Yellow Fever Attacks Philadelphia, 1793

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Samuel Breck's account appears in Hart, Albert Bushnell, American History Told by Contemporaries, vol. 3 (1929); Powell, John Harvey, Bring Out Your Dead, The Great Plague of Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793 (1949).



With a population of approximately 55,000 in 1793, Philadelphia was America's largest city, its capital and its busiest port. The summer of that year was unusually dry and hot. The water levels of streams and wells were dangerously reduced, providing an excellent breeding ground for insects. By July the city's inhabitants were remarking on the extraordinary number of flies and mosquitoes that swarmed around the dock area. That same month, a trickle of refugees escaping political turmoil in the Caribbean Islands became a torrent of thousands as ship after ship unloaded its human cargo on
Philadelphia's docks. Unbeknownst to the city's inhabitants, all the necessary ingredients for an unprecedented health disaster were now in place.

With them, the Caribbean refuges brought Yellow Fever. Philadelphia's ravenous mosquitoes provided the perfect vehicle for spreading the disease by first lunching on an infected victim and then biting a healthy one. The first fatalities appeared in July and the numbers grew steadily. Victims initially experienced pains in the head, back and limbs accompanied by a high fever. These symptoms would often disappear, leaving a false sense of security. Shortly, the disease would announce its return with an even more severe fever and turn the victim's skin a ghastly yellow while he vomited black clots of blood. Death soon followed as the victim slipped into a helpless stupor.

Unaware of the link between the mosquito and the disease's progress, Philadelphia's medical community was dumbfounded. Dr. Benjamin Rush, the city's leading physician and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, advised citizens to flee the city. He worked tirelessly to comfort and save the afflicted, but with little success. A good portion of the population, along with members of Congress, President Washington and his Cabinet, abandoned the city. The disease subsided and finally disappeared with the arrival of cold weather in November. It is estimated that 2,000 died.

"The horrors were heart rendering."

Samuel Breck was a Philadelphia merchant newly arrived to the city:

"I had scarcely become settled in Philadelphia when in July, 1793, the yellow fever broke out, and, spreading rapidly in August, obliged all the citizens who could remove to seek safety in the country. My father took his family to Bristol on the Delaware, and in the last of August I followed him... I was compelled to return to the city on the 8th of September, and spend the 9th there.Everything looked gloomy, and forty-five deaths were reported for the 9th. And yet it was nothing then to what it became three or four weeks later, when from the first to the twelfth of October one thousand 'persons died. On the twelfth a smart frost came and checked its ravages.

The horrors of this memorable affliction were extensive and heart rending. Nor were they softened by professional skill. The disorder was in a great measure a stranger to our climate, and was awkwardly treated. Its rapid march, being from ten victims a day in August to one hundred a day in October, terrified the physicians, and led them into contradictory modes of treatment. They, as well as the guardians of the city, were taken by surprise. No hospitals or hospital stores were in readiness to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. For a long time nothing could be done other than to furnish coffins for the dead and men to bury them. At length a large house in the neighborhood was appropriately fitted up for the reception of patients, and a few pre-eminent philanthropists volunteered to superintend it. At the head of them was Stephen Girard, who has since become the richest man in America.

In private families the parents, the children, the domestics lingered and died, frequently without assistance. The wealthy soon fled; the fearless or indifferent remained from choice, the poor from necessity. The inhabitants were reduced thus to one-half their number, yet the malignant action of the disease increased, so that those who were in health one day were buried the next. The burning fever occasioned paroxysms of rage which drove the patient naked from his bed to the street, and in some instances to the river, where he was drowned. Insanity was often the last stage of its horrors."

"The attendants on the dead stood on the pavement soliciting jobs"

Breck recounts the experience of his father's neighbor:

"...Counting upon the comparative security of his remote residence from the heart of the town, (he) ventured to brave the disorder, and fortunately escaped its attack. He told me that in the height of the sickness, when death was sweeping away its hundreds a week, a man applied to him for leave to sleep one night on the stable floor. The gentleman, like everyone else, inspired with fear and caution, hesitated. The stranger pressed his request, assuring him that he had avoided the infected parts of the city, that his health was very good, and promised to go away at sunrise the next day. Under these circumstances he admitted him into his stable for that night. At peep of day the gentleman went to see if the man was gone. On The Philadelphia Docks opening the door he found him lying on the
floor delirious and in a burning fever. Fearful of alarming his family, he kept it a secret from them, and went to the committee of health to ask to have the man removed.

That committee was in session day and night at the City Hall in Chestnut Street. The spectacle around was new, for he had not ventured for some weeks so low down in town. The attendants on the dead stood on the pavement in considerable numbers soliciting jobs, and until employed they were occupied in feeding their horses out of the coffins which they had provided in anticipation of the daily wants. These speculators were useful, and, albeit with little show of feeling, contributed greatly to lessen, by competition, the charges of interment.

The gentleman passed on through these callous spectators until he reached the room in which the committee was assembled, and from whom he obtained the services of a quack doctor, none other being in attendance. They went together to the stable, where the doctor examined the man, and then told the gentleman that at ten o'clock he would send the cart with a suitable coffin, into which he requested to have the dying stranger placed. The poor man was then alive and begging for a drink of water. His fit of delirium had subsided, his reason had returned, yet the experience of the soi-disant doctor enabled him to foretell that his death would take place in a few hours; it did so, and in time for his corpse to be conveyed away by the cart at the hour appointed. This sudden exit was of common occurrence. The whole number of deaths in 1793 by yellow fever was more than four thousand."


Yellow Fever Attacks Philadelphia, 1793

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Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemic of 1793 was the largest in the history of the United States, claiming the lives of nearly 4000 people. In late summer, as the number of deaths began to climb, 20,000 citizens fled to the countryside, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and other members of the federal government (at that time headquartered in Philadelphia).

At the urging of Benjamin Rush, the support of Philadelphia's free black community was enlisted by Absalom Jones, Richard Allen, and William Gray, a fruitseller who along with Allen and Jones had secured support to build the African Church the previous year.

In an effort to prove themselves morally superior to those who reviled them, Philadelphia's black community put aside their resentment and dedicated themselves to working with the sick and dying in all capacities, including as nurses, cart drivers, and grave diggers. Despite Rush's belief that blacks could not contract the disease, 240 of them died of the fever.

As the weather cooled, the disease subsided, and the deaths stopped. Then accusations began against the black citizens who had worked so hard to save the sick and dying. The attack was led by Mathew Carey, whose pamphlet attacked many in the black community. A response to the pamphlet was published by Richard Allen and Absalom Jones.

the pamphlet publicly rebuked the printer Matthew Carey for his racist depictions of African American activity during Philadelphia’s famous yellow fever epidemic. Carey claimed that many blacks had exploited the sickness to pilfer white homes; Allen and Jones parried the assertion by claiming that blacks had nobly served ailing white citizens. The document became the first copyrighted work by black authors in the United States. But because we have no manuscript original, or letters about the writing of it, there is no way to know definitively what sources Allen and Jones used.

www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1590.html

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Yellow Fever 1793 Philadelphia

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Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever, as it Appeared in the City of Philadelphia, in the Year 1793,
Benjamin Rush

http://deila.dickinson.edu/cdm4/docu...&CISOPTR=20237

ARTHUR MERVYN;

OR,

MEMOIRS OF THE YEAR 1793.

BY

CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18508/18508.txt
__________________

[Illiniwek]

Isn't there a marker at the Cityview condos to commemorate where the mass grave for the victims was?

[CHIOSSO]

I don't know but if you walk past old St Marys cemetery on the Fifth St side. Notice that the graves are shoulder height. On the Forth St side they are ground level. That's because they dumped dirt there so they could inter more of the departed during the epidemic.

[GMonkey]

My daughter's school has been doing a really cool school-wide project about the Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philly. For language arts, they read the book about it, for social studies, they studied he government's handling, for science, they examined the biological aspects, math story problems included stats about the epidemic. It was a really unique way to get all of the kids involved in the same subject, but to check it out from all angles.

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A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE MALIGNANT FEVER
Lately Prevalent in PHILADELPHIA



Philadelphia Archives - Biographies

[CapnMarko]

My daughter's school has been doing a really cool school-wide project about the Yellow Fever Epidemic in Philly. For language arts, they read the book about it, for social studies, they studied he government's handling, for science, they examined the biological aspects, math story problems included stats about the epidemic. It was a really unique way to get all of the kids involved in the same subject, but to check it out from all angles.

That is awesome, and a great way to educate.