Plague and Imperialism: The Third Pandemic: 1890s-1920s

According to medical historians, bubonic plague has reached pandemic (global or near global) level on three occasions. The first, often called the Plague of Justinian, occurred during the 6th and 7th centuries. The second began in the 14th century (The Black Death). It lasted until the 18th century in Europe and a bit longer in some eastern and middle eastern locations.

The Third Plague Pandemic killed about 15 million people, the great majority in the Indian subcontinent. It began in Western China in the mid-1850s during the Taiping Rebellion, and gradually spread west to Russia, reaching the Ural and Caspian regions by the 1870s and 1880s. It also moved east, reaching southern China and Hong Kong by 1894. 

Modern technology played a role in its spread. Fast steamships  took it across the wide Pacific. It reached Hawaii in 1899 and San Francisco in 1900. Railways also helped to spread the disease widely, especially in India. 

Plague had minimal effect in Western Europe on this occasion but an outbreak did occur in Glasgow, Scotland in 1900, with 35 infected, of whom about half died.

By this time, medical scientists had embraced germ theory, and one of the results of the new pandemic was the discovery of the microbe responsible: yersinia pestis, named for Alexander Yersin, the Russian physician who isolated it. Yersin's vaccine was prepared from heat killed plague bacteria. (Images: the bacteria and Yersin.)

By the beginning of the 20th century many investigators also concluded that plague was spread by fleas from rats. From 1900 huge efforts were made to eliminate the rodents, as in Sydney, Australia (below). 

The rat-flea-human cycle had competition, however. Many people  argued that plague could be spread by humans and contaminated materials (fomites), which led to the quarantining of victims, mass burials, the destruction of clothing, furniture, and other property. 

These measures caused great resentment and unrest, especially in colonial possessions like Hong Kong, India, and Hawaii, where insensitive white authorities often ran roughshod over indigenous beliefs and customs and treated local people with racialistic disrespect. In Hong Kong, British officials sent gangs of soldiers to "disinfect" Chinese houses. This involved not only spraying them with strong disinfectants, but removing furniture, bedding, and other household items to be burned. 

The Chinese inhabitants saw the quarantines, searches and disinfecting as unnecessary, insulting, and intrusive. Many of them distrusted western medicine. Chinese who were found to be infected were removed to an airless hospital ship and later to a makeshift substandard hospital converted from an old factory. 

The Chinese reaction is understandable. About 90% of the infected Chinese died, versus about 66% of Europeans. The official death toll in Hong Kong was 2500, but was undoubtedly much higher, because many deaths were conealed from the authorities. The death toll in in nearby Canton, where many Hong Kong Chinese fled, was much higher. 

American officials in Hawaii used similar measures in trying to combat the spread of plague among the Chinese community, and aroused similar hostility. The same was true in San Francisco and in British India. The images below were taken at quarantine camps in Karachi (now in Pakistan). 

India suffered more from the plague than any other country or region. Plague killed as many as 12 million Indians between the 1890s and 1920s, 3 million in 1903 alone. In comparison plague killed about 7000 in Europe and about 500 in the US, mostly in San Francisco in the early 1900s. Another outbreak took place in Los Angeles in 1924-25.

A plague vaccine developed by a Russian bacteriologist, Waldemar Haffkine, was employed in India, but it was only partially effective. In any case only 4 million Indians had received the vaccine by 1900, when the population of British India was 230 million.

In 1910, another plague epidemic broke out in eastern Siberia and spread into Manchuria in northern China. It was traced to hunters who had been trapping marmots. The disease initially spread from infected marmots to humans via their fleas. 

The discovery of that link led to the realization that other rodents besides rats could spread plague via fleas, and that rats might not be the main vector. Today in the Western US, the fleas of prairie dogs and other burrowing rodents are capable of spreading the disease, and humans are ocasionally infected in this way. The disease spread in these animals after plague arrived in San Francisco in 1900.

It was soon learned that human fleas can spread plague as well, and that humans can also spread it through coughing when it takes the pneumonic form and invades the lungs. The pnuemonic form is much less common than the bubonic (lymphatic) form, but it was present in the Manchurian outbreak. The image below shows some of the victims.

Wu Liande, the Chinese doctor who directed anti-plague efforts in Manchuria in 1910-11 and again in 1920-21, had been trained in Western medicine at Cambridge University. 

Wu used many of the same measures as European and American imperialists, but met less resistance because he was Chinese and understood local customs. He also introduced the use of gauze masks and other garb to prevent the spread of pneumonic plague. The photo below shows a patient (see arm) being vaccinated with the Haffkine vaccine. Wu's measures soon brought plague under control in northern China.

None of the measures used to combat plague, however, were completely successful before the discovery of the first antibiotics in the 1940s. DDT, which began to be employed around this time, also helped by killing fleas but had harmful effects on the environment. Organisms could also adapt to the DDT. Some strains of the bacteria have already demonstrated resistance to antibiotics.  

Plague has disappeared from much of the world since the 1950s, but major outbreaks still occur, mainly in impoverished areas. In August 2017 1800 people were infected with plague in Madagascar, 1100 of them with the pneumonic form. On average about 1000-2000 cases of plague are reported globally each year. 

Could plague return again in pandemic form? Under the right circumstances, it could. Best advice: avoid burrowing rodents.

Further reading: 

J. N. Hays, Epidemics and Pandemics: Their Impacts on Human History. ABC-Clio, 2005.

_________, The Burdens of Disease: Epidemics and Human Response in Western History. Rutgers University Press, 2009.

Christian W. McMillen, Pandemics: A Very Short History. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Marilyn Chase, The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco (New York: Random House, 2004)

London's Clerkenwell District: Wells, Prisons, Dickens, and Marx

The London neighborhood of Clerkenwell, a short walk to the north of the intersection of Ludgate Hill and Fleet Street, derives its name from the Old English for “clerks’ well” -- clerks in this case meaning clerics/clergy. Medieval monks and nuns from several nearby religious houses drew their water from a well here, along the banks of the now subterranean River Fleet, which runs under Farringdon Street and Road. 

The River Fleet gave its name to Fleet Street and the notorious Fleet Prison for debtors. The prison is long gone, replaced by high rise offices. Hard to say which is worse.

To the west of Farringdon St./Rd, just past Holborn Viaduct runs a narrow lane and area called Saffron Hill. It didn’t get its name from upscale developers. Saffron was once grown here. By the early nineteenth century it had become a derelict area inhabited by the very poor and criminals. Many shops along the street and just off it fenced stolen goods. 

Charles Dickens placed Fagin’s thieves' den in Oliver Twist here, just off Saffron Hill on Field Lane. Alas, or maybe not, there are few reminders of those days left. Saffron Hill ends at Clerkenwell Rd and becomes Herbal Hill, a street descending the other side of the gentle incline.

Near here one can see the well that gave Clerkenwell its name. It's on Farringdon Lane, just east of Farringdon Road. The well is inside a modern office building with a sign on the wall: Clerks’ Well.  You can see it through a plate glass window, much like Christmas displays at Harrods. Visits can be arranged. Maybe you can be drowned in this holy well.

The well is just off Clerkenwell Green, which hasn't been green for three hundred years or so.

Clerkenwell Green is where the Artful Dodger and Charley Bates take Oliver Twist to introduce him to their trade: pick-pocketing. The episode leads to Oliver’s arrest and appearance in court before the snarling magistrate Mr. Fang and his temporary rescue from Fagin by the kindly Mr. Brownlow. (Illustration from Oliver Twist by George Cruikshank)

The courthouse itself is at one corner of the Green. The Old Middlesex Sessions House, is an impressive building. It's a neoclassical structure, opened in 1780. It once had the reputation of being the most severe London court in its sentencing of convicted criminals. Today it's a Masonic Lodge and a tour of the attractive interior, if open, is well worth the time. Its dome is a replica of the Pantheon in Rome. The purpose of the court's elaborate decoration was no doubt to convince those who entered of the sacred majesty of the law. 

Across the Green sits a memorial to someone who denounced that majesty as a tool of the ruling class. The Marx Memorial Library houses a large collection of literature relating to the history of Marxism, socialism, and the British trade union movement. Its building, dating from 1738, once housed the Welsh Charity School.

If you are  thirsty, and I'm sure you are by now, there are several nice pubs nearby. One, the Betsey Trotwood is named for David Copperfield's crusty but goodhearted aunt. It lies just to the north of Clerkenwell Green where Farringdon Lane runs into Farringdon Rd. 

A couple blocks north of the pub, at the intersection of Roseberry Ave, is a large white post office depot with the words “Mount Pleasant” emblazoned across its front. The name has a certain irony. It was once the location of one of London's most feared prisons, the Cold Bath Fields House of Correction, opened in 1794. Londoners nicknamed it “The Bastille, ”or just “The Steel.” It was a most unpleasant place, especially after the governors introduced the notorious treadmill. Of course, we pay to use treadmills today.

Clerkenwell is well worth a visit! But for heaven's sake, don't get caught thieving!

A Georgian Cartoonist's Christmas

According to contemporary cartoonists, Georgian Christmas celebrations were not the scenes of pious, orderly behavior and domestic bliss the Victorians liked to portray. Consider this cartoon by Thomas Rowlandson, from 1804, "Christmas Gambols".

Drunken servants party in the kitchen in less than spiritual fashion. What would their masters think? Perhaps they encouraged such conviviality! Party on ! The mistletoe hanging from the ceiling indicates that the servants are acting in accord with an old Christmas tradition -- up to a point. 

"At Home in the Nursery" by George Cruikshank, 1825, portrays a chaotic Christmas party for children at the home of Master and Mrs. Twoshoes. The children are certainly enjoying themselves! Not quite the pious scene Dickens portrayed of the Cratchit household in A Christmas Carol.

Lewis Walpole's, "A Pleasing Pastime, Christmas Quadrille Party," 1826 shows four gentlemen braving ice skating with hilarious results, probably after tippling a bit too much at the local pub.

"Drawing for a Twelfth Night Cake at St. Anne's Hill," was the work of George Cruikshank's father Isaac.  It portrays an all male celebration at the country house of Charles James Fox in 1799. The image emphasizes Fox's sympathy with revolutionary France, then at war with Britain (liberty caps). Twelfth night celebrations were often rather wild affairs. Like most Georgian celebrations, I suppose.

Placid or Chaotic, Enjoy your Holidays. God Bless Us All, Everyone!

St. Mary's Church, Beddington Park, a Little Gem in South London

I have walked by St. Mary's Church in Beddington Park, Surrey many times. The other day the church was open for visiting and I wandered in for a look about. I found an interior of artistic beauty and considerable historical interest. 

There has been a church on the site since Anglo-Saxon times. It was probably a wooden church. It is listed in Domesday Book (1086) a survey of most of England and Wales carried out by orders of England's first Norman king, William the Conqueror. 

Most of the present church dates from the 14th and 15th centuries, including the tower. But just past the tower, on the right of the central aisle, one comes to a Purbeck marble font dating from the 12th century.

The roof of the nave and chancel are wooden and highly decorated. The organ screen was designed and made in the workshop of arts and crafts pioneer William Morris in the late 19th century. It is believed that Morris painted part of the screen. 

View of the organ screen, on left.

To the right of the chancel is the Carew Chapel, which probably dates from the late 15th century. The chapel was dedicated originally to the family that owned Carew Manor next door. Many Carews were commemorated and buried under here.

The chapel contains an impressive tomb, a monument to Richard Carew (d. 1520). On the front of it a man, his wife, and seven children are portrayed. This was Sir Nicholas Throckmorton and his family. Sir Nicholas inherited the estate after the death of a later Carew,  his uncle Francis, and adopted the Carew name. 

  
There is much more to see at St Mary's, which is certainly worth a visit.  

Hunting the Feejee Mermaid: from Charleston to London

I took a trip across London not long ago to visit the Horniman Museum and Gardens. The Horniman contains much of interest in its natural history, ethnography, and botanical collections. I must admit, however, that the star attraction for me was a famous hoax: the Feejee Mermaid. 

I had first stumbled onto the Feejee Mermaid while researching an article on the influence of two pseudo-sciences, mesmerism and phrenology, in antebellum Charleston, South Carolina. The Mermaid had been exhibited there in 1842 by the great American showman of the day, P. T. Barnum. He claimed it had been caught by fishermen in Fiji. A contemporary drawing of it reveals that this was not much like the beautiful, siren-like mermaids of legend. 

The Mermaid proved a big hit despite its grotesque appearance. It also sparked a major controversy among Charleston's intellectuals, with some, Rev. John Bachman, a highly competent naturalist, denouncing it as a crude fake. Others, notably Richard Yeadon, editor of the Charleston Courier, pronouncing it as genuine. 

Disagreement in Charleston over the mermaid's bona fides became quite heated, with both sides accusing the other of violating the Southern code of honor. Bachman and Yeadon traded insults and came close to the dueling field, an outcome only prevented by the intervention of mutual friends. 

I summarized the Charleston mermaid dispute in the article I mentioned above, because the animosities carried over into the debate over mesmerism a few months later. 

But back to the Horniman Museum. I arrived to discover that the ballyhooed Mermaid was not there! In the place where it was supposed to be, there was a placard with a picture of the mangy critter and the words "the following object has been temporarily removed from display." I learned from one of the guides that it was on loan to a museum in the USA. The object that was not there looks like this:



That the main thing I came to see was away on tour was not the only surprise I was in for. The object that was not in the Horniman is called the Feejee "Merman," not the Feejee "Mermaid." Due to its absence, of course, I was unable to verify its sex or gender. I subsequently learned that there was not one mermaid or merman but at least several, perhaps many. 

Learning from Barnum, other circuses and promoters secured (or constructed) their own mermaids or mermen for their sideshows. Some of them were made in Japan, including Barnum's and the one in the Horniman. The Barnum mermaid was exhibited elsewhere, including Cape Town and England for twenty years before a collaborator of Barnum, Moses Kimball, acquired it. Most naturalists denounced it as a fake, but the promoters who exhibited it and others were more interested in the revenue it produced. 

Some accounts say that Barnum's mermaid was destroyed in a fire; others say it survived. The Peabody Museum at Harvard University claims that the object below is the Barnum mermaid, but other "mermaid experts" disagree. They argue it was one of many that were exhibited during the nineteenth century. 

My visit to the Horniman was a failure in that I did not see the Mermaid or Merman. But I learned that the history of the "Feejee Mermaid" was much more complicated and interesting than I had thought. 

Further Reading: 

The Feejee Mermaid; Early Barnum Hoax: Live Science

Kenneth S. Greenberg, "The Nose, the Lie, and the Duel in the Antebellum South," The American Historical Review, Vol. 95, No. 1 (Feb., 1990), pp. 57-74.

Peter McCandless, 'Mesmerism and Phrenology in Antebellum Charleston: Enough of the Marvellous,' The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 58, No. 2 May, 1992, pp. 199-230.

London's Invisible River Fleet

One of London's numerous underground rivers, the River Fleet is perhaps the most famous. The Fleet once ran pure and freely from Highgate and Hampstead down the valley now occupied by New Bridge St., Farringdon St., and Farringdon Rd. before emptying into the Thames.

The Fleet was once called the River of Wells because there were so many wells along its course, some of them holy. It was also surrounded by various religious foundations, monasteries, convents, and friaries. Henry VIII erected Bridewell Palace along its banks, but his son Edward VI gave it to the City of London to serve as a school for boys and a house of correction for women of ill repute. An interesting juxtaposition of functions that. "Bridewell" later became a general house of correction for many types of offenders, and the term became generic for such institutions. 

One reason the royals gave up Bridewell may be the fact that the river had become a foul open sewer, clogged with animal carcasses from nearby Smithfield Market, refuse from tanneries, and the wastes and castoffs of untold numbers of Londoners. 

The noxious miasmas that the Fleet "Ditch" -- as it was often called -- exhaled may be the reason why it was surrounded by prisons, workhouses, and cheap housing. It was a good place for housing if not thinning out the poor and undesirable. Many criminals had their haunts along or near its banks. Dickens placed Fagin's den in nearby Field Lane on Saffron Hill.

The Fleet river/ditch/sewer was gradually covered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today it is almost forgotten, but you can see evidence of it as it flows into the Thames under Blackfriars Bridge. Or, you can see the water at its source in Highgate and Hampstead Ponds.

Scandal: Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, and the British Election of 1784

The Westminster parliamentary election of 1784 produced a major scandal due to the active involvement of Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1757-1806). 

At the time, British women were unable to vote or run for Parliament. They would not gain those rights for more than a century. Georgiana's scandalous behavior was not to defy the electoral laws but the convention that women, at least "respectable" women, should not actively canvas for votes on behalf of men. [Below: Portrait by Thomas Gainsborough]

Georgiana's marriage to William Cavendish, 5th Duke of Devonshire, was not a happy one. The Duke was unemotional and adulterous. The Duchess sought refuge in society, the theatre, gambling, and visiting pleasure gardens. Gambling became an addiction, and she racked up enormous debts. 

As celebrities do today, she attracted the attention of the media, in press and print. Artist Thomas Rowlandson produced many cartoons in which she was the subject, such as the two below showing her at the gaming table and at Vauxhall (in center of the crowd with her sister). Many other notables are pictured at Vauxhall, including Dr. Samuel Johnson, Oliver Goldsmith, and James Boswell, seated at the left.

The candidate Georgiana helped was Charles James Fox, leader of the parliamentary Whigs. In 1780 she had stood on the hustings with Fox. In 1784 she went much further. She went about the streets of Westminster, canvassing voters and trying to convince them to cast their vote for Fox. He was not only running to keep his seat as an MP, but hoping that the Whigs he led would gain enough seats to allow him to replace his rival, William Pitt the Younger, as Prime Minister. 

The Westminster electorate was relatively large for the time and included men of the middling and lower ranks. For a duchess to mix and touch -- some claimed even kiss -- such folk seemed scandalous to many contemporaries. Cartoonists had a field day, notably Rowlandson. The image below, "The Devonshire; or Most Approved Method of Securing Votes" shows the Duchess kissing a butcher. 

More licentious, and completely fanciful, "The Poll" shows Georgiana and Albinia, Countess of Buckinghamshire, on a see saw trying to "tip the balance" between the two leading candidates, Fox and Sir Cecil Wray. Albinia openly supported Wray, and met the same criticisms as Georgiana. Both women are shown exposing their breasts, symbolizing their scandalous behavior. Fox is on the right with his hands in the air. The phallic-shaped rocks the seesaw rests on add another level of suggestiveness.

The image below shows Georgiana processing to the hustings with other canvassers, including other women.

Despite all the negative publicity Georgiana received, Fox was reelected as one of the two Westminster MPs. Who knows, her efforts may even have helped him win over voters. His goal of becoming Prime Minister was thwarted, however, because Pitt gained a solid majority of supporters in Parliament.

Georgiana did not enter the political fray again so publicly. She continued for years to mix with and influence Whig leaders like Fox, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the Prince of Wales, the future George IV. 

She also had an affair with a member of the Whig inner circle, Charles Grey, with whom she had an illegitimate daughter. The affair ended when her husband threatened her with divorce and never seeing her children again. Georgiana, who had strong mothering instincts, chose her children over Grey. He was furious at the rejection, but had some compensation. He later became an earl, Prime Minister, and had a tea named after him. 

The portrait below by Joshua Reynolds, shows the Duchess playing with her daughter, also named Georgiana.