Wednesday, June 10, 2015
AOH Historian's Report
A Disease That Haunted The Irish
By Mike McCormack
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| Cholera Outbreak in Athlone, Ireland 1832 |
Cholera is an infection of the human
intestine and is recognized as one of the most efficient killers of all time;
it works quickly to kill, often on the same day as infection. Cholera causes
violent vomiting, cramps and diarrhea and is spread by contaminated excrement
and handling clothing and bedding of infected people. In crowded cities,
sewage-contaminated water supplies were a major source of its spread, but no
one realized that until after 1854. Before that, it had arrived in America with
Irish and German immigrants, crowded below decks on coffin ships with little or
no fresh water or sanitary facilities for a rough six-to-eight-week passage
across the Atlantic.
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| Depiction of Cholera Outbreak in The Five Points, NYC in 1832 |
It decimated the polluted immigrant
slums into which many immigrants were forced to live. In June 1832, an outbreak
of cholera spread rapidly throughout the crowded, unsanitary dwellings of New
York’s Five Points neighborhood before spreading to the rest of the city
killing 3,500 in two months. Nativists blamed the disease on the life style of
the poor – namely Catholicism, poverty and drink until the disease spread
uptown, where well-to-do families kept the cause of death a secret. New York’s
Croton reservoir was completed in late 1842 to bring clean water to the city
for drinking and street cleaning, but the Croton Water Board objected to
wasting that clean water in the Five Points. A second major outbreak occurred
in 1849 killing 5,017. For the next 20 years, deaths in the Five Points area
was triple that of the rest of the city.
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| Cholera Cross in Clinton County, Illinois |
In 1842, cholera also broke out in
Saint Louis brought by German and Irish immigrants coming up the Mississippi
from New Orleans where upon arrival; dehydrated from the voyage they drank
great gulps of contaminated water. Like their countrymen in New York the Irish
were forced into a filthy slum area called the Kerry Patch. As a result, the
St. Louis death toll reached 4,500 in three months. The increase of immigrants
in 1849 fleeing Ireland’s Great Hunger led to a second major outbreak that took
more than 7,000 lives. In May 1849, the city took over Arsenal Island in the
Mississippi and renamed it Quarantine Island. All ships were stopped there for
inspection and those passengers who seemed ill remained in hastily built sheds
until they either recovered or died, just like Grosse Isle in Quebec. Thousands
were buried there before the island – cemetery and all – washed away in the
spring floods of the 1860s after the city built dykes on the west side of the
river and changed its flow.
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| Federal Mortality Census Report for 1850 |
However, the quarantining efforts
failed to stop bacteria from infecting St. Louis’ water supply. With no other
dumping site available, chamber pots were emptied into the streets and rain
washed the excrement into the limestone caves beneath the city where raw sewage
from the city was also dumped. It eventually overflowed into a low area near
the Kerry Patch creating a putrid pool angrily called Kayser’s Lake. Henry
Kayser was the city engineer who decided to divert the entire city’s waste
water into the limestone caves beneath the city rather than build sewers to
save money. In 1849, approximately one-tenth of the population of St. Louis
died from disease.
Not knowing the true source of the
disease, people blamed everything from sauerkraut to stench as thousands of new
immigrants joined the prospectors who stopped at St Louis – the gateway to the
west – to outfit for the journey to the recently discovered gold fields of
California. Typically, cholera swept through the poorest areas first and was
interpreted by the Nativist press as being due to the immigrants’ ignorance,
laziness, and moral laxity. By the third week of June, cholera was killing
roughly 100 people a day. Rev. John B. Druyts, Jesuit president of Saint Louis
College, told the frightened students to place themselves under protection of
the Blessed Virgin Mary. Those who survived were to chip in and buy a silver
crown for her statue in the chapel. The effect of this holy resolution calmed
the students. In what was called a miracle, there were no deaths within the
school walls, although there were victims of the disease in almost every house
around the College. In October 1849, a silver crown was reverently carried on a
purple cushion to the statue.
On June 24, citizens crowded a
public meeting and demanded that city officials do something or resign. The
officials did what officials always do: they formed a committee. The committee
not knowing the cause, immediately ordered coal, tar and sulfur pots to be
burned in the streets. They banned fresh vegetables, especially cabbage
believing the smell of sauerkraut was a contributing factor. They also kept
public transportation out of the slums in case the disease might be airborne
and ordered churches to stop all that infernal bell-ringing at funerals since
it lowered the morale of the people. Then they spent $10,000 to buy slop carts
and hired street cleaners, telling them to collect and dump liquid filth into
the once lovely Chouteau’s Pond which had already become gray with industrial
waste, creating another source of infection.
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| Map Depicting Cholera Outbreak in Ireland |
More practical prevention came in
1850, when the city drained both Kayser’s Lake and Chouteau’s Pond – not
because it eliminated a cause of the disease, but because they finally
installed a sewer system – and that, unintentionally, was what finally did the
job. Cholera returned again before the end of the century, but it was never
again as lethal.
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| Cholera Localities Map - Belfast 1832 |
Many are the stories of sorrow in
the diaries of our immigrant ancestors who were forced to endure the squalor
imposed upon them as a result of the bigotry that condemned them to substandard
living conditions. There are also stories of resilience that allowed them to
not only survive, but to climb out of the derelict districts and set a course
for their sons and daughters that made them the major contributors that the
Irish are today in every field of endeavor. But while we celebrate their
accomplishments and contributions, we should never forget the hardships
suffered by those who laid the groundwork.
