HP109 Smallpox in Hawaii

Welcome to history podcast. Thank you for listening to this episode. This is the 109th episode of history podcast. Today’s episode is a request from listener Brandon Midgett via email. Brandon would like to know more about the smallpox outbreak in Hawaii during the 1800’s.

On February 10, 1853 an American Merchant shipped called the Charles Mallory would ignite an 11 month smallpox epidemic on the Hawaiian Islands.

The Charles Mallory had made almost record time on its trip from San Francisco to Honolulu, which was part of the problem. The west coast of America at the time was rampant with smallpox. Usually, the trip from San Francisco to the isolated islands took much longer, so any disease on board would wipe out the weak among the crew and passengers and be gone by the time the ship docked. Since the Charles Mallory had made such good time there was no time for this to happen. One of its passengers had the deadly disease.

It was customary to fly a yellow flag on your ship if there was a sickness aboard. When the Charles Mallory sailed to Honolulu it was flying such a flag, high on it mast. The sick passenger was isolated on a reef west of the harbor. All the other passengers of the infected ship came ashore in Waikiki for vaccinations and quarantine.

By March the man isolated on the reef was better and no new cases of small pox had appeared. The Charles Mallory was also long gone. Things in Honolulu settled down, while more ships from the west coast continued to arrive. Had the crises been averted?

In May two Hawaiian women who both lived on Maunakea street in downtown Honolulu fell sick with smallpox. Their homes and clothing were burned to the ground. The general commissioners of health made plans for vaccinations, opening of hospitals and a system to warn ships entering the harbor.

These precautions were far too little, too late. Yellow rags soon hung from doors from one end of Honolulu to the other. Physicians rushed to vaccinate everyone they could. Drugstores were overrun with people seeking vaccination. In the novel The Colony, John Tayman describes a physician named Dwight Baldwin running along the coast of Maui yelling “Don’t let anyone land! Drive them back, drive them back! They bring a terrible sickness!”

Most districts in Honolulu were now reporting cases. On June 15, 1853, a national day of humiliation, fasting and prayer was observed. The people looked toward their religions for help. Mormon elders assisted by laying hands on the people and anointing them with oil. Protestant ministers created food stations and helped setup vaccinations. Catholic priests baptized the dieing and tended as best they could to the sick.

By Mid-June 41 were dead and 114 were sick. The week after that, the numbers were twice as much. Honolulu crews were burying 50 corpses a day. On Oahu the efforts of Baldwin, his fellow physicians and the efforts of the general commissioners of health kept the death toll on Oahu to 1,500 out of 4,000 reported cases. Most of the devastation was localized in Honolulu.

By October, it seemed that Honolulu was safe, but the outer rural districts still battled the disease. Some of the neighboring islands were not as lucky as Oahu. Kauai, Maui and Hawaii would lose 450 to the disease. Thankfully, quick action and adherence to quarantine restrictions saved the islands of Niihau, Molokai and Lanai.

By the end of 1854 the islands had lost 2,485 souls out of a reported 6,405 cases. No new cases had been reported. Richard Armstrong was responsible for the census. He felt that the numbers I just mentioned were well below what the actual numbers were. He believed that they were double or even triple this amount, more like 5 or 6,000 deaths. According to another estimate in the book The Colony, the number dead was 10,000 to 15,000, a fifth of the population of Hawaii at the time. Two people died for every child born in the islands. An accurate number of those who perished will most likely never be known. After the devastation it is estimated that only 70,000 Hawaiians remained in the islands.

Out of the reported 2,485 deaths only a handful of those were white men. Since all people regardless of skin color were affected by this disease, why were there less white deaths? The answer lies with the Hawaiian culture. They were slow to adopt western ways. Many natives refused to be vaccinated, even going as far as scratching their arms to simulate vaccination marks. Natives fell sick everywhere. Some were left abandoned and unburied, others were buried shallow graves that were later dug up by wild animals. Some were buried in the floor of their families hut homes or in the front yard. This made sure that the virus would find the rest of the family.

Many natives fled. The healthy fled to get away from the sick and hopefully avoid getting ill. The sick fled out of fright and ran to neighboring districts, islands, and the mountains, spreading the disease everywhere they went.

Oddly enough for many of the natives who had not adopted the western medicine they had adopted the western idea of a ‘will’ and the local paper called the Polynesian was filled with attorney’s announcement of the finalization of Hawaiian estates.

For those who stayed in Honolulu during the peak of the epidemic it was horrific. Teams of wagon drivers were hired to haul away the dead bodies of loved ones. These wagon drivers became so apathetic to their job that they were often seen stopping at the local pub for a drink on their trip to the mass graves sites. At the mass gave sites the bodies were so many that they had to put them in on their side to make room for as many as possible.

Horror stories circulated among the natives about doctors butchering the dead, cutting up their bodies. This was actually true, but not as horrid as it sounds the physicians were conducting autopsies to find out as much as they could about the disease.

It was not long before many tried to place blame, they found Gerrit Judd. The accusers stated that Judd had rejected a better plan for vaccinations, which was never proved. They also said that he had been paid $200 to let the Charles Mallory enter the harbor. It was not said who paid him the 200.

Hawaii state universities website states that it was the English physician Edward Jenner who developed the vaccination for smallpox. He had observed that milkmaids who caught the more mild disease cowpox did not catch smallpox. Jenner infected an 8 year old boy with the material taken from the pustules of sick cows. Then later exposed the boy to smallpox, and the boy did not develop any symptoms. This process became known as vaccination from the Latin “vaca” meaning cow. His work was initially criticized but later accepted and adopted.

The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was in 1977. Two deaths have been reported both in 1978 in Birmingham, England as a result of laboratory accidents. Smallpox is kept in only two places in the entire world, the Center for Disease Control or CDC in Atlanta, Georgia, United States and the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia.

The origin of smallpox is uncertain. It is generally believed to have originated in Africa then made its way to India and China, thousands of years ago. The first recorded occurrence of smallpox was in 1350 BC during the Egyptian-Hittie war.

Hawaii would move through this epidemic to arrive at another. Leprosy, also called Hansen’s disease, after the man who discovered the germ responsible for the disease. If you are interested in learning more about the Leper colony on Molokai I would highly recommend John Tayman’s The Colony.

Sources for this podcast were:

Gavan Daws’ Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands
John Tayman’s The Colony: The Harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai
and
various websites to be listed on the website, historyonair.com