Bubonic Plague PDF - 1900 Sydney Outbreak

Bubonic Plague Bubonic plague struck terror in Sydney in 1900. Also known as The Black Death, this – at least the third global pandemic – was carried from China and India on trade routes, so most infections occurred near the harbour. There was no cure, mortality rates were usually 50% and victims d...

Bubonic Plague Bubonic plague struck terror in Sydney in 1900. Also known as The Black Death, this – at least the third global pandemic – was carried from China and India on trade routes, so most infections occurred near the harbour. There was no cure, mortality rates were usually 50% and victims died in agony. Nobody was sure how infection occurred or how to treat or contain it. Wealthy citizens fled to Katoomba; Chinese in the City were often scapegoated. While Sydney Council dithered, Premier William Lyne imposed Dr George MacCredie on the City Plague Department, and (allied with Chief Medical Officer Dr John Ashburton Thompson) parts of the CBD were quarantined and cleared, many rats killed, and badly-built wharves and noxious substances removed. Only 300 Sydneysiders contracted plague, and only a third died, but (because Lyne wanted to avoid panic) hundreds of people were despatched to North Head Quarantine station. Thompson wrote an influential report on the episode, emphasising the role of insects in epidemics, which encouraged the state government to embark on ‘slum clearance’, closed open tips such as that at Moore Park, and built garbage disposal facilities in Pyrmont, including the Burley Griffin incinerator. Researchers went on to demonstrate the mechanism whereby fleas from infected rats carried plague to people. After this episode, plague continued to reach Australian ports, but with much less impact. In Sickness and in Health Reports in the 1860s and ’70s described houses in Mount, John and Bowman Streets: The toilets were “frequently dilapidated … and so badly constructed that a slight shower of rain causes them either to overflow or soak into the surrounding soil, creating a great deal of disease”. A later inspector noted:  “it would be utterly impossible for a housewife to keep a bad house tidy. When she is placed in such a house, she soon ceases to strive to preserve order and cleanliness in her house; the husband does not care about coming home to his wife; she becomes careless and neglects her children; their diet is also neglected, and they are allowed to expose themselves to the sun. ”At the top of John St… there is a cow-shed (remnant no doubt of the original farm) the drainage from which was lying in pools in the yard, stinking and creating a nuisance”. In Bowman Street “… we came to four houses built of rubble with corrugated iron roofs…. The drainage of these house runs down along the surface gutters to a vacant piece of land close by, the stench of which is something frightful.” Many people gained cheap protein from nearby abattoirs or their own animals, but one account listed “stale bread and dripping, brown bread, potatoes, treacle and salt.” “Meals were cooked on an open fireplace in their rooms”. As a harbour precinct Pyrmont was especially vulnerable. The first recorded epidemic was smallpox in 1789, disrupting and dispersing every community in its path. Measles appeared every few years from 1866-67 compounded by scarlet fever in 1875-76. Smallpox in 1881-82 followed on the heels of the anti-Chinese protests of 1978 and sparked another wave of violence. ‘Asiatic flu’ in 1890 had a similar effect but it did lead to the adoption of quarantine and isolation to control epidemics.