With the invention of the telegraph, and the resulting wire service for news, coverage of far-flung events still had its faults. These telegraph reports would still be missing information, and any updates on the same story in the same paper were not combined in a single story. To make sure you read everything about a story, you would have to read the entire telegraph section.

Even with a faithful wire service, weekly publications sometimes wouldn't print the telegraph reports until the next week, keeping readers in suspense, particularly with news of sickness out East.

This blog takes a look at the coverage of the 1879 yellow fever outbreak in the Southern United States, from the vantage of newspapers in the Washington Territory.

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

September

Waiting for a weekly newspaper would have been suspenseful, and doubly so if the newspaper doesn't publish telegraphs for an extra week. This gap for the readers of the Argus happened between August 28 and September 11, 1879, and the new edition brought more bad news from the South.

On September 2, a quarantine plan of Memphis by quarantine superintendent R. Johnson was approved by the national board of health. A picket was to be established around the entire city, a patrol of 50 mounted men put on duty, and quarantine law enacted for the city.

The telegraphs in the Argus reported 81 new cases in Memphis, but only 7 deaths. The board of health declared New Orleans an infected port. Despite this, a telegraph from September 10 stated the sanitary director of Louisiana claimed there were no new cases of the fever in New Orleans since the 1st, and that there were no live cases.


On September 13 the Puget Sound Mail, newly-moved to La Conner, Washington Territory, started reporting the telegraphs as well*. A New York telegraph from September 5 revealed that the wealthy railroad developer, Jay Gould (pictured above[b]), sent the Memphis Howards $5,000 and said "he will foot their bills as long as necessary."[11] This report was not added in the Argus.

A telegraph from September 11 mentions the fever catching in several Georgia counties, including Polk, Paulding, and Harrison. A detailed description of the fever's effects was also published.

For those tallying up the mentioned deaths while reading the Washington Territory newspapers were in for a surprise: a telegraph from September 13 mentioned the total cases in Memphis were 1,136. Only about 211 were explicitly mentioned in the telegraphs in the Argus and Mail since July 10.

Even with funding from Gould, the Howards asked for more contributions to cover their $1,000/daily expenditures in the South. So far, the season had seen $17,000 in contributions, and was expecting to last another two months.

The tail-end of September had little updates, except to announce 10 new cases and 2 deaths.

On October 2, the Argus printed on page 4, "At last accounts yellow fever ravages have subsided somewhat."[16]

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*- The Mail could very well have been reporting the entire time when it was named the Bellingham Bay Mail, but I could not find records of it prior to September 13, 1879 in time for the assignment.
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