William Wragg: A South Carolina Loyalist Memorialized in Westminster Abbey

In the south choir aisle of Westminster Abbey in London lies a marble memorial to a wealthy South Carolina planter. His name was William Wragg. The inscription on the memorial records his unfortunate fate. He was drowned off the coast of Holland (The Netherlands) in September 1777.

 

The monument, sculpted by Richard Hayward, was erected in 1779 by his "afflicted sister." It is unique in the Abbey. Wragg is the only civilian participant in the American War for Independence to be memorialized there, which holds the remains of many British monarchs, heroes, and cultural icons such as Chaucer, Newton, David Livingstone, Dickens, Darwin, and Stephen Hawking. 

The Abbey contains the remains of two British army officers who participated in the Revolutionary War, Major John Andre, who the Patriots hanged as a spy, and General John Burgoyne, who lost the pivotal Battle of Saratoga in 1777. 

William Wragg was born in Charleston (then Charles Town) in 1714, son of Samuel and Marie (Dubose). Shortly after his birth his merchant father purchased a large plantation, Ashley Barony. 

At the age of four William was subjected to a traumatic experience. He was accompanying his father on a trading voyage in May 1718 when their ship, the Crowley, was captured by pirates blockading Charleston Harbor. 

The pirates were commanded by none other than Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard. In battle, he was a frightful figure, famous for putting lighted fuses (slow matches) in his beard, and carrying several loaded pistols during attacks. 

Teach crammed all 80 of the Crowley's passengers and crew into the hold of his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge. He used them as hostages to demand a ransom. It was an unusual ransom, to say the least: medicines for syphilis, malaria, and wounds. William Wragg's father, Samuel, volunteered to go ashore and procure a medicine chest. 

Teach refused to let Samuel go because his wealth and status made him too valuable a hostage. He chose another hostage for the task. Several days passed. No medicines arrived. Teach threatened to kill Samuel and loot poorly defended Charleston if his demand was not met. 

The Charleston authorities finally sent a large consignment of medicines. Blackbeard put the hostages ashore, but not before stripping them of most of their clothing. They had to walk a long distance through the woods to town. Blackbeard was killed later that year in a naval action along the coast of North Carolina

Having survived his encounter with Blackbeard, young William embarked on another adventure several years later. His parents sent him to England to be educated. He attended Westminster School, Oxford University, and the Middle Temple, where he studied law. He was admitted to the English bar in 1733.  

After practicing law for some years, Wragg returned to South Carolina. His father died in 1750, making him one of the wealthiest men in the colony, with several plantations and more than 250 enslaved laborers. He soon became involved in politics and in 1753 was appointed to the governor's royal council. [Image; William Wragg by Jeremiah Theus]

Wragg proved to be a staunch advocate of the prerogatives of the council and the British Crown against the pretensions of Commons House of Assembly. He was so outspoken that Royal Governor Henry Lyttleton removed him from the council in 1757 to appease the Assembly. Wragg was elected to the Assembly the next year and served until 1768. He resigned, he said, due to the Assembly's increasing opposition to British rule. 

As the disputes between the Crown and the colonies led to more extreme measures on both sides, Wragg remained outspokenly loyal to the British government. Yet he refused offers of royal office, declaring he did not want to profit from his loyalty.  

In 1775 he refused to declare allegiance to the rebel cause by signing a document called The Association. His interrogators, many of them old friends, asked why he would not join them. He replied, 

“I’d despise myself if I subscribed to an opinion contrary to the dictates of my conscience. I have no hostile intentions toward you gentlemen, but I believe the logical outcome of your current measures will be an attempt to separate from the mother country.” 

The gentlemen said he would be left alone if he signed the oath of allegiance to the Patriot cause. Wragg then asked, "What kind of supporter would I be if I signed this document under duress?"  

The de facto Provincial Government of South Carolina ordered Wragg confined to his plantation. Two years later, after he had refused to sign another oath of allegiance, the state government banished him from South Carolina. Leaving his wife and daughters behind, he boarded the ship Commerce for Amsterdam, with only his son Billy and Tom, an enslaved servant, as companions. 

The ship foundered in a storm off the coast of the Netherlands. Wragg drowned trying to save his son. Tom, however, managed to save Billy and himself. The Westminster memorial depicts them clinging to a piece of wreckage, with the sinking vessel behind them. 

Another Loyalist, George Milligen, said of Wragg that "he would have been an ornament to Sparta or Rome in their most virtuous days." 

Next time you are in Westminster Abbey, check out the Wragg memorial! 

Further Reading:

John Drayton, Memoirs of the American Revolution 2 vols., Charleston, 1821. 

The Papers of Henry Laurens. 16 vols., Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972-2003. Volumes dealing with the 1760s and 1770s.

William Wragg | Westminster Abbey (westminster-abbey.org)

Wragg, William | South Carolina Encyclopedia (scencyclopedia.org)

Report by George Milligen, Surgeon to the Garrison for His Majesty's Forces in South Carolina, dated 15 September 1775. National Archives, Kew CO_5_396_037.pdf

  

Boycott: The Strange History of a Word

To boycott something means to ostracize someone or something, to refuse to patronise a business or an establishment or an organization. It can be used both as a verb or a noun, "to boycott" or "a boycott." 

Boycotts were used as a tactic against racial discrimination in the US South in the 1950s and 60s. They are often used today against companies that are perceived as discriminating against certain groups or engaging in unjust practices. [Image: Civil Rights Boycotts in US South, 1950s]

Where and when did the word "boycott" originate? It is actually a fairly recent addition to the English language, first used about 160 years ago. It came from what is now the Republic of Ireland, which was then a part of the UK. 

The word "boycott" comes from the name of a person who was the object of an agrarian protest, Captain Charles Boycott. He was a retired English army officer who had become the land agent of an absentee Anglo-Irish landlord, Lord Erne, in County Mayo. [Image: Captain Boycott, as Drawn by Spy (Lesley Ward) in Vanity Fair, 1881]

In 1880, Boycott became the focus of a coordinated protest by activists of the Irish Land League, instigated by its founder, Michael Davitt, and its leader, Charles Stuart Parnell, MP. Davitt himself was from County Mayo. [Images: Parnell and Davitt]

Davitt had established the Land League in 1879 to protect tenant farmers against oppressions by large landowners, notably arbitrary evictions and rack renting (raising rents excessively). The League campaigned to secure what it called the Three Fs: Free Sale, Fixity of Tenure, and Fair Rents. 

In pursuit of these goals, and specifically to prevent planned evictions on Lord Erne's estate, League activists urged estate workers, including seasonal crop harvesters, to refuse their labor. The protest quickly evolved into a community-wide movement designed to isolate Boycott, the land agent on the spot. 

Shops and tradesmen in the nearby town of Ballinrobe refused to serve him or do business with him. (The League coerced some of them into participating.) In short order, his life became unbearable.

News of Boycott's predicament soon spread to London. The government sent a regiment of Royal Hussars (light cavalry) and over 1000 men of the Royal Irish Constabulary to protect volunteer harvesters, mostly Protestant Orangemen. They managed to harvest about £500 of crops -- at a cost to the British government of about £10,000 (millions in today's money). 

Boycott left Ireland after the harvest and took a job as an estate agent in Suffolk, England. He died in 1897. The Boycott affair was widely followed and reported and people began using the word "boycott" to describe similar protest actions. 

A poster promoting Parnell's pamphlet "Boycotting" shows that it quickly became an eponymous word. Parnell is pictured on the cover.

According to one contemporary source, "boycott" was first coined by a local priest, Father John O'Malley, who was helping an activist to find a simple term for the action the local people would understand. He rejected "ostracism," and "social excommunication" as too elitist. and suggested calling it "to boycott him."  

I hope this little tale helps to explain where "boycott" came from, and inspires you with an example of how a boycott can be effective if enough people participate. Boycotts are needed more than ever, against the corporations, institutions, and individuals supporting and enabling the Trump-Musk Regime.

"The times they are a changing." They'd better be, and quick.  

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CABAL: The Curious History of a Word

The word "cabal" is likely familiar to online gamers. Google it and "Images" and you will get nothing but ads for the game "Cabal." 

Today's QAnon activists use "cabal" to denote a secret global conspiracy against freedom. (Secret to everyone except QAnon members, of course, who possess information the rest of us are ignorant of.) 

The origins of the word "cabal" lie in the distant past. It most likely derives from "Kaballah," which refers to the mystical interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures. In medieval Christian Europe, "Caballa" or "cabale" came to refer to occult doctrines or secrets. In these contexts it related to mysticism and magic. 

In the 17th century "cabal" developed a wider, mainly political meaning. It came to mean a small group of individuals united in secret to achieve a desired political or economic goal. For many people it became a pejorative term used to denote a devious clique or conspiracy opposed to the general good. 

This usage has survived into modern times. Cabal is often used today to denote a clique, faction, gang, ring, junta, and similar groupings, real or imagined.   

In Britain, "cabal" came into prominent use during the turbulent politics of the late 17th century. Opponents of the "Merry Monarch," King Charles II (1660-1685), accused him of leading a cabal. [Image: Charles II, by Sir Peter Lely]

These accusations are particularly interesting, because at the time (1667-74), the King was governing with the advice of a small band of five ministers, the first letters of whose names could be used to spell out the acronym "CABAL." Opponents of royal policies often referred to them as the "Cabal" or "Cabal Ministry." 

The five members of the Cabal were Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Ashley, and Lord Lauderdale. They were signatories to the public Treaty of Dover (1670) that created an alliance with the France of Louis XIV against the Dutch. 

The public treaty acted as a screen for a secret treaty in which Charles promised to convert to Roman Catholicism in return for a French pension of £230,000 a year. Louis promised more money if Charles announced his conversion to the British public, which he wisely never did. Most of the CABAL did not sign and were not aware of the secret treaty.

Some historians argue that the present meaning of the word "cabal" derives from the usage of the term to describe this particular political grouping of the late 1660s -- early1670s. That may be true, although claims that the word itself derives from them is likely a myth. 

PS. A prominent member of the CABAL ministry who did not know of the secret treaty eventually turned against Charles II. In the 1670s, Lord Ashley (Anthony Ashley Cooper, later 1st Earl of Shaftesbury) helped found one of the first British political parties, the Whigs. 

The Whigs posed as defenders of Parliament and Protestantism against what they argued was the King's authoritarian and pro-Catholic tendencies. Charles II's supporters coalesced uneasily into what became the pro-royalist Tory Party. (Image: Lord Ashley, later Lord Shaftesbury)

Ashley was the patron of the philosopher John Locke. He was also one of the founders, or Lords Proprietor, of the colony of Carolina. He and Locke wrote the original blueprint for the colony, The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina. The names "Ashley", "Cooper," and "Shaftesbury" are found all over the oldest settlement, Charleston, which of course, was named for Charles II. At that time, Charles and Ashley were still on good terms. 

In 1682, fearing arrest for High Treason, Ashley fled to the Netherlands, where he died of an illness the following year. By then, the CABAL Ministry was history, but the political meaning of the term "cabal" lived on and thrives today, for good or ill. 

 

 

The British Evacuate Charleston, December, 1782

On December 14, 1782, British forces evacuated Charleston, South Carolina after an occupation that had lasted two and a half years. The day later became a local holiday: Victory Day. 

Sir Henry Clinton's capture of the city two and a half years before was the greatest British victory of the War for American Independence.  [Image: Siege of Charleston, 1780, by Alonzo Chappel, 1862]

The British and their Loyalist allies had gone on to gain nearly complete control of the state. Lord Cornwallis' decisive victory at the Battle of Camden in August seemed to solidify their conquest. [Image: Battle of Camden, by Granger]

At the height of their success, things began to sour for the British. In fact, the seeds of their ultimate defeat had already been sown. The army's strength was depleted by malarial fevers, dysentery, and possibly yellow fever. A smallpox epidemic was raging as well, although that hurt both sides. 

South Carolinians had an advantage over the British when it came to the local fevers: differential immunity. People who had been born in or lived in the state for years had often developed some immunity or resistance to the fevers. They might get ill, but they were less likely to be prostrated or die than the "unseasoned" British soldiers, and they would generally recover the ability to function more quickly. 

The British commanders knew that the lowcountry was an unhealthy place. But they expected to find relief from the fevers as they moved farther inland. The upcountry had was reputedly much healthier than the lowcountry. 

That may have been true before the region become thickly settled. But it had filled rapidly with white and enslaved black settlers following the French and Indian War (1754-1763). Lowcountry fevers migrated along with them, in their bodies. The British were caught by surprise. 

The consequences were dire. The fate of the 71st Highlanders provides an example. Cornwallis had posted them to Cheraw in June because he had been informed that it was a healthy location. By late July, fevers had incapacitated two-thirds of the regiment. Their commander removed them to another location. The Patriots  interpreted the move as a retreat, and they soon received many new recruits to their ranks.

When Cornwallis arrived at Camden to confront the approaching army of General Gates, he found that a third of his army was too ill to fight. Overall, he had only 2000 effectives, and the Patriot army numbered at least 3000. In spite of this, the British achieved a crushing victory.

But Cornwallis' problems had just begun. He moved his healthy men from Camden to the Waxhaws because it was reputedly healthy, only to find that it was just as sickly. Everywhere he went, fevers followed him. 

Cornwallis himself succumbed, and was virtually incapacitated during the crucial time in early October when the "Over Mountain Men" annihilated Major Patrick Ferguson's Loyalist detachment at King's Mountain. 

The experience of the summer and autumn weighed heavily on Cornwallis. In the spring of 1781, he decided to march his army north to Virginia, and gave as one of his reasons that it was the only way "to preserve the troops, from the fatal sickness, which so nearly ruined the army last autumn." Thus began the fatal road that would end at Yorktown in October. 

From many histories of the Revolutionary War, one could easily conclude that Cornwallis' surrender to Washington and the French at Yorktown ended the conflict. That was true for many parts of the old thirteen colonies, but in South Carolina it was far from the case.

Although the British now recognized the need to make peace, negotiations in Paris dragged on for more than a year. In the meantime, the war in South Carolina continued. 

Local resistance to British control had strengthened after Camden. Partisan bands constantly harassed isolated British detachments and posts, then vanished into the swamps and forests.

When Cornwallis marched North in April 1781, the Southern Continental Army under General Nathanael Greene moved into South Carolina. In September, they fought a British force to a standstill at Eutaw Springs. Both sides claimed victory, but the British retreated to Charleston and soon abandoned nearly all their posts outside of the city. [Image: Battle of Eutaw Springs, by Granger]

Eutaw Springs was the last major battle of the war in South Carolina, although skirmishes continued for nearly a year. In August, 1782, Colonel John Laurens, a firm opponent of slavery, was killed in a skirmish at the Combahee. 

Greene moved his army ever closer to Charleston. The British expected an attack, but Greene waited. At his camps along the Ashley River, his men, especially those from the North, suffered terribly from malaria and other diseases.      

At the end of November 1782, British and American negotiators in Paris agreed on preliminary articles of peace. The British commanders in Charleston did not yet know that, but they had been preparing for an evacuation for some time. The British had already evacuated Savannah, which they had seized in December 1778. 

In early December they began loading transport ships for departure from Charleston. This was not an ordinary military evacuation. In addition to the British soldiers, the fleet removed over three thousand Loyalists and their families. The transports were also loaded with  five thousand Africans who had fled to British lines in return for promises of freedom from General Clinton. 

Some of the ships were bound for the West Indies or St. Augustine in British Florida. Some were headed directly to England. The rest, especially those carrying the liberated Africans, were to the last British stronghold in the former thirteen colonies, New York. 

The evacuation was remarkably peaceful, even dignified. By prior agreement between the commanders on both sides, Greene's soldiers did not enter the city  until the ships were ready to depart. The last to board the transports were British and Loyalist soldiers, who marched from their lines at Boundary Street (now Calhoun) to the wharves, closely followed by Greene's men. The two forces were separated by only a few hundred yards, but not a shot was fired. 

The whites who remained cheered the entering American army as heroes. Many of them had also cheered the British when they arrived two and half years before. Such is war. 

The definitive peace treaty was signed in Paris in September 1783. The British evacuated New York two months later. Most of the Africans there were taken to Nova Scotia. Some of them later helped to found the British freedmen's colony of Sierra Leone in the 1790s. [See History and Other Stuff: Boston King: Black Loyalist, Minister, African Colonial Leader (mycandles.blogspot.com)]

[Image: The Evacuation of Charleston by the British, by Howard Pyle, 1898, Delaware Art Museum]

 

Most of the sources for this post come from Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011/2014.

Smallpox Inoculation in Charleston, South Carolina, Part Two: 1760

In January 1760 a major smallpox epidemic struck Charleston, the first one in twenty-two years. The long time between epidemics meant that a new generation had been born who had no immunity to the disease. The population had also grown by immigration of both Europeans and Africans -- in the latter case not by choice). The city was now home to about 10,000 people of all hues.

During the previous epidemic in 1738 local doctors had employed inoculation for the first time in the city, with considerable success. [See Smallpox Inoculation in Charleston, South Carolina, Part One]

In this case, the disease did not arrive by sea but by land, from the backcountry. A smallpox epidemic had been spreading through Eastern North America for several years. War once again aided the transmission of the disease, in this case, the French and Indian War. Both sides enlisted Native American allies, whose movements helped to spread smallpox. 

Late in 1759, a punitive expedition from Charleston against the Cherokees led by Royal Governor Lyttleton coincided with a virulent smallpox outbreak among that nation. Soldiers returning to the city from it carried the infection back to the city. Efforts to contain it failed. 

In 1760, the inhabitants were much less reluctant to undergo the procedure than in 1738. No one opposed it upon religious or medical grounds in this instance. The people were now more familiar with it, and some residents recalled its effectiveness in the earlier epidemic. (It seems they had better memories than 21st Century Americans facing the Covid Pandemic). 

For the same reasons, most of Charleston's doctors were prepared to inoculate in 1760, and the numbers inoculated were much higher than in 1738. Mass inoculations took place almost immediately after the outbreak of the disease. Eliza Pinckney commented that the doctors had no choice: "The people would not be said nay." 

The demand for inoculation overwhelmed the doctors, who worked constantly to meet it. (It was also quite profitable.) Dr. Alexander Garden, who was in high demand, wrote that "many more people were inoculated than could be attended by the practitioners of physic." He recorded that he had inoculated more than 500 people himself, and the effort had left him completely exhausted. [Image: Alexander Garden. Garden was also a highly competent naturalist for whom Linnaeus named the gardenia.  History and Other Stuff: How the Gardenia Got its Name (mycandles.blogspot.com)

Garden estimated that 2400 to 2800 people were inoculated in less than two weeks. Another doctor, Lionel Chalmers, later estimated that more 3500 had been inoculated during the entire epidemic, while about 2500 contracted smallpox naturally. 

Deaths from smallpox numbered 940, or about 16 percent of infections and close to 10 percent of the population.  Of those infected naturally, 848 died -- about 33 percent. Of those inoculated, deaths numbered 92 -- between 2 and 3 percent. 

Other sources claimed that deaths among the inoculated were higher -- 140 to 160 -- but Chalmers thought that an exaggeration. An exact count was extremely difficult due to the chaos the epidemic produced. Total deaths in South Carolina in 1759-1760 are unknown, but must have numbered in the thousands. Native Americans, the Cherokee and Catawba, had the greatest losses. [Image: Lionel Chalmers]

Among the dead were French Acadians (exiled from today's Nova Scotia at the start of the war with France) interned in South Carolina during the war. One third of the 300 who were still alive died during the epidemic. Poor whites and enslaved Africans also suffered disproportionately, due to lack of necessities and care.

It is impossible to know how many Africans were inoculated, though letters and other documents show that some certainly were. Household slaves were most likely to be inoculated, plantation workers less so. The expense plus the problem of having all the work force inoculated at one time held down the numbers inoculated. 

The lack of care for those inoculated was another problem. Eliza Lucas Pinckney, famed for introducing indigo cultivation into South Carolina, reported that "the poor blacks have died very fast even by inoculation." She attributed the outcome to a lack of proper nursing.

Some masters compromised by having a few of their slaves inoculated so they could travel to town to deliver goods and obtain supplies. In that way, they hoped that the disease would not spread to their workplace. 

Several months into the epidemic, in April, some prominent Charlestonians began to call for an end to inoculation within the city. They did not oppose the procedure itself, but they feared that it was prolonging the epidemic and hurting the economy through continued quarantine. Many rural people white and black were coming to town to be inoculated. 

The Assembly revived the act of 1738 restricting inoculation, with minor revisions. It banned inoculation within two miles of Charleston. The main innovation was the creation of a commission to enforce the law and report on cases of smallpox until the town and its environs were free from the disease. Despite the ban, the city was not declared smallpox free until December.  

Despite the chaos and uneven allocation of its benefits, in 1760 inoculation had once again proven its value.  

 

Sources: 

Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (New York and Cambridge: 2011, 2014)

Smallpox Inoculation in Charleston, South Carolina, Part One: 1738

Few people may be aware that Charleston, South Carolina was an early western pioneer in the use of inoculation to prevent death from smallpox. 

Inoculation for smallpox was not vaccination but a kind of proto-vaccination. It involved infecting people with the actual disease, usually by placing matter from smallpox pustules in a small incision in the skin. It was done in hopes of producing a mild case and subsequent immunity. It was the inspiration for today's vaccines. [Image: Inoculating for the Smallpox, 18th century]

Inoculation was essentially unknown in the West at the beginning of the 18th century. It had been practised in the Ottoman Empire and in parts of Africa for some time. Shortly before 1720 knowledge of the procedure arrived in England and in New England, most famously via an English aristocrat, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and an African, Onesimus, slave to Rev. Cotton Mather of Boston, Massachusetts. [See Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Smallpox Inoculation]

The British were slow to adopt inoculation, partly because the disease was endemic, at least in the more densely populated areas. This meant that it was always present. Most people became infected as children. Those that survived were immune. It did not fundamentally disrupt the normal patterns of life and work.

Moreover, inoculation was dangerous. It meant giving someone the disease, hopefully in a milder form. But sometimes, it killed or  disfigured the recipients. It could also spread the disease if the inoculated were not carefully isolated. They were contagious until they had passed through the disease. Many people demanded that inoculation be banned or at least strictly regulated, especially when the disease was not present in their communities.

There was also a religious objection. Many of the devout denounced it as an interference with Divine Providence: if God wanted you to have smallpox he would give it to you. Whether you lived or died was God's Will. 

That argument lost much of its power after a few decades, however. The 18th century was, after all, the Age of Enlightenment. A counter argument quickly developed, embraced by many religious leaders: Inoculation  was a gift from God. By the mid-18th century, some British inoculators were making substantial incomes from the practice.

One of the reasons for an increased uptake of inoculation in Britain (and somewhat later, on the Continent) was the success of the procedure in the British colonies in North America. 

The colonists were more receptive to inoculation than people in Britain and Europe. Ironically, in part this was because in the colonies smallpox was normally absent from their lives. It arrived in epidemic waves, generally about twenty or so years apart. 

This meant that whenever smallpox arrived, a large proportion of the population was vulnerable. Large numbers would become ill and many would die. 

Mortality rates were often 20 percent or higher. Survivors were often left with pock marked faces, and some became deaf or blind. Young women's marriage prospects could be blighted by the pocks. [Image: A severe case of smallpox, early 20th century]

These tragedies aside, economies and everyday life were severely disrupted by quarantines. These differences led to the colonies becoming a kind of experimental laboratory testing the efficacy of inoculation. 

The first such "experiment" took place during a smallpox epidemic in Boston in 1721. Mather, armed with knowledge from Onesimus and probably having read some accounts of its in Ottoman lands, convinced a local surgeon, Zabdiel Boylston, to try the method. 

Boylston inoculated 287 people. Six of them died, about 2 percent. That may sound terrible. But nearly 6000 contracted the natural disease, of which 844 died, or about 14 percent. Boylston published a famous account of his results, which emboldened others to employ inoculation, especially in the colonies. [Image: Title page of Boylston's Account, 1726]

One of the first places to do so was Charleston, South Carolina. During a minor outbreak in 1732, the South Carolina Gazette published an article describing inoculation. The author claimed that it was effective, but recommended against its use for concern that the inoculated could spread the disease. No one in Charleston seems to have adopted the procedure.

Six years later, another, much more severe outbreak struck Charleston. It began in May and appears to have spread from a newly arrived ship, the London Frigate. On this occasion, a local surgeon, Arthur Mowbray, began to inoculate. His action provoked a lively debate over inoculation, not just the prudence of doing so, but also the proper way of doing it. [image: Charleston Harbor, c.1770]

The South Carolina Gazette published letters by locals, mostly medical men, about inoculation. The doctors were divided. The paper's editor, Lewis Timothy, opposed the procedure as unproven and dangerous. The most vocal advocate of it was a feisty and somewhat mysterious surgeon, James Kilpatrick. 

He claimed to be from Ulster in Ireland, and he may have been born there around 1700, but he was a Scot. His real name was not Kilpatrick, but Kirkpatrick. His family had been implicated in Jacobite plots against the Hanoverian monarchy that had replaced the Stuart dynasty in 1714. 

He came to South Carolina in the early 1720s, possibly fearing prosecution, which may account for the name change. He had matriculated at the University of Edinburgh prior to his departure.

Kilpatrick wrote an account of inoculation after the 1738 epidemic in Charleston. He gave credit to Mowbray for having begun inoculation, and credit to himself for taking it up and defending it. There was a personal side to his account. One of his children died of smallpox in the early stages of the outbreak. He quickly inoculated the others and his wife.

During and after the epidemic Kilpatrick conducted a rancorous pamphlet duel with another local doctor, Thomas Dale, who accused him (and Mowbray) of spreading the epidemic through careless inoculation. Kilpatrick accused Dale of being ignorant of the disease and inoculating solely for profit. The dispute was not just a matter of income, but of professional rivalry and personal pride. It is likely that both men distorted the facts. 

Unfortunately, only one of the pamphlets has survived, by Kilpatrick, and his Essay on Inoculation (1743) is the only first-hand account of the epidemic. Nevertheless, Charlestonians who remembered the events decades later agreed on one thing: inoculation in 1738 had been a great success. 

Kilpatrick estimated that about 1 percent of the 800 to 1000 persons inoculated in Charleston in 1738 died. The population of the city was then about 6000. Lewis Timothy, a critic of inoculation, claimed that the death rate among the inoculated was closer to 3 percent. These figures are similar to those reported in Boston and other places within the empire around this time. 

These were excellent results, given that smallpox often produced mortality rates of 20 percent or higher. Among Native Americans, it was often much higher, because so few of them had ever been exposed to this Old World disease. In 1738 smallpox was estimated to have killed about 50 percent of the Catawba Nation. Differential immunities of this magnitude helped to cement European dominance of the Americas. 

Despite inoculation's success in 1738, the state assembly moved to restrict inoculation several months into the epidemic, by which time it was dying out. The rationale was that inoculation itself could spread the infection and keep the outbreak alive. The assembly did not prohibit it, but mandated that it could not be performed within two miles of Charleston. 

The motives behind this restriction were as much economic and military as medical. The epidemic had stifled trade for months due to strict quarantine and country peoples' fear of coming into town. 

Also, war had broken out with Spain that year, the War of Jenkins' Ear. The assemblymen feared that as long as cases of smallpox were present in Charleston, they could not rely on country folk to come to the city's defense in case of a Spanish attack.

By the end of 1738, smallpox had retreated from Charleston. It would not return for more than twenty years, once again during war. On this occasion, the demand for inoculation would be much greater, and the opposition much less. The procedure had proved its value. [Continued in Part Two: ]

P.S. James Kilpatrick moved to London in the early 1740s, where he published his Essay on Inoculation about the 1738 epidemic. He established a successful practice in inoculation and obtained his M.D, from Edinburgh University. He published a much longer work on the procedure, An Analysis of Inoculation, in 1754, under the name Kirkpatrick. He died in 1771. One of his sons had a successful career in the British East India Company, and rose to the rank of Colonel. Two of his sons also became ranking officers in the company, and one of them, James Achilles, married an Indian princess. Their story can be followed in William Dalrymple's magnificent and highly informative White Mughals (London, 2002) [Image: James Achilles Kirkpatrick, the grandson of James Kilpatrick/Kirkpatrick of Charleston.

Sources: All the sources for this post may be found in Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (New York and Cambridge: 2011, 2014)

Access Part Two

 

  

 

Dying in Paradise: Colonial South Carolina

South Carolina was the wealthiest colony in British North America at the time of the Revolution. It was also the unhealthiest. It was long notorious for its deadly fevers, notably malaria and yellow fever, both transmitted by mosquitoes. 

Dysentery was another major hazard, transmitted by amoebas or bacteria in water. The “bloody flux” subjected many to enormous suffering and in many cases, an early grave. Smallpox and other periodical contagions added to the grisly toll.

Wealth and unhealth were intimately connected. Both arose largely from the cultivation of rice with enslaved Africans, the majority of South Carolina’s population from 1708 until the early 20^th century. [Image: Africans hoeing in the rice fields]

 It is widely known that whites suffered terribly from disease in the lowcountry plantation areas. In Christ Church Parish [now Mount Pleasant] in the early 18th century, the parish register records that 86% of baptized children died before age 20. 

Between 1750 and 1779, planter Henry Ravenel and his wife had 16 children. Eight died before age 5. Only six survived past 21. Of their seven daughters, none lived to be 20. Elias Ball and Mary Delamere, who married in 1721, had six children. All died before age 20. Many other families fared the same or worse. The death rate for whites in early 18^th century Charleston was roughly twice that of the average parish in England or New England at the time. 

Less well known is that Africans also died in large numbers from these diseases and many others. This is due to the staying power of pro-slavery arguments of the 19th century, which claimed that Africans were virtually immune to the “tropical” fevers that killed so many whites. A benevolent God had “designed” African constitutions for this work. 

Gov. John Drayton summed up this argument in 1802: “these situations are particularly unhealthy, and unsuitable to the constitutions of white persons … that of a Negro is perfectly adapted to its cultivation.” In 1850, the Lutheran minister and naturalist John Bachman claimed that Africans were perfectly designed for laboring in the lowcountry environment. [Images: John Drayton and John Bachman] 

In stark contrast, some 18th century observers commented on the heavy mortality of the enslaved. An example is Alexander Garden, a Charleston physician and naturalist for whom the gardenia is named.  Garden served for several years as port physician in the 1750s. In this capacity he inspected arriving ships for signs of contagious diseases. This included slave ships. 

Garden was shocked by what he found. Many of them had lost as much as one-third to three-fourths of their "cargoes" during the voyage from West Africa. The ships on arrival were "so filthy and foul it is a wonder any escape with life.” (Image: JMW Turner, Slave Ship, showing sick slaves being thrown overboard, alive, based on the infamous Zong Case 1783)

Many Africans also died on the slave ships in harbor waiting to be sold. Their bodies were often thrown overboard into the Cooper River to save the cost of burial. In 1769, the royal governor published the following proclamation in the South Carolina Gazette:

"A large number of dead Negroes have been thrown into the river … the noisome smell arising from their putrefaction may become dangerous to the health of the inhabitants." The governor offered a reward to be paid on the conviction of those responsible  in hopes of ending this "inhuman and unchristian practice." [Image: Charleston harbor, c. 1770] 

It did not end. In 1807, the last year that the slave trade was legal, traders brought almost 16,000 Africans to Charleston in the last four months of the year alone. The local economy could not absorb so much "labor" in such a short time. Hundreds died of disease on the filthy ships while waiting to be sold.

In April 1807, The Courier reported on an inquest on the body of an African woman found floating in the harbor. The jury concluded that she died as a result of "a visitation of God," shifting responsibility to the Almighty. They "supposed her to belong to some of the slave ships in this harbour, and thrown into the river, to save expence of burial."

This was hardly an isolated incident. The newspaper's editor noted that such "burials" had become so common that something ought to be done to stop it. His great concern was the unpleasant thought that Charleston's citizens [whites] might eat fish from the harbor that had "fattened on the carcasses of dead Negroes."

Alexander Garden also treated many sick and injured Africans, of whom he wrote: "Masters often pay dear for their barbarity, by the loss of many valuable Negroes, and how can it well be otherwise -- the poor wretches are obliged to labor so hard ... and often overheat themselves, then exposing themselves to the bad air ... The result was pneumonia and other respiratory disorders, "which soon rid them of cruel masters, or more cruel overseers, and end their wretched being."

Further Reading: Peter McCandless, Slavery, Disease, and Suffering in the Southern Lowcountry (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, PB, 2014) Winner of the SHEAR Prize for Best Book on the early American Republic, 2012.

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