1677-1678 — Smallpox Epidemic, Massachusetts Bay Colony, esp. Boston & vic. –750-1,000
Massachusetts Bay Colony (Hundreds to >1,000)
— >1,000 Kales. The Boston Harbor Islands: A History of an Urban Wilderness. 2007, p.36.
— 1,000 Workers of the Writers’ Program. Boston Looks Seaward: 1630-1940. 1941, p.241.
–Hundreds. Le Beau, Bryan F. The Story of the Salem Witch Trials. NY: Routledge, 2010.
— Many. Woodward, M.D. “The Story of Smallpox in Massachusetts.” 2016.
–750-1,000 Blanchard.[1]
Boston (>200-640)
— ~640 Publick Occurrences, Boston 9-25-1690, in Historic Burying Grounds…Newsletter.[2]
— >340 Cotton Mather in Blake, J.B. Public Health in the Town of Boston, 1630-1822. 1959, 20.
— >200 Purvis, T. L. Colonial America to 1763. NY: Facts On File, Inc., 1999, 173.
Boston and Charlestown ( 200-300)
–200-300 Grob, Gerald N. The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America. 2002, pp. 72-73.
Charlestown ( 91)
–91 Winter. Budington. The History of the First Church, Charlestown, p. 76.[3]
–Mortality of a plague. Webster. A Brief History of Epidemic…Pestilential Diseases… 1799, 203
Roxbury ( 18)
–18 “Tracing Smallpox Through the Burying Grounds.” HBGI Newsletter, Boston, 4/1, Spring 2015.
Salem ( ?)
–? 1677-1678 Smallpox in Salem. (Carlson, Fever in Salem… 1999, p. 161.)
Other localities ( ?)
Narrative Information
Blake: “….Upon the arrival of Thomas Jenner’s vessel [from England] in July 1677…officials, ‘understanding that Gods Afflicting hand has been upon them by the Infectious Disease of the Small Pox…for the prevention of the further spreading of that Infectious & noisome Disease amongst the Inhabitants if the Lord please,’ ordered Jenner not to proceed beyond a certain island in the harbor and there to air the passengers and goods aboard. Despite these efforts the malady began to spread. By May 1678 the Governor and Council directed the Boston Selectmen to keep people from laying out bedding or clothes in their yards or on the highways, and to make sure that no one went abroad too soon after having the disease. The town officers accordingly designated certain places for airing infected articles and set a nightly watch of twelve men.[4]
“During the course of the epidemic Thomas Thacher, a minister-physician, was moved to publish A Brief Rule to Guide the Common-People of New-England How to Order Themselves and Theirs in the Small Pocks, or Measels. In this broadside, the English colonies’ first medical publication, Thacher advised avoiding excessive heat or cold, abstaining from meat and wine, and using water-gruel, boiled apples, warm milk, and other easily digested food.[5] ‘Never was it such a time in Boston,’ wrote young Cotton Mather in November 1678. ‘Boston burying-places never filled so fast.’ The bells were tolling for burials by sunrise, ‘corpses following each other close at their heels,’ with thirty-eight dying in one week, ‘6, 7, 8 or 9 in a day….Above 340 have died of the Small Pox in Boston since it first assaulted the place….’” (Blake, John Ballard. Public Health in the Town of Boston, 1630-1822. 1959, pp. 19-20.)
Grob: “A decade later [after 1666 smallpox outbreak] smallpox made its appearance in Charlestown and quickly spread across the Charles River to Boston. Between 200 and 300 persons died. The adoption of measures to quarantine the community prevented its spread to adjacent towns.[6] ‘Boston burying-places never filled so fast,’ noted a youthful Cotton Mather. ‘It is easy to tell the time when we did not use to have the bells rolling for burials on a Sabbath morning by sunrise; to have 7 buried on a Sabbath day night, after Meeting. To have coffins crossing each other as they have been carried in the street…To attempt a Bill of Mortality, and number the very spires of grass in a Burying Place seem to have a parity of difficulty and in accomplishment.’”[7]
Historic Burying Grounds Initiative Newsletter (Boston): “On September 25, 1690, the first edition of Publick Occurrences, one of the first English-language news publications in North America, was printed. It contrasted the concurrent 1690 epidemic with the deadlier 1677-78 smallpox outbreak in Boston:
The Smallpox which has been raging in Boston, after a manner very Extraordinary, is now very much abated. It is thought that far more have been sick of it then were visited with it, when it raged so much twelve years ago, nevertheless it has not been so Mortal, The number of them that have dyed in Boston by this last Visitation is about three hundred and twenty, which is not perhaps half so many as fell by the former [the epidemic of 1677-78]. (p. 5)
“….In the neighboring town of Roxbury, the death records of the First Church of Roxbury state that a total of 26 people died, of which 18 people died of smallpox, all between September and December….
“Bostonians were aware of the contagious nature of smallpox without understanding the exact means of transmission. The town records of May 6, 1677, contain specific instructions for the airing out of any clothes or bedding of a person who had smallpox. There were four specific areas where linens could be laid out, during the ‘dead time’ of the night. Three citizens were appointed to inspect that these rules were followed. Sick people were also under quarantine orders to remain in their homes until they were considered well enough to go out. A watch of twelve men was ordered to verify that the quarantine orders were followed.” (“Tracing Smallpox Through the Burying Grounds.” Historic Burying Grounds Initiative Newsletter. Boston, V. 4, Ed. 1, Spring 2015, p. 6.)
Kales: “Another smallpox epidemic struck the colonists in 1677, killing over a thousand people in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was at that time that town officials began to look at the islands of Boston Harbor, isolated and detached from the mainland, as a quarantine station for people from abroad. The town council ordered the passengers and crew of a ship infected with smallpox to spend eight days in quarantine on Deer island before coming ashore in Boston. The fear was the infected ship could worsen the smallpox disease rampaging through the town.” (Kales, David. The Boston Harbor Islands: A History of an Urban Wilderness. 2007, p. 36)
Le Beau: “During the period 1677-1678 a smallpox epidemic took hundreds of lives…” (Le Beau, Bryan F. The Story of the Salem Witch Trials. New York: Routledge, 2010.)
Odrowaz-Sypniewska: “1677-1678 – Smallpox breaks out, killing more people than the 1666 epidemic. Thirty die in one day, at the height of the epidemic.” (Odrowaz-Sypniewska, Margaret. “New England Timeline.” The New England Colonists Web.)
Purvis: “1677-78. Smallpox. Boston, Mass. (more than 200 died). (“Table 6.7 Outbreaks of Epidemic Disease in Colonial America,” pp. 173-174 in Purvis, Thomas L. Colonial America to 1763. NY: Facts On File, Inc., 1999.)
Webster: “In 1677…in Charlestown, Massachusetts, raged the small-pox with the mortality of a plague.” (Webster. A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases… 1799, p. 203.)
Woodward: “In the winter of 1677-78 smallpox again raged, brought as usual by English ships, and many deaths were recorded. Fast days were held to stay its progress…” (Woodward, M.D. “The Story of Smallpox in Massachusetts — Annual Oration 1932.” 2016.)
Workers of the Writers’ Program: “The story of quarantine in Boston goes back to the year 1677, when 1,000 Massachusetts Bay Colonists died in an epidemic. As a result, Gallups Island was chosen as a voluntary quarantine station.” (Workers of the Writers’ Program. Boston Looks Seaward: 1630-1940. 1941, p. 241.)
Sources
Blake, John Ballard. Public Health in the Town of Boston, 1630-1822. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959, 283 pages. Google preview accessed 1-7-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=Zk2j4jrSf2EC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Budington, William Ives. The History of the First Church, Charlestown, in Nine Lectures, With Notes. Boston: Charles Tappan, 1845. Google digitized. Accessed 1-7-2017 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=mlVLAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Carlson, Laurie Winn. Fever in Salem: A New Interpretation of the New England Witch Trials. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999. Google digital preview accessed 1-7-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=SUVKAAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Grob, Gerald N. The Deadly Truth: A History of Disease in America. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2002. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=U1H5rq3IQUAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Historic Burying Grounds Initiative Newsletter (Kelly Thomas, Program Director). “Tracing Smallpox Through the Burying Grounds.” Boston, MA: Vol. 4, Edition 1, Spring 2015. Accessed 1-7-2018 at: https://www.boston.gov/sites/default/files/document-file-12-2016/hbgi_spring_2015_newsletter.pdf
Kales, David. The Boston Harbor Islands: A History of an Urban Wilderness. History Press, 2007. Partially digitized by Google. At: http://books.google.com/books?id=5LB-hSGmNrUC
Kohn, George Childs (Ed.). Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence From Ancient Times to the Present (Revised Edition). NY: Checkmark Books, 2001.
Le Beau, Bryan F. The Story of the Salem Witch Trials. New York: Routledge, 2010. Accessed 1-7-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=wQo3DAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Odrowaz-Sypniewska, Margaret. “New England Timeline.” The New England Colonists Web, Massachusetts Origins. 5-3-2009 at: http://www.angelfire.com/mi4/polcrt/NewEngTimeline.html
Purvis, Thomas L. Colonial America to 1763. NY: Facts On File, Inc., 1999. Google digital preview: http://books.google.com/books?id=BZRJSx3uMYEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Webster, Noah. A Brief History of Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases…(in two volumes). Hartford, DT: Hudson & Goodwin, 1799, p. 203. Accessed 1-7-2018 at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N27531.0001.001/1:11?rgn=div1;view=fulltext
Woodward, Samuel B., M.D. “The Story of Smallpox in Massachusetts — Annual Oration 1932.” Massachusetts Medical Society, 11-14-2016. Accessed 1-7-2018 at: http://www.massmed.org/About/MMS-Leadership/History/The-Story-of-Smallpox-in-Massachusetts/#.WlJ10zdG2nI
Workers of the Writers’ Program (Work Projects Administration in the State of Massachusetts). Boston Looks Seaward – The Story of the Port: 1630-1940. Boston, MA: Bruce Humphries, Inc., for Boston Port Authority, 1941. Accessed at: https://archive.org/details/bostonlooksseawa00writrich
[1] The low end of our range is speculative. If we add 640 deaths for Boston, 91 for Charlestown, and 18 for Roxbury, we get 749. We know that smallpox was in Salem though we have not seen mortality figures there, not for any other locations which travelers to and from Boston carrying smallpox would have gone. Thus it does not appear to us to be unreasonable to assume at least 750 deaths. For the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony, including of course Boston, we show two sources noting 1,000 or over 1,000 fatalities. We presume these figures include localities other than Boston, Charlestown and Roxbury.
[2] Our number based on statement in 9-25-1690 edition of Publick Occurrences, which notes that about 320 people had died in this most recent outbreak which “is not perhaps half so many as fell by the former [the epidemic of 1677-78].” We reason that if 320 deaths is not quite half the total of those who died the winter of 1677-78, then at least (or approximately) 640 died (or twice 320).
[3] Fn: “The names of ninety-one persons are registered as having died of this disease during the winter of 1677 and 8 [1678] in this town, and a special order was passed by the selectmen that the bell should on no account be tolled more than three times a day, because of the discouraging effect it had upon those who were sick of the small pox.”
[4] Blake, in footnote 50, cites Boston Record Commissioners, Report, Vii, 119. Adds: For similar preventive efforts in Salem, see Joseph B. Felt, Annals of Salem (2nd ed., Salem, Mass., 1845-49), II, 423-424.
[5] Blake, in footnote 51, writes: “Thacher took his precepts directly from Thomas Sydenham, the great English clinician; he could not have made a better choice. The broadside was republished in pamphlet form during the smallpox epidemics of 1702 and 1721-22. Thacher, Brief Rule (Viets, ed.), xxvii-liii; H. E. Handerson, “The Earliest Contribution to Medical Literature in the United States,” Janus, IV (1899), 543.”
[6] Grob footnote 4: John Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1953), pp. 43-50.
[7] Grob footnote 5: Cotton Mather to John Cotton, November 1678, quoted in David E. Stannard, “Death and the Puritan Child,” American Quarterly 26 (1974)):464.