In the summer of 1905, yellow fever epidemic struck New Orleans’s French Market “Little Italy,” “almost wholly inhabited by an Italian population intimately connected with the handling of bananas, the unloading of such cargoes, from fruit ships arriving from Central
American ports.”162 Italians, mostly Sicilians, were ignorant of the diseases’ origins, not fluent in
English and suspicious of doctors. It was not until July 21 that Surgeon John H. White of the Marine Hospital Service diagnosed two deaths as yellow fever.163 State health officials, who
initially denied the outbreak, acknowledged over 100 cases and 21 deaths; the Marine Hospital Service estimated the number to be almost 200.164 Pathologist Sir Rubert Boyce of the Liverpool
School for Tropical Medicine conducted autopsies, describing symptoms, “Skin yellow; spleen enlarged and dark, stomach contained black contents,” in another “Skin markedly yellow; muscles dark red stomach contains black vomit; cardiac end of stomach deeply congested.”165
161-“Drying Houses at Labor Camps: Rainy Season Brings them Into Use Again,” Canal Record, 1 (1908), 323
Princeton University Library Jan. 30, 2009
162-Joseph Holt “To the People of New Orleans,” October 4, 1905, in Miscellaneous Papers of Dr. Joseph H. Holt
(New Orleans, 1906), 6 Jones Hall Louisiana Research Collection, Tulane University, New Orleans
163- “Annual Report of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service of the United States for the Fiscal Year 1906,”
U.S. Congressional Serial Set, Issue 5152 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907), 129 Univ. of California Library Dig. Aug. 31, 2010
164-“No Yellow Fever Here: Dr. Kohnke Says False Reports are Circulated,” Holt, “To the People of New Orleans,”
October 4, 1905, 5, 4,
165- Rubert William Boyce Yellow Fever and its Prevention: A Manual for Medical Students and Practitioners (E.P.
51
The epidemic spread to sugar plantations in surrounding parishes. In Patterson, thirty cases among “Italians employed in the mills.” A medical journal reported, “Outside Patterson, La. the Italians are in a riotous state and threaten to burn down the hospitals,” and a surgeon in St. John and St. Charles parishes “is said to have been mobbed by Italians.”166 In March 1906,
one sugar planter bemoaned labor shortages caused by “an exodus of Italians from the parish, which has been going on since the last grinding,” fearing a recurrence of yellow fever.167
Authorities erected inspection camps along the Louisville & Nashville at Flomaton, the Alabama-Florida line, on the Southern Pacific at Echo and Waskon, near Shreveport.168 On July
26, officials in Tampa learned of the death of an Italian. Dr. Joseph Porter insisted, “the Italian colony at Tampa and West Tampa suspected the nature of the man’s illness and purposely suppressed all facts connected with his sickness, and aimed to secrete the case.”169 On August 6,
deaths were reported in Pensacola, two weeks later, three Greek men reported symptoms.170
By September a case was reported in Atlanta, Georgia, where, a “refugee from
Pensacola,” arriving on the Louisville & Nashville railway, “was promptly removed from the city, and died on September 5.”171 Tourism promotion by the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce had
emphasized the lack of yellow fever, explaining that the cities’ elevation 1000 feet above sea level, and the “cool, bracing atmosphere, with breezes that blow over the foot-hills of the Blue
166-“The Rise of the Yellow Fever Epidemic in New Orleans” St. Louis Medical Review, Vol. 51-52 August 26,
1905, 222, 181
167-“St. Marys Special Correspondence” The Louisiana Planter and Sugar Manufacturer 30 no. 3 (1906), 167 Univ.
of California Jan 9, 2015
168-“General Measures to Prevent the Spread of Yellow Fever,” Report of the Surgeon General of the Public Health
and Marine Hospital Service in United States Congressional Serial Set, Issue 5152 Dec. 3, 1906-March 4, 1907 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907), 135
169-“Yellow Fever in Tampa and Pensacola,” Annual Report of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907) 173-174
170-“Yellow Fever in Tampa and Pensacola,” Annual Report of the Surgeon General of Public Health and Marine
Hospital Service, 178
171-‘Inspection and Certification of Railway Passengers at Atlanta, Georgia,” Annual Report of the Surgeon General
52
Ridge” formed natural barriers to the spread of disease.172 Dr. C.P. Wertenbaker inspected
railcars in Montgomery and Atlanta reported, “a large number of refugees variously estimated from 500 to 5,000, and every train from the infected districts brought others.”173
On August 26, authorities erected a sanitary cordon around Pensacola. Along East Government Street, pools of water were oiled and porches screened.174 The chief health officer
reported “mosquitoes breeding in every conceivable place, little cups of water in the trees, vases of broken crockery . . .in roof gutters, where limbs of trees had fallen and made damns.”175 In
New Orleans, the Marine Hospital Service, directed by Dr. White and aided by local volunteers, oiled 70,000 cisterns in the French Quarter with kerosene.176 Sulfur cans were distributed for a
citywide fumigation of rooms and enclosed spaces on Sunday, August 20, when nearly 300 tons of sulfur were burned.177(Figure 3.7 and 3.8)
Public health officials protested that Italian immigrants “have been one of the greatest difficulties that the health authorities have had to contend with. They are ignorant and
superstitious and fight and impede the physicians in every way.”178 Sir Rupert Boyce found ideal
mosquito breeding grounds in the French Market. “Human beings and animals were herded together in close proximity, the court yards were littered up with rubbish, consisting of rotting
172-Atlanta: A Twentieth Century City (Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, 1905), 5
173-Report of Surg. C.P. Wertenbaker, Annual Report of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service of the U.S.
for the Fiscal Year 1905 Vol. 34 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1906), 51
174-Joseph Y. Porter “Florida,” Fourth Annual Conference of State and Territorial Health Officers with the U.S.
Public Health and Marine Hospital Service (Washington, D.C., May 23, 1906), 58
175-“Florida Medical Association, thirty-seventh annual session, Jacksonville, April 6-8, 1906” The Journal of the
American Medical Association, 1717
176-Sir Rubert Boyce, Yellow Fever Prophylaxis in New Orleans, 51
177-“The mosquitoes that were hatched before the screening and oiling were done are still about the city in vast
numbers, and are, at the present crisis, liable to be as dangerous as rattle-snakes. To get rid of these mosquitoes requires fumigation by sulphur fumes. This fumigation, to be effective, must be done as a pre-concerted effort on a given day at a given time.” Rubert Boyce, Yellow Fever Prophylaxis in New Orleans, 57 Journal of the American Medical Association (Chicago, Il) Vol. 45 August 26, 1905 641 Univ. of Michigan Library Dig. Feb. 19, 2011
53
wood, tin cans, bottles and disused tubs. No proper drainage existed in the yards, the [water] closets were very dilapidated and constructed on the cess pit or pail system.”179 (Figures 3.9)
There were only six Blacks among the 452 recorded yellow fever deaths in New Orleans, but Blacks were suspected as carriers of yellow fever.180 In November a study by New Orleans
physician Dr. C.M. Brady attributing the low death rate of Blacks to their “phlegmatic temper” and the fact that “the sweat glands of the negro are decidedly more active than those of the white.” Blacks played a major role in the epidemic, according to Brady, because they “tend to associate with the Italians on certain terms of social equality,” with Italian fruit-dealers having “a staff of several negro boy hangers-on, who promptly contract the disease from their masters and return to their specific homes with the usual consequences.”181 Quarantine restrictions dealt a
blow to the banana trade. On August 11, after mosquitoes were found in banana-loaded railcars in Cairo, Illinois until October, no bananas were unloaded in New Orleans.182 Bananas were
imported through Mobile, Alabama, free of yellow fever, due to quarantine enforced by Dr. Henry Goldthwaite and assistant Dr. Edward Francis.183 In the wake of the epidemic, which
strengthened fears about the banana trade as a source of fever, United Fruit officials devised plans to improve the companies’ image.