1731 — Smallpox Epidemics, New York City and Philadelphia –836-988
–836-988 Blanchard figure.[1]
New York City (548-700)
–~560-700 Hopkins. The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History. 2002, pp. 241-242.[2]
— ~600 Common Council of the City of NY. Manual of the…City of New York. 1869, p850.
— 549 Goodfriend. Before the Melting Pot…Colonial New York City, 1664-1730. 1992, p. 154.
— 548 Zuckerman and Martin (eds.). New Directions in Biocultural Anthropology. P. 118.
–477 Europeans (“6.77% of their population”)
— 71 Africans (“4.50% of their population”)
— 229 Members of the Church of England (Anglican parish), New York. (Trinity Church)
Philadelphia ( 288)
–288 Schultz. “Epidemics in Colonial Philadelphia from 1699-1799…” EAR, Wtr./Spring 2007.
Narrative Information — New York
Common Council of the City of New York: “Small Pox. 1731. This disease raged fearfully in New York. Inoculation, which was then a novelty, was tried with success. But the safest course was believed to be to retire from the locality where it prevailed. The trade of New York suffered greatly from this cause at this as well as other periods when the epidemic prevailed. In one week fifty persons died of small pox. The disease set in about midsummer and continued its ravages until Christmas, during which period about six hundred persons fell victims to its ravages.” (Common Council of the City of New York. Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York 1869, p. 850.)
Goodfriend: “Smallpox was first detected [in NYC] in June 1731 and the number of cases increased rapidly during the summer. By August, the city was devastated:
Here is…nothing but the melancholy Scene of little Business, and less Money, The Markets begin to grow very thin; the Small-Pox raging very violently in Town, which in a great measure hinders the Country People from supplying this place with Provisions.[3]
“James Alexander detailed the personal impact of the disease: ‘The Small pox have taken from me my Son James & my negro Jupiter all the rest of my family I hope are past Danger tho they are afflicted with Boyles, the Small pox was at the height on Sunday Lost on the Last of my family.’ [end of p. 153]
“The death toll from the epidemic continued to climb, reaching 549 (478 whites and 71 blacks) by its end in mid-November. Furthermore, official reports may have underestimated deaths in the city during these awful months. At a minimum, 8 percent of the city’s population died in 1731. The survivors faced a gloomy prospect, not only as a result of the massive loss of lives, but because of the downturn in the economy. The decade ahead was a time of exodus from New York City.” (Goodfriend. Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730. pp. 153-154.)
Hopkins: “About half of the city’s population was infected, and nearly seven percent of the eight to ten thousand New Yorkers died within three months during this outbreak of 1730-31. The city was still paralyzed in August 1731 when a correspondent for Boston’s Weekly News-letter reported from New York:
“There is little or no Business, and less Money, the Markets begin to grow very thin; the Small-Pox raging very violently in Town, which in a great measure hinders the country People from Supplying this Place with Provisions.”
(Hopkins 2002, 242; citing Duffy 1953, 78-79, for the quotation)
Zuckerman and Martin: “Environmental and living conditions during the colonial period tended to be unhealthy because of poor sanitation, indoor pollution (e.g., coal fires), non-potable water, and crowded dwellings. For the enslaved, conditions were even more insalubrious, leading to high rates of morbidity and mortality (Curry 1981;[4] Rankin-Hill 1997[5]). In addition, American cities throughout the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries were ‘hot zones’ for epidemics, providing perfect conditions for acute infectious diseases. Epidemics of smallpox, yellow fever, measles, diphtheria, influenza, and other unspecified fevers have been documented in colonial New York. Smallpox was the greatest source of epidemic ‘crisis’ mortality in New York during the eighteenth century (Duffy 1968: 34-35),[6] with small-pox epidemics occurring in 1702, 1731, 1745-1747, and 1752. It is likely that smallpox accounted for a significant portion of the death toll, as it was endemic, acting as a fatal childhood disease, between 1756 and 1767 (Duffy 1968: 53-58).
“An examination of deaths reported in the 1731 smallpox epidemic indicates that both Europeans and Africans in New York suffered considerable losses. The 1731 Bills of Mortality represent individuals buried at the city’s church cemeteries, tallied by denomination. The number of ‘blacks’ buried is then given, with no church denomination. This indicates that burials at the African Burial Ground were being counted in some form. It is not known how or by whom. During the period of smallpox reporting shown above, 477 Europeans (6.77% of their population) and 71 Africans (4.50% of their population) died in New York. The overall death toll for August-December 1731 was 7% of the Europeans and 5% of the African population. This difference in frequency may indicate an underreporting of black burials, not surprising since it is believed that the Burial Ground was most often utilized without direct observation by European Americans….” (Zuckerman and Martin (eds.). New Directions in Biocultural Anthropology. 2016, pp. 117-118.)
Sources
Common Council of the City of New York. Manual of the Corporation of the City of New York. New York: E. Jones & Co., 1869. Google preview accessed 1-9-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=hj1NAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Goodfriend, Joyce D. Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Google preview accessed 1-9-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=5XmPJcGDY7oC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Hopkins, Donald R. The Greatest Killer: Smallpox in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1st Edition, 1983, with new Introduction, 2002. Google preview accessed 1-9-2018 at: http://books.google.com/books?id=z2zMKsc1Sn0C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Schultz, Suzanne M. “Epidemics in Colonial Philadelphia from 1699-1799 and The Risk of Dying.” Early America Review, Winter/Spring 2007. Accessed 1-9-2018 at: https://www.varsitytutors.com/earlyamerica/early-america-review/volume-11/early-american-epidemics
Also at: http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2007_winter_spring/epidemics.html
Trinity Church (an Episcopal Parish), Wall Street, NY. “Trinity and the Fight Against Smallpox.” News & Blogs, Voices from the Trinity Community, 11-12-2014. Accessed 1-9-2018 at: https://www.trinitywallstreet.org/blogs/archivists-mailbag/trinity-and-fight-against-smallpox
Zuckerman, Molly K. and Debra L. Martin (eds.). New Directions in Biocultural Anthropology. Hoboken, NJ, 2016. Google preview accessed 1-9-2018 at: https://books.google.com/books?id=YqTkDAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
[1] For the low-end of our range we have simply added the 288 deaths noted for Philadelphia and the lowest number (548) one of our sources has noted (even though that source speculates that black deaths were possibly under-reported. For the high-end of our range we again add to Philadelphia’s 288 the highest number a source notes for New York (700). We should note that given that smallpox was prevalent in two large population centers, it seems reasonable to speculate that evacuees from, or travelers through, one of these cities to have carried it elsewhere with fatal consequences. We just have not seen data to support this speculation.
[2] Calculated by taking 7% of 8,000 (560) and of 10,000 (700).
[3] Goodfriend footnote 153, which I cannot access on the limited Google preview.
[4] Curry, L.P. The Free Black in Urban America, 1800-1850: The Shadow of the Dream. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.
[5] Rankin-Hill, L.M. “A Biohistory of 19th-Century Afro-Americans: The Burial Remains of a Philadelphia Cemetery.” African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter, 4 (1), 1997, p. 13.
[6] Duffy, J. History of Public Health in New York City, 1625-1866: Volume 1. NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 1968.