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Norfolk Highlights 1584 - 1881
By George Holbert Tucker
Chapter 36
The 1855 Yellow Fever Epidemic
The 1855 yellow fever epidemic, referred to by contemporaries as "The
Death Storm," that wiped out around two thousand of Norfolk's population,
was one of the worst disasters in the history of the city.
Norfolk had previously experienced bad outbreaks of "Yellow Jack"
-- notably in 1795, 1802, 1821, and 1826 -- but none of them could compare
with the epidemic of 1855. Then, on June 7, 1855, the steamer Ben Franklin,
en route to New York from St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, where a
yellow fever epidemic was raging, put into Hampton Roads in distress.
Her hold, containing the larvae of the deadly yellow fever transmitting
mosquito, the Aedes aegypti, was a vertiable Pandora's Box of pestilential
evil.
The Ben Franklin was quarantined in Hampton Roads until June 19, when
the health authorities permitted her captain to take her to Page and
Allen's shipyard near the Gosport Navy Yard on the condition that her
hold "was not to be broken up." After tying up at the shipyard,
however, the captain violated his promise and had the hatches opened
and the bilges pumped out.
The first man stricken was a Richmond machinist named Carter who was
working in the ship's hold. On July 5, he came down with the fever,
and three days later he died. His death was followed by an outbreak
of the fever in a crowded nearby tenement known as "Irish Row,"
from which it spread into Portsmouth.
When "Irish Row" was closed by the health authorities, Norfolk
gave shelter to some of the families that had been evicted from the
slum and quartered them in an equally rundown tenement on South Church
Street known as "Barry's Row." It was there that the fever
broke out in Norfolk on July 30, after which it spread rapidly thoroughout
the city.
At that point, a general exodus to escape from the dread disease began.
But before long many cities, notably New York, Richmond, and Petersburg,
which had at first welcomed the refugees, refused to receive any others
from the pestilence-stricken Norfolk area. It is also a matter of record
that a boatload of refugees was repulsed at bayonet-point while attempting
to land at Old Point.
There were other communities, however, notably the Virginia Eastern
Shore, Mathews County, and Fredericksburg, that gave asylum to those
fleeing from the fever. And soon, moved by accounts of the pitiful plight
of Norfolk that appeared in the nation's press, volunteers from all
over the country came to Norfolk to nurse the stricken, while substantial
sums of money were collected to assist the fever-racked community.
August 14 was set aside by the authorities as a day of humiliation
and prayer, but the fever continued to rage. And before the end of August
all business in Norfolk had been suspended and the city was one great
hospital. The only vessel entering the Norfolk harbor at that time was
the little steamer J.E. Coffee that met boats from Baltimore and Richmond
in Hampton Roads to pick up the mail and bring in coffins. Before long,
however, coffins became a luxury, and the bodies of the fever victims
had to be buried in boxes or in the blankets in which they had died.
Many Norfolkians, because of their untiring efforts, became legendary
heros during the epidemic, notably the Reverend Mathew O'Keefe, pastor
of St. Patrick's Catholic Church, and Dr. George D. Armstrong, the Norfolk
Presbyterian minister. Armstrong later wrote a fascinating account of
his experiences, "A History of the Ravages of the Yellow Fever
in Norfolk, Virginia, A.D. 1855," that describes the ninety-day
terror in graphic detail. And although he had no idea that the wind-borne
mosquito was the agent of transmission of the fever, he came close to
pinpointing the cause when he observed: "The disease . . . spread
rapidly in the direction of the prevailing winds and but slowly in the
direction across the track of those winds."
Finally, with the coming of frost, the epidemic ended. Of those who
survived, according to Burton's "History of Norfolk," "every
man, woman and child, almost without exception had been stricken by
the fell fever and about 2,000 had been buried."
 Chapter
37
Two Memorable Freezes
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