All night the attending sister could hear the moans and delirium from Constance’s room. She heard her shout out “Hosanna,” and repeat it faintly through the night. At 7:00 the next morning, the toll of the church bell marked the hour. “At that clear sound, which she had always loved, whose call she had never refused to answer,” wrote the sister, “the moaning ceased; and at 10 o’clock a.m. her soul entered the Paradise.” The chapel was candlelit, the windows streaked with rain. Constance was robed in her habit with roses laid across her breast, a shock of beauty against the gloom. Reverend Louis Schuyler had arrived in Memphis just in time to read the services. Afterward, Constance was taken to Elmwood, where her body had to be held in a borrowed vault, as there were too many dead and not enough gravediggers.
Sister Thecla did recover, becoming a convalescent. Unlike any other disease, yellow fever’s hallmark is its cruel tendency to return after a period of brief recovery. When it did, as one doctor warned, it was time to order the coffin. Convalescents were under strict orders to remain in bed and quiet, but nurses and physicians usually hurried back to their duties. The vengeful fever would returnwith the most severe symptoms. Sister Thecla died one week later, after several days of pain and lucidity. An obituary for the two nuns read, “Of them may it be said that they were lovely in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.”
Louis Schuyler returned to St. Mary’s after Constance’s funeral. He had come to Memphis to fill the vacancy left by dead priests, to offer his services to a congregation of dying nuns and fever patients. Schuyler delivered the news to Dean Harris, who was still recovering, that both Parsons and Constance were gone. “My work here is done,” he said, “the whole of Memphis was not worth those two lives.” Schuyler left him sobbing.
Schuyler kept no diary or letters, nor would he have had time to write. Or perhaps the terror was too much for the sensitive twenty-six-year-old to record on paper. Even when encouraged to begin slowly, Schuyler had insisted working directly in the neighborhoods hardest hit by the epidemic. He refused a room at the Peabody Hotel for a cot in the parlor of Dean Harris’s fever-ridden home. Schuyler was in Memphis only four days before the fever struck him. The beds at St. Mary’s were full, and Schuyler was taken to the Court Street Infirmary, which had been recently opened for the feverish nurses and physicians. He was visited by another reverend from St. Mary’s, but Schuyler was already wildly delirious. It may have been due to his delirious shouts and screams that Louis Schuyler was moved from his hospital room into the death alley still alive. Piles of corpses and raw pine coffins lay all around him waiting for the wagons, which could take days to arrive. A nurse followed Schuyler’s litter into the alley and knelt beside him, promising not to leave his side. They sat beneath the buttressed stone and brick of the alley, cold shadows arching across the skyline creating a mosaic of gray light, sun and blue sky. “Please tell me,” asked Schuyler, “whether I am in Memphis or whether I am in my little church in Hoboken?”
On September 11, a cool front brought hope to the city. Rain had fallen the day before, chilling the air and sweeping the bayou clean. Will Armstrong sat at his desk that night at 9:00 writing to his wife, “My heart bounds with joy at the mere hope that this cool night will possibly end our labors . . . No one knows but the weary doctor what a delight that would be. Kiss all the children for me.” He ended his letter: “I alone am standing.”
A few days later, Lula Armstrong received a telegram from Dr. Mitchell informing her that “Dr. Armstrong is very sick but doing well today. Says you must not come here under any circumstances.”
On September 16, Lula received a penny postcard from her husband: “My dear wife: I have passed through the fever stages and have only to get the stomach right. Hope I can do this and see you soon.” But by September 20, she was notified by the nuns at St. Mary’s that her husband had died of yellow fever. His attending nurse said that even when delirious he tried to rise from his bed to see patients. In Elmwood’s leather burial record, the Graveyard Girl recorded his name: Dr. Wm. J. Armstrong, wrote ditto marks for yellow fever and the location of his plot in the Fowler Section, Lot #265. His body would be moved years later to another plot where his wife would be buried by his side. Lula Armstrong would also die on September 20—forty-six years later.
The next day three more sisters at St. Mary’s died. The sister who attended Constance at her deathbed soon followed, as did the nurse who attended Charles Parsons. John Lonsdale, who spoke at Parsons’s burial, fell feverish and died. John Walsh, the country undertaker, died along with most of his family; at the time of his death, Walsh had buried over 2,000 of the city’s yellow fever victims.
Dr. John Erskine, the doctor who opposed quarantine of the city, died on September 17 under the care of his brother, Dr. Alexander Erskine. His death crippled the Memphis Board of Health. It would not begin functioning again until mid-October.
Dr. R. H. Tate, the first black physician to practice in Memphis, was assigned to “Hell’s Half Acre” along Lauderdale a
nd Union. He died only three weeks after his arrival.
Three thousand Howard Association nurses, the large majority of them black, served during the epidemic; one-third of those nurses died. Among the 111 Howard doctors, 54 contracted the fever and 33 died.
Charles G. Fisher, head of the Citizen’s Relief Committee, died; of the twenty members of his committee, only three were left at the end of the epidemic.
Dr. W. A. White, rector at Calvary Episcopal Church, recovered from the fever just in time to bury his son. A local legend by the name of Annie Cook turned her house of prostitution, the “Mansion House” on Gayoso Street, into a hospital and nursed the sick until she herself perished of the fever. The sheriff died. Even Jefferson Davis Jr., the only son of the Confederate president, was lost to this plague in Memphis. His was the largest funeral seen during the epidemic: Fifteen people attended.
Churches throughout the city sacrificed ministers, priests and nuns. Hundreds more came from cities in the North. Those at St. Mary’s have become known as the Martyrs of Memphis.
At long last, on October 28, a killing frost fell, silvering the tree limbs and blades of grass, cooling the festering quagmire of Happy Hollow. Red leaves littered the ground and gold ones bronzed the treetops. A message was sent to Memphians scattered all over the country to come home. That same week, the Appeal published a number of advertisements as businesses downtown reopened. Cotton dominated the ads, but a few others touted “New goods at bottom prices,” “New mattresses” and “Mourning Goods” like black-trimmed stationery and calling cards, dark cloth and black crepe.
Though yellow fever cases would continue to appear in the pages of Elmwood Cemetery’s burial record as late as February 29, the epidemic itself seemed quieted. On November 27, a general citizen’s meeting was called at the Greenlaw Opera House. It would be held on Thanksgiving Day, following the holiday church services, to offer the city’s thanks to those who had stayed behind to serve and die.
Life was returning to Memphis. Cotton bales began collecting in the streets and along sidewalks. The collective din of steam compressors, train whistles and streetcars could be heard once again. Oyster season had opened, and restaurants and hotels posted signs for “fresh oysters,” while Seesel and Son’s grocery on the corner of Jefferson and Second received a large shipment of fish. Apples and potatoes filled crates, and mincemeat was prepared. Geese moved south, their wings white with moonlight during the evening hours. Soft rain had fallen early in the week, and men wore their pants tucked up while ladies dragged their hems through the mud downtown. There was even a fresh dusting of snow the day before Thanksgiving, offering a feeling of renewal for some, and for others, just a reminder of the lime that had spent so many weeks on the ground.
Intending to make the Thanksgiving citizen’s meeting a tastefulevent, florists worked for days creating elegant arrangements of azaleas, ferns, begonias, palms and other exotics. The platform of the Greenlaw was grandly outfitted. Colton Greene, the leader of Memphis Carnival who had such hope for the city, was asked to organize the stage decorations. He used that year’s Mardi Gras props from the Mystic Memphi.
As the meeting opened at noon, a commemorative statement was made: “To the martyred dead, we feel but cannot express our gratitude; yet, in all days to come shall their memories be kept green, and their names go down in the annals of our city honored, revered and blessed.”
Mayor John Flippin, now fully recovered from the fever, had less humble things to say. First he made a statement meant to quiet any gossip and make the record clear for history: At the beginning of the scourge, the press, the city officials and the Board of Health had been true to their promise to proclaim at once the appearance of the fever. He followed it with a reprimand for the many who had refused to leave Memphis either from poverty or belief they were immune. “The worthy,” he proclaimed, “often perished for the unworthy.”
Most important of all, the meeting announced that Memphis, its citizens, representatives in Congress and the Senate would earnestly do all they could to secure passage of a law mandating early quarantine.
In spite of the citizen’s meeting and the celebration of Thanksgiving, there remained lasting signs of the plague that November. Schools stayed closed until well into December, and St. Mary’s would not open its doors until January. The Greenlaw Opera House, which had once held such promises of sophistication and elegance for Memphis, would be sold as a storehouse by the following spring. Hotels, filled to capacity, promised returning Memphians that their rooms had been thoroughly fumigated and properly ventilated. And Elmwood Cemetery made an announcement that it would allow disinterment and relocation of bodies for the next two months only. The Memphis Avalanche reported, “Like the Memphis on the Nile, the town was fated to become a ghost city.”
December arrived in Memphis, and the worst yellow fever epidemic in United States history ended. That same month, Emily B. Souder, the ship held responsible for bringing yellow fever to North America in the spring of 1878, the one that denied fever and instead landed it on the banks of New Orleans, set sail once again for the Caribbean. Somewhere off the coast of New York, on December 10, she sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, ending her fourteen-year service. The captain and all on board were killed except two castaways.
CHAPTER 6
Greatly Exaggerated
President Rutherford B. Hayes continued to receive word of death and loss at the White House. The 1878 epidemic had stretched from Brazil to Ohio. In the following months, the final death toll in the Mississippi Valley would prove to be 20,000 lives and the financial loss close to $200 million. Two hundred communities in eleven states had been hit by the fever. It was a bitter piece of news. Not only was the 1878 yellow fever epidemic one of the worst disasters to befall the country, but it happened under Hayes’s shaky command. “It is impossible to estimate with any approach to accuracy,” announced Hayes, “the loss to the country occasioned by this epidemic.”
Surely Hayes was also stirred by an unspoken sense of guilt when he thought of his dismissive letter in August; he had called the Memphis pleas for help “greatly exaggerated.” The toll on human life in Memphis alone surpassed the Chicago fire, San Franciscoearthquake and Johnstown flood combined. It was being called by some the worst urban disaster in American history. Over 5,000 lives were lost in Memphis, nearly a third of the population that remained in August of that year.
President Hayes contemplated his next course of action. Politically speaking, he knew he needed to act authoritatively and quickly. His recent election had been fraught with controversy between the North and South. He had taken office only by assistance from the National Guard and a promise to withdraw federal troops from the South. His liberal views on the rights of blacks further united his enemies in the South. His only allies in that region had been the businessmen and merchants looking to profit from reconstruction, and now, their economic viability would certainly be at stake. On the brink of the 1878 epidemic, the Memphis Appeal had published a column entitled, “Poor Hayes: The Republicans hate and mistrust him; and the Democrats, knowing he occupies a position to which another was chosen by the people, have no respect for him.” A country not at all secure with his leadership was looking to Hayes for healing.
With Congress out of session in August of 1878, H. Casey Young, the congressman representing Memphis, had appealed to Hayes on behalf of the stricken city not only for relief aid but for a committee of experts to investigate yellow fever once and for all. But the president, one historian wrote, “was not in a position to commit the recessed Forty-fifth Congress to financial sponsorship of an investigation.” It would not take long, however, for the epidemic to demand the attention of the U.S. government and launch it into a controversial, public debate over the national health system.
In November, Hayes called his cabinet together to assess the situation; federal response had been slow. In the south, the dead were still rotting unburied in cities and farmlands. Thousands of peop
le had been displaced and collected in camps, waiting for food and supplies. The entire cotton market had been injured. The first action would be to declare a state of emergency in the Mississippi Valley. Charities and state governments could be depended upon to rally support, as well as deliver supplies and wooden coffins. Already, $1 million in aid had gone to Memphis from every state in the union and overseas. Towboats barreled down the Mississippi River carrying over 333,000 pounds of beef, 23,000 pounds of crackers, close to 33,000 pounds of coffee and 200 gallons of whiskey. Train cars full of wooden coffins pulled into the Poplar Street station.
What Hayes needed was a way to comfort the minds of the people, to offer some sense of protection against a tragedy like this in the future. He needed a united force of experts and physicians to not only reassure the people but also actively work to prevent and manage epidemics. The country needed a federal board of health.
In the weeks that followed, a battle would ensue between the American Public Health Association and the Marine Hospital Service, which would later become the Public Health Service. The two agencies, each under the helm of an ambitious, headstrong leader, would fight for dominant control of American health. It also became the familiar battle of federal versus state rights, an echo of pre-Civil War debates. This time, however, southern politicians argued vehemently for federal control of quarantines, while northern owners of those railroads and shipping lines shouted for state control. After all, on a local level, states would be unlikely to risk their own economy with quarantine, much less the financial stability of northern-owned transportation. That very problem had arisen during the 1878 epidemic: New Orleans officialslike Samuel Choppin believed strongly in a quarantine against infected ships arriving in New Orleans; but, once yellow fever was present, city officials refused to tell the rest of the country for fear of being quarantined themselves. A reporter for Harper’s wrote in December of that year, “No question in medicine, and scarcely any in theology, has been debated more learnedly and more ardently—I may say, indeed, more furiously— nor for a longer time, than this one.”
The American Plague Page 8