|
CHOLERA APPEARS IN THE
COUNTRY - PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES TAKEN IN DUMFRIES-ITS BAD SANITARY
CONDITION-ENTRANCE OF CHOLERA INTO THE TOWN-ITS SPREAD AND FATAL
RESULTS-STATISTICS OF CASES AND DEATHS.
BEFORE the close of the
protracted agitation to which the reader's attention has just been turned,
the fearful malady, cholera morbus, began to excite alarm throughout the
country. It had long scourged India. In 1831 it appeared in the northwest
of Europe, and after committing sad ravages there, crossed over in some
Hamburgh vessels to Sunderland, first startling that town with its
presence on the 26th of the following October. Next spring many places far
separate from each other were visited by the fell disease, and the towns
that had hitherto escaped awaited their turn in gloom and terror. Dumfries
for the two preceding years had been more than usually healthy; but as
soon as the warning note was sounded from Sunderland, steps were taken to
improve its sanitary condition, which was admittedly defective. A vigorous
Board of Health was constituted on the 15th of March, 1832, [The Board
(constituted by a Privy Council order) consisted of the following
gentlemen:-Provost Corson; Bailie Robert Armstrong; Bailie James Swan; Mr.
George Montgomery, dean of guild; Mr. James Thomson, deacon-convener; the
Rev. Robert Wallace; Dr. William Maxwell; Mr. Archibald Blacklock,
surgeon; Mr. James M`Lauchlan, surgeon; ex-Provost M'Kie; ex-Provost
Fraser; Mr. John Commelin, agent for the British Linen Company; Mr. John M
`Diarmid; Mr. Robert Threshie of Barnbarroch ; and Mr. James Broom, town
clerk.] and under its directing agency, supplemented by private effort,
the houses of the humbler classes were cleansed with hot lime; and, what
was of more moment, perhaps, supplies of nourishing soup and other food
were served out to many of their inmates during the winter season. After
much had been done to put the old tenements of the closes, in which
hundreds of families dwelt, in better order, and effect other
improvements, the town was still in a very unsatisfactory state. The
scavenging was deficient; the drainage merely nominal; and, worst of all,
the water supply was limited and impure.
With the exception of what
was furnished by a few wells and private pumps, all the water used for
domestic purposes was carried by hand or carted in barrels from the Nith
by four old men, who doled it out in tin pitchers or cans, from door to
door, at the rate of five capfuls a penny. The river, when swelled by
heavy rains, which was often the case, became thick with mud; and it was
constantly exposed to a more noxious pollution, caused by the refuse
poured into it from the town. The quality of the water did not improve by
being borne about in barrels of suspicious aspect; and often, indeed, the
liquid drawn from them during summer acquired a taste-me-not repulsiveness
by the presence of innumerable little objects, pleasant to no one save an
enthusiast in entomology. Besides, the water, whether bad or indifferent,
was often not to be had for love or money by the families who depended on
the barrels. Sometimes these intermitting fountains stopped running
altogether. At such periods, portions of the town experienced a
water-dearth, and obtained a faint inkling, at least, of one leading phase
in Oriental life. When the Burgh was originally built, the houses were
massed in closes together, that they might be more easily defended against
a foreign enemy; and when cholera came, as come it did, these places of
defence were its chief objects of attack. The town, in fact, as a whole,
when looked upon from a sanitary point of view, lay open and exposed to
the visitation. A neighbouring city, Carlisle, had a passing call from the
disease in July. Coming nearer and nearer, it entered the little village
of Tongland Bridge, where it left two victims; and after lingering some
weeks about the district, doing little harm, but gathering increased power
and venom, the fell destroyer burst upon Dumfries.
The first sufferer was a
respectable elderly widow, named Paterson, residing in English Street, who
was seized on the 15th of September, and died on the following day. [The
second case occurred on the 16th, and the third on the 17th September, in
a house of three stories directly opposite to Mary Paterson's house. The
names of the sufferers were William Bell and John Paton; who, being
advanced in years, both rapidly sank and died. There were some miserable
lodginghouses, for the reception of vagrants from all parts of the
kingdom, adjoining Mary Paterson's house ; and such was the anxiety of her
neighbours to witness and relieve her sufferings, that two gentlemen, and
a town's officer, had to stand at her door till within an hour of her
death, to prevent them harassing both her and her medical attendants; one
of whom, Mr. M`Cracken, shortly afterwards fell a victim to the
disease.--Note by DR. BLACKLOCK.] A man in good circumstances, also
advanced in life, who resided in an opposite house, hearing of what had
occurred, became much alarmed, took ill, and was a corpse before twenty
hours elapsed. These were the first prey of the pestilence. For about a
week afterwards, it seemed to be but dallying with its work, at the rate
of only one death per day: a heavy mortality in a population of ten
thousand, yet not very alarming, every thing considered. " Can this really
be cholera?" many asked; and some concluded that it was a mere British
imitation of the Asiatic disease; others, that it was the real disorder,
but of a mild type, and that the town was going to get off with a very
slight attack. From the 15th of September till the 24th, inclusive, there
were seventeen cases, nine of which were fatal; but when, on the 25th,
fourteen new cases and nine deaths were announced, all the people felt
that the veritable plague was in their midst, and were filled with fear
and trembling.
This was in Rood-fair week,
when the great annual horse market is held, and the Trades' processions
and rejoicings used to take place. No pageantry in this the closing week
of September, 1832, save dismal processions, coming so thick that they
jostle each other as they hurry onward to the tomb; no revelry, but
numerous incidents that might well have figured in Holbein's fantastic
picture, "The Dance of Death." September 26th, nine new cases, and five
deaths; 27th, thirty-seven new cases, and five deaths; 28th, sixty-eight
new cases, and nineteen deaths! The plague is now holding high carnival!
May God, in His great mercy, take pity on the poor town, and stay the
ravages of the destroyer! But it has, as it were, little more than begun
its fatal mission, and speeds on through all parts of Dumfries and the
neighbouring burgh of Maxwelltown, sparing no age, smiting rich and poor
alike, and prostrating the strong nearly as much as the feeble. At first
the humbler classes suffered most severely: eventually it mattered little
whether people sojourned in narrow, noisome courts, or in spacious
squares-in the vilest rookeries of the Vennel, or in the stately mansions
of Buccleuch Street: all places were freely visited, and no respect of
persons was paid.
What rendered the cholera
more appalling, was the circumstance that every one believed it to be both
infectious and contagious. It was supposed that an affected individual
distilled a poisonous influence all around him ; that there was death in
his touch; and that the virus of the malady lurked in every article of his
dress. He was counted like a leper of the old Levitical dispensation, and,
alas! too often treated as such; and when the cases began to multiply, the
town was looked upon as a magazine of disease-a place devoted to the
plague, which no man dared to enter, and from which many hastened in
panic-fear, only, however, in some instances, to fall cholerastricken in
their flight. Moreover, the disease was very little, if at all, amenable
to medical treatment. It was a mysterious epidemic, which "walked in
darkness," defying all the science and devotedness of the faculty.
" The salutary art
Was mute; and, startled at the new disease,
In fearful whispers hopeless omens gave.
To heaven, with suppliant rites, they sent their prayers:
Heaven heard them not. Of every hope deprived,
Fatigued with vain resources, and subdued
With woes resistless, and enfeebling fear,
Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow.
Nothing but lamentable sounds was heard,
Nor aught was seen save ghastly views of death.
Infectious horror ran from face to face,
And pale despair. 'Twas all the business then
To tend the sick, and in their turns to die.
In heaps they fell: and oft one bed, they say,
The sickening, dying, and the dead contained." [Armstrong's Art of
Preserving Health, book iii. ]
In addition to the resident
medical gentlemen, five practitioners were brought from Edinburgh, and two
from Castle Douglas, by the Board of Health. The whole of them, we
believe, performed their duty faithfully; and, sad to tell, two of the
native surgeons, Mr. William M'Cracken and Mr. John M`Ghie, martyrs to
their professional zeal, caught the malady and died. No cases were
admitted into the Infirmary-a most unwise resolution to that effect having
been adopted by a majority of its governors; and the poorer class of
patients, instead of being laid in the well-furnished, well-ventilated,
spacious wards of that institution, were crowded into a hospital made out
of an old granary, at the foot of English Street. Here they had little
chance of recovering; and their close contact with each other tended to
intensify the disease-though the truth is, that there was nearly as great
a proportion of deaths among rich persons attacked, and treated in their
own houses, as among the poor, one case in every two of both classes
having usually a fatal result. The civil authorities of the town, the
clergymen, and the influential inhabitants generally, soon rose above the
terror which at first seized upon men of all ranks, and co-operated
zealously and courageously with the medical practitioners in their efforts
to stay the course of the disease.
Direct resistance to it was
found to be of little service; but a plan for withdrawing out of the way
those who were peculiarly exposed to an attack, was adopted with success.
When the head of a poor family was laid low, and the arrows of the
pestilence were flying right and left in his homestead, its remaining
members were conveyed to rooms in the Academy prepared for their
reception, and there comfortably boarded and otherwise cared for. The
doors of the High School were closed when the disease became epidemic; and
they were reopened early in October for heart work rather than head work,
that an asylum might be afforded to widows and orphans hurrying away from
their ravaged homes and the presence of the destroying pest. By the middle
of the month this house of refuge numbered a hundred and twenty inmates,
chiefly fatherless children, whose varied wants of mind and body were
supplied by a band of "ministering angels;" and it is gratifying to record
that the well-aired lodgings, nourishing food, and warm clothing given to
the poor refugees, kept them in health and strength when the localities
they had fled from were still haunted by the destroyer. Good food and
comfortable clothing were rightly considered as a species of defensive
armour, which sometimes turned away the poisoned shaft when medicine would
have been of no avail. A soup kitchen was opened on a liberal scale; and
that in itself, there is every reason to suppose, foreclosed many all
attack. Great quantities of tar and pitch were burned in the lanes and
streets, making the prevailing gloom more lurid. This was for the purpose
of disinfecting the atmosphere; but the dusky vapour thus sent into it was
of no service as compared with the savoury smoke from the generous broth
doled out liberally to every applicant. To meet the great expense
incurred, a rate was imposed by the Board of Health; a large fund was
raised by voluntary subscription; and many towns, both in England and
Scotland, showed their sympathy for Dumfries-cholera-stricken more than
any town in proportion to its size - by handsome pecuniary contributions
for its relief.
Having said this much
regarding the means taken to cope with the disease, we must now trace its
further progress. Any and every effort to stay its course or propitiate
its fury seem, for a while at least, utterly fruitless. September 29th. -
The awful visitor is still making fearful havoc: new cases, fifty-two;
deaths, thirteen. September 30th.-Worse and worse: no fewer than
seventy-three new names are registered, and fourteen deaths occur. October
1st. - Fifty-six new cases, and twenty-three deaths. October
2nd.-Deadliest day of all - "Be thou for ever blotted from the calendar!"
The new cases are fifty-five; the deaths, forty-four. We dare not pause to
reflect upon the scenes of horror which these figures suggest-scenes such
as the Burgh never witnessed before, though often desolated by the fiend
of war; unless when, in 1623, it was scourged by both plague and famine,
which, during the spring and summer, destroyed at least five hundred of
the inhabitants. "The bare recollection of them," says the Courier, at the
time of the crisis, "is enough to quail the stoutest heart; what, then,
must have been the dreadful reality? Hearses plying in every street;
patients seized, and in imminent danger, faster than the bearers were able
to remove them, or mourners to accompany them to their long home; the
gravedigger's spade in constant requisition; the strong man stricken down
in his pride; the feeble snatched in a few hours from a sick-bed to the
tomb; the hospital emptied, and as quickly filled again; for several days
scarcely a single recovery; the faculty fatigued beyond endurance,
compelled to ride the shortest distances, and yet unable to answer the
incessant calls of suffering humanity; at other times seriously affected
themselves, until relieved by the promptitude and skill of their brethren;
shops for general business shut at noonday; publicans warned to close
their stores at dusk, that the vicious might be hampered in their evil
propensities; every vehicle employed in removing family after family to
the country; the public schools dismissed; St. Michael's vacated from the
dread of cholera graves, and Divine service performed in the Courthouse;
trade suspended, workshops depopulated, and industrious traders gathered
into knots, discussing the fearful extent of the pestilence; many
requiring medical aid, and paralyzed from the force of terror alone; every
countenance shaded with grief, and a whole community the picture of
despair."
October 3rd, when the
disease reached its culminating stage, was market-day; but when death was
mercilessly titheing the town, no business toll was levied at the bridge.
Out of nearly sixty carriers, only one made his appearance. No butter,
eggs, or poultry were offered for sale. Not a solitary bullock was seen on
the Sands, though two thousand cattle at least would have been there under
ordinary circumstances. Next day (October 4th) brought little abatement of
the epidemic; for though the deaths fell to twenty-seven, sixty-two new
cases were announced. The report on October 5th was thirty-two new cases,
and only eleven deaths; and people began to breathe with some degree of
freedom. The weather, too, underwent an auspicious change. During the
first ten days of the visitation, the sky wore a peculiar aspect; and when
the suffering Burgh was viewed from the surrounding heights, a dense mass
of cloud appeared hovering over it, which spectators, with no great
stretch of fancy, compared to a vast funeral pall. The pressure of the
atmosphere was felt to be unusually heavy, though that was partly
attributable, no doubt, to the circumstance that the nervous system of
those who breathed it had lost its wonted tone through the operation of
grief and terror. On the 30th of September, after heavy rain on the
preceding day, the sky became comparatively bright. The dull, close season
returned, however, and continued till the 4th of October, when copious
showers fell, followed by a smart frost next morning, with its welcome
accompaniment, a light, healthy, bracing atmosphere. Though this
improvement in the weather was short-lived, it exercised a cheering-
influence: the buoyant air combined with the lightening calendar to bring
gleams of hope to many a despairing heart-ay, and health to the pulse of
many a wasted frame. Then the more sanguine portion of the inhabitants
flattered themselves with the idea that the epidemic would decline as
rapidly as it had been developed : but, on the 6th, thirty-six new cases
and seventeen deaths were reported, as if it had obtained a new lease of
power; and before the cycle of the disease was finished, October had run
its course.
As showing the march of the
disease for the following fortnight, we quote from a diary published in
one of the local newspapers. October 7th (Sabbath).-" To-day the weather
was wet and stormy; the thermometer still lower, and the rain occasionally
mixed with hail." New cases, thirty-one; deaths, four. 8th. - "Another
showery and stormy day." New cases, thirty-five; deaths, twenty-one.
9th.-"The town still unprecedentedly dull and deserted; many shops
remaining closed at noonday." New cases, fourteen; deaths, fourteen. 10th.
- "Although this is market-day, the town is nearly as dull as it was last
week. Only two or three carriers have arrived, and these from a
considerable distance, such as Newcastle, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. Some of
the hucksters have procured a small supply of butter, but the price is
advanced twenty-five per cent. The Sands is minus a single bullock, and
some of the jobbers are anxious that the magistrates should transfer the
market to the nine-mile toll-bar. To this advice the authorities demur,
and have intimated a hope that in the course of a week or two the panic
will die away, and matters proceed in their ordinary course." New cases,
sixteen; deaths, fourteen. 11th. -"The weather dreadful, and contributing,
among many other causes, to depress the animal spirits." New cases,
fifteen; deaths, eight. 12th." To-day, the weather is better;
comparatively few hearses have been seen; in certain wards, scarcely a new
case has occurred; and the whole faculty have evidently profited by one or
more nights of sound repose." New cases, thirteen ; deaths, eleven.
13th.-" The weather to-day was delightful; the medical report, the most
cheering that has yet been issued. Nine new cases; six deaths." 14th.-"
There has been one case of cholera in the Infirmary, and eight in the
Poorhouse. The under jailor and his wife died of cholera some time ago.
The head jailor was next attacked, and had hardly recovered when his
sister-in-law fell a victim. Some of the prisoners have also been seized."
New cases, twenty; deaths, five. 15th." The weather is still close,
gloomy, and moist. New cases, twenty; deaths, eleven." 16th.-" The weather
was rather unpromising in the morning, and `heavily in clouds brought on
the day;' but it improved in the course of the forenoon, and enabled many
to brace their nerves, and breathe a purer atmosphere, by strolling a few
miles into the country. The medical report was exceedingly cheering, and
had an excellent effect on the spirits of the people." New cases, four;
deaths, eight. 17th. - "Another cheering report; one or two lots of cattle
on the Sands; goodly lots in motion for the markets of the South; a
considerable number of maidens in the egg and butter market; friends long
amissing showing face at last, and the town altogether ten per cent.
better than it has been for the last three weeks. The weather good; the
air bracing, and free from moisture; and every thing tending to restore us
to, not frighten us from, our propriety." New cases, three; deaths, three.
18th.-" The medical report still excellent, and several of the stranger
practitioners about to leave us. To-day the soup-kitchen was opened under
excellent management." New cases, four; deaths, four. 19th." Report to-day
not quite so favourable : eight new cases, three deaths, and twenty-eight
recoveries. The recoveries, however, are a cheering circumstance; and we
begin to indulge the hope that we will ere long be enabled to announce a
clean bill of health. The weather continues delightful, is verging to what
it should be during winter, and the remark has become nearly as current as
a password, that Dumfries will soon be itself again."
And so, happily, it was,
before many more weeks elapsed. For some time one or two fatal cases per
day were reported; and on the 30th of October it was announced, for the
first time during the visitation, that not a single death had occurred.
The fell destroyer still tarried in the town and suburbs, as if loath to
leave a locality where he had acquired such a hecatomb of victims; but
about the middle of November, after a two months' reign of terror, the
fiat of an interposing Providence stayed his terrible hand, and, like the
overmastered fiend in Bunyan's dream, he "spread forth his dragon's wings,
and sped him away." "Few can figure to themselves the pleasure we at
length feel," says the Courier of the 13th of November, "in announcing
that the doors of the cholera hospital have been closed, and that its only
occasional inmate is a supernumerary nurse, whose instructions are to keep
the pest-house ventilated and free from damp-a precaution which has been
adopted in other quarters. During the past week-that is, from Monday the
5th till Monday the 12th current-the new cases were reduced to five, and
the deaths to two; the recoveries within the same period were seven; and
yesterday the patients under treatment were so low as five-most, if not
all, of whom are expected to recover."
The entire number of
persons attacked by cholera in Dumfries, as officially reported, was 837;
of whom 380 were males, and 457 were females. The deaths reported were
421: 187 males, and 234 females. It was ascertained, however, from the
number of coffins made, and the sexton's accounts, that the real deaths
exceeded the reputed ones; [Pamphlet on Cholera Morbus. D. Halliday,
Dumfries.] and the probability is, we think, that the mortality was not
less than 550. Of the fatal cases, 68 occurred in the cholera hospital.
Maxwelltown, population considered, suffered about as severely as the
sister Burgh; the cases there having been 237, and the deaths 127. A large
proportion of those who died in Dumfries were buried in a plot of St.
Michael's churchyard set apart for the purpose. Here gangs of gravediggers
were busy for weeks together piling the coffined dead tier above tier, and
before the pit was finally covered over, it had received at least 350
bodies within its dark embrace. The Cholera Mound, as this vast
charnel-house is popularly called, lies along the west side of the burial
ground; and a neat cenotaph tells the fate of those who sleep below, and
of their fellow-sufferers, in the following words:
In this Cemetery,
and chiefly within this enclosure,
lie the mortal remains
of more than 420 inhabitants of Dumfries,
who were suddenly swept away
by the memorable invasion of
Asiatic cholera,
A.D. MDCCCXXXII.
That terrific Pestilence
entered the town on 15th September,
and remained till 27th November;
during which period it seized
at least 900 individuals,
of whom 44 died in one day,
and no more than 415 were reported
as recovered.
That the benefit of this
solemn warning
might not be lost to posterity,
this Monument
was erected, from collections made in
several churches in this town.
Ps. xc.-Thou turnest man to
destruction; and sayest,
Return, ye children of men. Thou carriest them away
as with a flood.
Mat. xxv. 13.-Watch therefore; for ye know neither
the day nor the hour. |
