John Jay and the Yellow Fever Epidemics: Editorial Note
John Jay and the Yellow Fever Epidemics
Almost immediately upon his return to the United States and his election as governor of New York, Jay would have to deal with a deadly threat: yellow fever. The disease would return to New York yearly throughout Jay’s tenure, with epidemics in 1795, 1796, 1798, 1799, and 1800. In his actions and correspondence, Jay revealed his belief that government should act proactively to protect citizens, not just from war, but from other threats such as disease. In particular, preventative public health efforts were instituted to reduce local causes (then believed to be filth and “miasma”), at the same time that the traditional practice of quarantine was employed.
Yellow Fever
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yellow fever, also known as Yellow Jack, was a yearly visitor to the Caribbean and the American South, and appeared with regularity in the North. New York, susceptible as a port city, had outbreaks in 1702, 1731, 1742, and 1743. In 1793, Philadelphia experienced a major epidemic, marking the beginning of the disease’s thirty-year appearance in the northern states. Lasting from July to November, the 1793 epidemic killed approximately 10 percent of Philadelphia’s population.1
The yellow fever virus is spread between humans by the mosquito, Aedes aegypti. In the 1790s, however, the disease was ascribed to either direct contagion or environmental causes (infectious). The direct contagion theory held that the disease originated elsewhere, and was spread by direct contact with infected people and things. The environmental theory held that the disease was domestic in origin, produced by a confluence of certain conditions—humidity, rotten animal flesh, stagnant water, filth—which created the conditions (particularly miasmas, or bad air) for the disease to spread. Proponents of the direct contagion theory believed that quarantine and the banning of social and business intercourse with infected places was the proper response to an outbreak of the disease. Proponents of the environmental theory believed that the disease could be held in check by public sanitation work, such as the cleaning up of public areas, paving streets, and draining cellars.2
The Epidemic of 1795
New York City served as the state capital in 1795, and was rapidly growing, in both population and commercial importance. In 1790 the population was approximately 33,000; by 1800, it had grown to 60,000.3 Foreign immigration began to contribute significantly to this increase, in addition to those who came from the rural United States. Housing was inadequate; multiple families crowded into formerly single-family dwellings. Sanitation was almost nonexistent, with waste and garbage flowing in the streets.4
New York had suffered a mini-epidemic in 1791, with 100 deaths. The city responded to Philadelphia’s 1793 epidemic with quarantine and a measure to enforce the City’s law against nuisances. By proclamation, New York’s governor, George Clinton, citing a 1784 quarantine law, banned all intercourse with Philadelphia. Despite this measure, the City of New York did contribute funds to the relief effort. Clinton’s proclamation became the model for similar measures passed in the ensuing two years under his and Jay’s administrations.5
The events of 1793 resulted in the creation of the Health Committee (later Commission), a quasi-governmental public health group. On 13 September 1793, in tandem with the governor’s proclamation, a citizen’s committee for the city, chaired by Comfort Sands, appointed a seven member committee consisting of Robert Bowne (chair), John Broome (chair),6 Robert Lenox, Nathaniel Hazard, White Matlack, Dr. Samuel Bard, and the Health Officer for the Port of New York Dr. Malachi Treat (appointed 10 January 1792). The Health Committee would be tasked with employing doctors to assist in the inspection of ships and inspectors to monitor the docks and ferry landings. At the next Common Council meeting of 16 September, Mayor Richard Varick and the Council appointed an additional Health Committee charged with helping the “Committee appointed by the Inhabitants” consisting of four aldermen (Isaac Stoutenburgh, John Campbell, Gabriel Furman, and Theophilus Beekman) and three members of the Common Council (assistant aldermen Frederick Stymeets, Nicholas Carmer, and George Janeway). According to their own minutes, the two Committees acted as one.7 The Health Committee at this point supported the theory of direct contagion, and lobbied heavily for strict quarantine laws, such as a 27 March amendment to the Act of 1784—a measure that expanded the quarantine to all ships entering New York, employed a salaried health officer, and designated Governors Island as a quarantine station with the additional appointment, if needed, of physicians for Albany and Hudson.8 During the 1794 fever season, Governor Clinton would appoint the Health Committee (membership intact) as a state commission funded by that amendment.9
Rumors of yellow fever in the West Indies again reached New York the following summer. Jay, having just assumed the role of governor, would have to work quickly, with the infrastructure already established by the City and left behind by Governor Clinton. On 20 July, Malachi Treat, one of three Health Officers appointed to inspect ships, examined three sick sailors on the brig Zephyr, just arrived from Port-au-Prince. During the course of her journey, the ship’s boy had died of fever. The three sailors soon recovered, but Treat (who had autopsied the boy’s body) took sick on 22 July and died eight days later. Treat’s death gave fuel to the contagion model, justifying the quarantine strategy. At the same time, sailors aboard the ship William, in from Liverpool, fell ill, as did several people in the neighborhood. While the disease appeared to be confined, rumors of an epidemic were not, and on 8 August, the chairman of the city’s Health Committee, John Broome, was forced to act. He issued a statement that all measures were being taken to confine the fever: quarantine and cleaning up of “nuisances.” A quarantine center was established in a makeshift hospital and almshouse at Belle Vue farm to receive fever victims, on land leased from Brockholst Livingston, located several miles outside the city on the East River. The city later purchased the land in 1798.10 In mid-August, as a precautionary measure, Jay declared the New York ports closed to all vessels from the West Indies and the Mediterranean. With the exception of Treat, who had died, and Matlack, “who was absent,” Jay kept all of Clinton’s appointees on the Health Committee, replacing Treat with his former pupil, William Pitt Smith, as Health Officer.11 It is notable that a good number of Clinton appointees were Republicans, most notably Broome (who on the same day the ill-fated Treat boarded the Zephyr, joined Brockholst Livingston’s Citizen’s Committee against the Jay Treaty), but either for the sake of practicality, collegiality, or political prudence, Jay chose continuity, with fever season looming. Matlack, seen by some as a rabid anti-Federalist and Jay Treaty opponent, may have been absent for political reasons, or, like many citizens of means, may have fled the disease.12
Throughout August, the Health Committee continued to deny that there was an epidemic. The public, however, refused to ignore the reports of further deaths, and on 21 August, the Health Committee was forced to admit that there had been twelve deaths from the fever. Three days later, they declared that an epidemic did exist, but limited its impact to the area surrounding the docks on the East River. By September, the city was in full panic, and almost all those citizens who had the means to leave New York, did so.13
In late August, Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Mifflin issued a proclamation “interdicting the customary intercourse” between New York and Philadelphia (and Norfolk where the disease also appeared).14 Previous to this ban, the management of the nascent epidemic had been the concern of the Mayor and City Council. The extent of Jay’s power in this situation was questionable. The governor could suggest legislation, but he lacked the power of veto. He was a member of the Council of Revision, but that body possessed little real power to override the legislature. Moreover, much of the state was highly suspicious when the governor sought to exercise authority. Executive power, as used by Clinton, grew more out of influence and party interest than specific powers. Jay, as a Federalist, was a proponent of a strong executive as a check on legislative power, but he had to act carefully. As the issue of interstate commerce involved the state executive, the ban forced Jay to act more directly.
Jay wrote John Charlton of the city’s Medical Society on 4 September, to gather, in conjunction with the College of Physicians, the Health Committee, and the City Council, information regarding the supposed epidemic: “This Proclamation, by exciting alarms & apprehensions throughout this and the neighbouring States, and in foreign Countries, naturally tends to produce Embarrassments to the Commerce of this City and to interrupt that Intercourse with the Country, which is at all times necessary to the convenience and Interests of both.” Jay was anxious to have the quarantine lifted, as it could prove disastrous to the city’s, and therefore state’s, economy, especially if other states followed suit. However, he was unwilling to suppress information that would sacrifice public health. “If such a Disease does really exist and prevail here, it should candidly be admitted and made known, that the Dangers resulting from it may be guarded against.” The resultant reports stated that eighty–nine deaths had been reported and that all precautions had been taken to contain the disease. Jay sent copies of the reports to Governor Mifflin on 9 Sept., concluding “I flatter myself it will appear to your Excellency from these Documents that it is not necessary to suspend the Intercourse between this City and Philadelphia, and that therefore the Prohibition in Question will be revoked.” Despite his efforts, the ban continued through October, as the disease spread and the numbers of ill and dead increased.15
Jay did his best to serve as an example to others and quell panic. He turned down an invitation by the French Consul to a “republican entertainment” on the grounds that it would be inappropriate, thus avoiding a potentially indelicate political situation. On 3 October, he declined John Blanchard’s offer to let the Jay family evacuate to Blanchard’s home in Meadow Ridge, New Jersey. He believed the epidemic was waning and would send “Mrs. Jay and the Children” (but not himself) to the country only if the danger grew worse.16
By the end of October, the epidemic had begun to abate. Thomas Mifflin rescinded the ban on intercourse, and sent along $7,000 as aid to the city (repaying the kindness New York City paid Philadelphia in 1793). By November, the Health Committee reported 732 total deaths. The cost to the city, in terms of both direct expenses and lost commerce, was enormous.17
Jay issued a general call for a day of Thanksgiving for 26 November. This proclamation is suffused with Jay’s religious beliefs, saying that the late sickness only serves to remind the populace that all, good and bad, is in the hands of the “Supreme Ruler of All Nations.”18 This seemingly benign recommendation (not even an order) brought forth an immediate flood of criticism from political opponents. Jay’s title of “Commander in Chief of the State of New York” was mocked for pretense and seen as indicative of an ambitious executive.19 References were repeatedly made to the Jay Treaty. One author suggested that the Treaty was responsible for God’s wrath, and inquired, “Would it not do well for the Clergy to add their most fervent petitions, that the Almighty Ruler of the Universe would be pleased to turn the heart of our enemy, the King of Great Britain—that he would extend his gracious protection to our unhappy brethren who are daily falling into the hands of British pirates, and save our commerce from future depredations.”20 Opposition papers also mocked Jay’s pious tone which “possesses such genuine ingredients of the whining cant of religious hypocrisy as render him worthy of a cardinal’s hat, and will even fit him for the Papal Dignity in time.”21 Jay’s defenders responded by railing against the spirit of party: “It outrages all senses of decency—all regard for virtue and religion. The proposed ejaculation on the treaty, is open profanity. To countenance such shameful scurrility, is a proof of public depravity.”22
Subsequent Yellow Fever Outbreaks
Governor Jay prepared for future outbreaks in 1796 by making more appointments, notably Dr. Richard Bayley as Health Officer of the Port of New York in February. Bayley would be instrumental throughout Jay’s time in office.23 The governor also addressed the fiscal failures of the previous year with Broome of the New York City Health Committee and with the legislature in January.24
On 1 April, the state legislature passed “An Act to Prevent the Bringing In and Spreading of Infectious Diseases in this State.”25 This act provided for the position of a health officer for the city of New York, the appointment of seven commissioners for the health department, the quarantining of vessels with sick passengers or sailing from foreign ports, and empowered the Governor to issue orders of quarantine. With the act came a new, separate Health Commission appointed by the governor consisting of Robert Bowne (chair) and John Campbell from the original Health Committee, Jay’s protégé Francis Childs, as well as John B. Coles, William De Peyster, Jr., John Murray, Sr. (who would succeed Bowne as chair), Henry Will, and a William Robinson, all with business connections, several with Federalist affiliations.26
The 1796 act was amended in February 1797 to provide for the cleaning of streets, the regulation of tanners, glue, and soap makers, the inspection of ships sailing from Cape May, and to allow for the collection of fines. It was further amended by two state laws passed on 6 and 30 March 1798; this legislation contained provisions that extended the powers of the commissioners, granted the mayor the power to declare quarantine, appropriated funds for the lazaretto on Bedloe’s Island, and required the removal of sick passengers to said lazaretto.27
The act of 1 April, like the 1794 act, other legislation passed in Pennsylvania, and the past quarantine proclamations of Clinton, Mifflin, and Jay, tested certain constitutional boundaries concerning interstate commerce and international relations. The governors had to some degree been overstepping their authority. With that in mind, as well as the expense of paying for quarantine, Jay wrote to Secretary of State Timothy Pickering two weeks after the passage of the act, concerning the governor’s role in policing ports, and the need for federal aid in such areas as quarantining war ships from other nations that were at war (Britain and France) in the same quarantine anchorage.28 This correspondence was followed by the introduction by Samuel Smith29 of Maryland of a bill which proposed strong discretionary powers to the federal government in the quarantining of ports. Smith’s proposal inspired a state’s rights debate, the result being a modified federal law, passed on 27 May 1796, that empowered the president “to direct revenue officers and the officers commanding forts and revenue cutters, to aid in the execution of quarantines, and also in the execution of the health laws of the states,” but ultimately left jurisdiction with the governors.30 Clinton had already established somewhat of a precedent by unilaterally extending his authority over the Port of New York to the shores of New Jersey and Connecticut. The Federal act, besides providing for federal assistance, also tacitly approved the governors’ control of their ports beyond interstate boundaries and naval authority in times of emergency. By June, Jay was receiving aid from the President via Secretary of War James McHenry.31
Through the remainder of 1796, Jay explored both explanations of yellow fever and the means of abatement. He corresponded with Benjamin Rush, on the domestic nature of the disease.32 Jay ordered a new sickhouse or “lazaretto” to be built on Bedloe’s (now Liberty) Island, after first considering some buildings left by the French, on advice of Samuel Bard, after ruling out housing the sick on Governors Island near the garrison.33 Jay successfully recommended state legislation to strengthen measures to remove nuisances, asking that domestic as well as foreign causes of the disease be addressed. He also requested and received of Bayley a detailed report on the proper arrangements for the lazaretto on Bedloe’s Island, including transportation.34 The 1796 outbreak was mild (247 cases and 69 deaths), and officials believed that they had chosen the correct course. The fever season of 1797 would be even milder: twenty to twentyfive deaths.35
In April 1797, Jay issued a proclamation quarantining ships from the Mediterranean and West Indies. Citing his expanded powers granted by the Act of 1796, the Governor added Turkey and North Africa based on general reputation, as he had in 1795, but this time with stronger legislative backing.36
When the capital was moved to Albany in 1797, Jay remained in touch with members of the Health Committee and the Medical Society, often through Richard Varick, and encouraged all to report any signs of possible epidemics and suggest measures to be taken to prevent them. Jay also traveled frequently to the City, despite the risks. The abovementioned amendment to the quarantine act brought with it the complete replacement of the 1796 Health Commission with a smaller commission in February 1797 consisting of Alderman John Oothout (chair), Jacob Abramse, and Ezekiel Robins.37
As the fever season began, Oothout informed Jay that the fever had appeared in Philadelphia, and recommended that all ships from that city be quarantined and examined before entering the port. Jay responded by signing a quarantine proclamation the very next day, on 17 August 1797.38
While continuing this program of addressing the contagion vector of the disease, Jay also supported the infectious (environmental) theories of his Health Officer. Bayley approached the disease as one from the Rush camp and continued to report on issues of public sanitation during and after the 1797 outbreak. He and Oothout, who was also concerned particularly with the infectious dangers of rotten provisions, worked with the mayor and the Common Council to address these environmental issues. Jay hedged his bets as far as the rival theories were concerned and supported addressing both vectors.39
The health officer and commissioners of health entered the 1798 season confident that their measures were working. Ships were inspected and not allowed into port until thoroughly cleaned. Streets were cleaned, ground filled in, poor drainage attacked, offensive odors removed, and obnoxious industries monitored. As New York prepared for possible war with France by building fortifications on Bedloe’s Island, the Health Commissioners were allowed to use Bellevue as a substitute location for tending to those stricken with yellow fever. Oothout and Bayley continued to be energetic in the pursuit of public cleanliness and kept the governor up to date on the efforts. Jay’s preparation also consisted of surrounding himself with family and friends, working with nephew Peter Jay Munro, Matthew Clarkson (who also served on the Military Committee), and Jay’s former law clerk Robert Troup. But 1798 saw the worst outbreak of the yellow fever in New York yet.40
The beginning of August saw the appearance of several cases; Varick and members of the common council increased enforcement of public health laws.41 Severe rainstorms in mid-August resulted in pools of standing water and flooded basements. Oothout issued a circular, notifying merchants who reputedly stored rotten provisions that they must dispose of them immediately. In a report to Varick, Oothout proposed a regular garbage pick-up and the draining of Lispenard’s meadow. Inspections of cellars were increased, as was the use of quick lime. By September, the number of deaths had reached 950, affecting even the wealthier parts of the city. Many who could flee the city did so, including the sheriff. Jay, noting the severity of the epidemic, even suggested his son escape to Rye.42 Peter Augustus Jay later wrote his father, “I have lost a greater number of acquaintances within a few weeks than in all the former Visitations of the fever.”43 The poor were starving, necessitating the establishment of soup kitchens by the Health Committee. Landlords evicted tenants who could not pay rent, leaving many homeless. The city’s officials were stymied; they had done what was successful in past years, yet the disease grew. By the time the fever had run its course in November, 1,524 were dead from yellow fever, with an additional 562 from hunger and secondary infections.44
Privately, Jay despaired. In a letter to Jedidiah Morse, he admitted, “I believe that Pestilence may proceed from natural causes and that it often does. Intemperance, Filth &c. will doubtless produce Diseases as Cause and Effects. But New York never was so clean and neat as it has been for this year past, and yet an alarming fever prevails in it. If ’Famine and Plague, Tribulations and Anguish have heretofore been sent as scourges for amendment’ why not now.”45 Publicly, he called for action, urging Oothout to take all measures necessary for combatting the disease: “altho the Fever will probably cease before the middle of next month, yet every exertion should be made to remove whatever may engender or encrease its extension or its virulence: and I flatter myself that the powers vested in you by Law for those purposes will continue to be executed not only with prudence but also with promptitude and firmness.”46 However, Mayor Varick commented privately that “The two Sets of Health Commissioners have almost surfeited the Common Council. The first did nothing or less than nothing; & the last might have done more last Summer earlier & probably saved the lives of hundreds: they were good & honest but extremely timid & unenergetic men. The Health Committee did 4 times as much…”47 Varick was referring to the chaos of having overlapping jurisdiction and terms of the reappointed Clinton and Jay Commission and the 1 April 1796 State Commission, which may have offered opportunity for corruption or inaction. Such opinions probably reflect feelings of helplessness more so than any accurate assessment of Bayley’s or Oothout’s abilities—by all accounts, they were capable men as flummoxed by their inability to contain the disease as Varick. This frustration seems rooted in the idea that the public officials should be able to do something; the failure of that effort must lie in men. Varick, nevertheless, asked for more money. Oothout himself had resigned in January 1799,48 making a new appointment necessary.
Jay responded to Varick and his own misgivings by reorganizing the department. Alderman Gabriel Furman, a veteran of the original Health Committee(s), was appointed in Oothout’s place at Varick’s recommendation. Bayley’s former apprentice James Tillary49 would work with the Health Office as Resident Physician of the Port of New York, in a move toward hiring professionals, in accordance with the Act of 25 February 1799. “An ACT to amend an act entitled ’An act to provide against Infectious and Pestilential diseases’”50 created the office of Resident Physician, placed a Health Commissioner on Staten Island, and two other Commissioners in New York City, and also regulated boarding houses and hotels. Other acts from the same session regulated the treatment of provisions, based on a report on yellow fever coauthored by Tillary favoring environmental causes.51
If the causes of the disease remained obscure, Jay could concentrate his efforts on the human malefactors who could be seen. In a letter from Varick reporting intelligence from Robert Troup, Jay learned that the Sheriff of New York, Jacob John Lansing, had left the city, fearing the fever. Varick describes him as “in plain English a poor dastardly Moneymaking Devil, unfit to hold the Office for this City.”52 In his reply, Jay commented that “the Removal of the Sheriff from the City is in my opinion improper— be so obliging as to inform me whether he remains out of Town, or whether he returns to it daily, or how often at stated or uncertain periods—and whether he pays any and what Degree of personal attention to the Duties of his office—”53Lansing’s dereliction of duty in a time of public distress seems to have been particularly offensive to Jay, and he pursued the case, making inquiries of Robert Troup. He asked that Troup investigate the reports, and if true, to recommend a replacement. He requested the same of his nephew Peter Jay Munro, noting in both letters the “humane and commendable behavior” of one of the deputies and inquiring of his other abilities as a possible candidate.54
As the epidemic weakened in November, Jay endeavored to understand why it had inflicted such severe consequences, despite all the best efforts. He praised the members of the Health Committee as having not only done honor to themselves, but to their governor. He requested that they continue to investigate reports that “putrid provisions” had contributed to the severity of the epidemic, and “let nothing be omitted to ascertain the names of the Inspectors by whom those provisions were inspected and branded.”55
The final two epidemics of Jay’s administration saw the deaths of 356 in 1799 and 67 in 1800. Yellow fever would continue to return to New York in varying degrees of severity, with the last major epidemic in 1822.
The abovementioned act of 25 February 1799 continued Jay’s policy of quarantine and sanitation, although with a greater and more defined role for the public sector.56 Yellow fever also brought to the foreground such problems as the lack of a reliable water supply in New York City. Several schemes were proposed, including damming the Bronx River, or even the Harlem River.57 But not until a bipartisan alliance between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr was proposed did the City get a waterworks project going. Legislated in Albany, the Manhattan Company would create a rather poorly built wooden water main system fed from an uptown reservoir. Burr “hijacked” the legislation, seizing opportunity from sickness and filth, and transformed the waterworks into what became the anti-Federalist Manhattan Company Bank.58
The yellow fever epidemics forced public officials to rethink how governments act: from reactive to proactive. Even quarantines were transformed from a simple closing of ports, to legislated policies with explicit procedures. The role of government was being reshaped in the face of epidemics. Public health was transformed from private philanthropy to public policy. If it was the government’s responsibility to take care of its citizens, then Jay, as governor, saw it as his responsibility to make sure that this was carried out.
1. K. David Patterson, “Yellow Fever Epidemics and Mortality in the United States, 1693–1905,” Social Science & Medicine 34 (1992): 855–65.
Of those infected by yellow fever virus, 75–85 percent recover after four to six days. However, others enter into the acute phase of the disease within twenty-four hours, in which the patient becomes jaundiced, suffers from severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and bleeding from the eyes, ears, nose, and stomach, producing black bile and black stools. The kidneys then fail, and approximately half of those in the acute phase die in ten to fourteen days. Those who survive suffer no organ damage, and all survivors (of the lesser and more severe manifestation of the disease) gain permanent immunity. “Yellow Fever,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention https://www.cdc.gov/yellowfever/index.html (accessed Apr. 2018).
2. Thomas A. Apel, Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds: Science and the Yellow Fever Controversy in the Early American Republic (Stanford, 2016), Introduction, 1–10.
It should be noted that eighteenth century sources often use the term “infectious” when referring to what modern medicine calls “contagious,” as seen in the quarantine legislation of the 1790s.
3. Ira Rosenwaike, Population History of New York City (Syracuse, 1972), 202.
4. Yellow fever was at the center of the creation of public sanitation and public works, starting in 1799 and after. The cleaning of the streets and waterways was formerly left to private individuals. Hendrik Hartog, Public Property and Private Power: The Corporation of the City of New York in American Law, 1730–1870 (Ithaca, 1983), 131–33.
5. , 2: 34. The proclamation quotes directly from the quarantine act of 1784: “Whereas, by statute, entitled, ‘An act to prevent bringing in, and spreading of INFECTIOUS DISTEMPERS in this state,’ it is enacted, ‘That all vessels of whatever kind they may be, having on board any person or persons infected with the YELLOW FEVER, or any other contagious distemper, or coming from any places infected with such contagious distemper, shall not come into any of the ports or harbours of this state, or nearer the city of New York than the island commonly called Bedlow’s Island.’ And whereas it is represented to me, that the city of Philadelphia is now infected with a contagious distemper; wherefore I DO, by these Presents, strictly forbid and prohibit all vessels, coming from Philadelphia aforesaid, and all other vessels coming from any other place infected with any contagious distemper, or having on board any person or persons infected therewith, from entering any of the ports of this state, or to approach nearer to the city of New York than the said island called Bedlow’s Island . …” New-York Journal, 14 Sept. 1793.
Clinton’s quarantine proclamation of 1794, quoted in full in JJ’s 1795 proclamation, used nearly the same language, substituting New Orleans and the West Indies as the areas under interdiction. Clinton’s proclamation was worded to fit exactly that of the “Act to prevent bringing in, and spreading of INFECTIOUS DISTEMPERS,” which was passed 4 May 1784, and reprinted two days previously. This act was based on “An Act to prevent the bringing in and spreading of infectious Distempers in this Colony,” legislation passed on 24 Mar. 1758, in response to small pox and yellow fever, and revived in 1762. JJ’s proclamations, likewise, kept to established precedent and legislative acts. Daily Advertiser (New York), 26 Aug. 1794; “Proclamation Regarding Quarantine,” 27 Apr. 1797, below; : 117–19; Diary (New York), 11 Sept. 1793; Laws of New-York, from the year 1691, to 1773 inclusive (New York, [1774]), 368–69, 432–33.
6. Bowne served as chair at the first meeting on 13 Sept., and Broome was chair of the expanded Health Committee at the 16 Sept. 1793 meeting and thereafter.
7. Committee of Health, “Minute Book”; , 2: 33–34. See also 419. Robert Bowne (1744–1818), Quaker merchant, Federalist, founder of the printing firm Bowne & Co., founding director of the Bank of New York and Mutual Assurance Co., member of the New York Hospital, New York Chamber of Commerce, and the Manumission Society; John Broome (1738–1810), merchant and politician; Gabriel Furman (1756–1844), Alderman, 1st ward (1792–99), became Health Commission chair in 1799; Robert Lenox (1759–1839), merchant and philanthropist, President of the New York Chamber of Commerce, Alderman, 2nd Ward (1795–97); Theophilus Beekman (1749–1807), merchant, Alderman, Montgomery Ward, 5th Ward (1789–96); Nathaniel Hazard (1748–98), merchant; Samuel Bard, physician and founder of the first New York Hospital and the medical school at Columbia University; Isaac Stoutenburgh (1738–99), Alderman, 4th (West) Ward (1789–95), New York State Senator (1778–87), Commissioner to build first state prison; John Campbell (1740–98), Alderman, 6th Ward (1792–96); Frederick Steymets (Stymets, Stymeets) (1750–95), member of the Corporation, Assistant Alderman, 1st Ward (1792–95); Nicholas Carmer, Assistant Alderman for the 3rd (East) Ward (1791–1801); George Janeway (1741–1826), Assistant Alderman, 6th Ward (1792–96). For appointments of the second committee, see , 2: 34, and 19: 729–31. For the rest of the Committee, see “Proclamation on Yellow Fever,” 13 Aug. 1795, note 4, below.
8. See , 101. The full title of the law was “An Act to amend the act, entitled, an act to prevent the bringing in and spreading of infectious Distempers in this State”. Charles Dekay Cooper (1769–1831), physician, Republican, and future Secretary of State of New York (1817–18), was appointed to the Albany post at this time. Daily Advertiser (New York), 21 June 1794; : 144–45.
9. Committee of Health, “Minute Book,” 22 Aug. 1794.
10. , 102; 68–70; and , 357. For an account of the Zephyr incident, see the Health Committee Report, 8 Sept. 1795, enclosed in JJ to the Governor of Pennsylvania (Thomas Mifflin), 9 Sept. 1795, below.
Belle Vue had been the property of Lindley Murray, who, on leaving New York, sold it to a Thomas Smith in 1786. The farm came into the hands of Henry Brockholst Livingston, who was leasing it for £90 a year with an agreement to sell for £1,800, which the City offered to assume without meeting Livingston’s desired price of £2,000. The Common Council began negotiating in earnest in late 1795, and the sale was settled in April 1798 for £1,800, after Livingston had received several years of rent. , 88; , 2: 100–101, 202, 431–33; Claude Edwin Heaton, “The Origins and Growth of Bellevue Hospital,” Academy Bookman 12 (1959), 6–7; , 502–3.
11. , 182.
12. , 127; Committee of Health, “Minute Book”; “Proclamation on Yellow Fever,” 13 Aug. 1795, below.
On John Broome’s political activities, see New York Citizens to GW, 20 July 1795, , 18: 370–82.
Charles Adams (1770–1800), son of John and Abigail Adams, and a New York lawyer, discussed Matlack’s political involvement with the Livingston Republicans and a related political meeting: “At the first gathering of Citizens on thursday the Cloven foot was discovered and The Democratic Society stood exposed to view The weather cock politics of the Livingstons is not unknown to you They were active in the scene The first Orator was a Mr White Matlack an excommunicated Quaker who for lesser crimes had long since been read out of their Society and who since by fraudulent bankruptcies defrauding widows and filching the poor pittance of the Orphan had sufficiently brazened his face for advocating a total neglect of payment of our debts to England the favorite subject upon which he discanted. The Livingstons came next The detestation of Hamilton and all his proceedings begged in head and ears Indian Wars Algerine depredations British impositions Generosity of France all these were consequences of The Chancellors dissappointment in not obtaining the place of Secretary of the Treasury—” Charles Adams to JA, 5 Mar. 1794, , 10: 98–101.
13. , 103; , 357.
14. Philadelphia Gazette, 1 Sept. 1795.
15. See JJ to Thomas Mifflin, 9 Sept. 1795, enclosing JJ to John Charlton, 4 Sept., Charlton to JJ, 5 Sept., JJ to John Broome, 6 Sept., JJ to Richard Varick, 6 Sept., Broome to JJ, 8 Sept., New York City Committee on Health to JJ, 8 Sept., and Richard Varick to JJ, 8 Sept. 1795, below.
16. JJ to the French Consul, 19 Sept., and to John Blanchard, 3 Oct. 1795, both below.
17. See Mifflin to JJ on lifting the quarantine, 21 Oct. 1795, printed in , 52–53; JJ to Mifflin, 29 Oct. 1795, ALS, PHi (EJ: 01129). On the donation, see , 2: 181–82; , 104. On the death toll, see 71.
18. Proclamation for a Day of Thanksgiving, 11 Nov. 1795, below. See also John Sloss Hobart to JJ, 18–19 Nov. 1795, below, for a humorous take on the controversy.
19. See for instance, “Juvenus”, “For the New-York Journal, &c.,” Greenleaf’s New York Journal, 9 Dec. 1795; Proclamation for a Day of Thanksgiving, 11 Nov. 1795, note 1, below.
20. Argus, Greenleaf’s New Daily Advertiser (New York), 14 Nov.; Aurora General Advertiser (Philadelphia), 17 Nov.; Hampshire Chronicle (Springfield), 23 Nov.; City Gazette (Charleston), 31 Dec. 1795.
21. Aurora General Advertiser (Philadelphia), 14 Nov.; Richmond Chronicle, 24 Nov. 1795.
22. Otsego Herald (Cooperstown), 26 Nov. 1795.
23. Richard Bayley (1745–1801), Connecticut born, trained first under John Charlton (and married Charlton’s sister Catherine), then under William Hunter in London. A founder of the New York Dispensary, he became professor of anatomy and surgery at Columbia, and researched yellow fever during the 1795 epidemic. Bayley published an account of the epidemic in which he emphasized environmental causes and medical meteorology. Appointed first health officer of the Port of New York in 1796, he authored the Quarantine Act of 1799. He died of yellow fever in 1801. Mayor Richard Varick initially thought Bayley “notwithstanding his oddities… an excellent public officer.” An account of the epidemic fever which prevailed in the city of New-York (New York, 1796; , series 1, no. 30041); Varick to JJ, 10 Jan. 1797, ALS, NNC (EJ: 09292).
24. See JJ to Broome, 29 Jan. 1796, LbkC, N: Governor’s Lbk 1 (EJ: 02988); JJ’s Message to the New York State Assembly, 15 Jan. 1796, below.
25. , 28–30; Argus, Greenleaf’s New Daily Advertiser (New York), 14 Apr.; Daily Advertiser (New York), 25 Apr. 1796. This act repealed similar New York City laws of 1784 and 1794, and solidified and extended the powers given to the governor and the committee.
26. , 419; John Butler Coles (1760–1827), flour merchant, Alderman, 2nd Ward (1797–99), 1st Ward (1799–1802), New York State Senator (1799–1802), became involved in the waterworks scheme of Joseph Browne; William De Peyster Jr. (1735–1803), son of William De Peyster Sr., and Margareta (Roosevelt) De Peyster, served on the board of managers of the almshouse; John Murray Sr. known as “Presbyterian” John Murray, brother of Robert Murray, uncle of “Quaker” John Murray who married Catherine Bowne, Robert Bowne’s daughter; John Sr. and Bowne both served as directors of the Bank of New York in the 1780s and ’90s; Henry Will (1734–c. 1802), pewterer, election inspector for the 5th Ward (1794 and 1796), New York state assemblyman (1789–92); William Robinson, probably William I. Robinson of the firm Wm. & S. Robinson, merchant shipping. See Gerhard Koeppel, Water for Gotham (Princeton, 2000), 67–68; , 105, 107. For the commission’s work, see Richard Bayley and the Health Office to JJ, 31 Dec. 1796, printed in , 30–36.
27. , 24–27; Greenleaf’s New York Journal, 18 Feb. 1797; Albany Register, 10 Apr. 1797. There followed an act to provide for the payment of the commission and the health officer, , 158–61. Greenleaf’s New York Journal, 2 May; Argus, Greenleaf’s New Daily Advertiser (New York), 3 May 1798.
28. JJ to TP, 14 Apr. 1796, below.
29. Samuel Smith (1752–1839), Republican representative from Maryland (1793–1803, 1816–22), U.S. senator (1803–15, 1822–33), general of the Maryland militia, and vice-president of the Maryland State Colonization Society (1828).
30. “An Act relative to Quarantine”, 27 May 1796. , 1: 474. As Congress debated the bill, Robert Brooke (c. 1760–1800), Republican governor of Virginia, made a proclamation of quarantine three days before the passage. Governor Mifflin was subsequently in correspondence with TP about similar concerns, such as situations in which a merchant captain would avoid quarantine by unloading in New Jersey, where the governor may have followed a different medical theory. “Proclamation,” Columbian Mirror (Alexandria), 7 June 1796; Philadelphia Gazette, 23 June 1796; Mifflin to TP, 25 June, (enclosing proclamation), 27 June 1796, (enclosing report by the port’s resident physician James Mease [1771–1846] on New Jersey incidents), both ALS, MHi: Pickering.
For more on this act and the subsequent debate, see Simon Finger, The Contagious City: Politics of Public Health in Early Philadelphia (Ithaca, 2012), 135–41; Joseph Jones, Outline of the History, Theory and Practice of Quarantine (New Orleans, 1883), 10–14.
31. Orders were given to Lieutenant William Wilson, commander of Fort Jay (1796–97) on Governors Island, to assist in the enforcement of the quarantine and health laws of New York State. In the management of the port, JJ also had to appeal to President Washington in reconciling the U.S. customs inspectors and his health officers. James McHenry to William Wilson, 22 June 1795, LbkC, N: Governor’s Lbk. 1 (EJ: 03022); JJ to TP, 19 Sept. 1796, LbkC, N: Governor’s Lbk. 1 (EJ: 03037); LS, MHi: French (EJ: 04774).
32. Rush to JJ, 2 Aug. 1796, below.
33. For preliminaries, see JJ to John Charlton, 22 Apr. 1796, below; JJ to Alderman [Isaac] Stoutenburgh, 7 June 1796, LbkC, N: Governor’s Lbk. 1 (EJ: 03020); JJ to Richard Varick, 7 June 1796, below. For detailed planning, see JJ to John Murray, 13 July 1796, LbkC, N: Governor’s Lbk. 1 (EJ: 03024); JJ to Richard Varick, 18 July, LbkC, N: Governor’s Lbk. 1 (EJ: 03025); JJ to Richard Bayley, 18 July, LbkC, N: Governor’s Lbk. 1 (EJ: 03026). For the completion, see JJ’s Address to the New York State Legislature, [1 Nov. 1796], below.
34. Richard Bayley to JJ, n.d. Dec. 1796, enclosing Bayley to JJ, n.d., ALS, NHi (EJ: 00891); , 13–28, in which letter is dated 28 Nov. 1796.
35. , 105. JJ reassured his family that the fever was not as bad as feared or reported. See JJ to Ann Jay, 3 Aug. 1796, ALS, NNC (EJ: 05930); 8 June 1796, below; JJ to SLJ, 4 Aug. 1796, below.
37. John Oothout (1739–1804), Chairman of the first Board of Health, 1798, 1799, New York state assemblyman (1800), Alderman, 2nd Ward (1802–3); Jacob Abramse (c. 1743–1820) had been appointed Commissioner of the almshouse in 1795, and served as inspector of elections in 1799 for the 4th Ward; Ezekiel Robins (d. 1808), member of the New York Manumission Society, New York state assemblyman (1797–99, 1800–1803). The commissioners were appointed per Act of 10 Feb. 1797, see note 27, above. Shrady “Medical Items,” 419; , 2: 200, 432, 499; , 57.
38. John Oothout to JJ, 16 Aug. 1797, LbkC, N: Governor’s Lbk. 2 (EJ: 03268). The mid-August proclamation read as follows:
By His Excellency John Jay Esquire
Governor of the State of New York &c. &c.A Proclamation
Whereas it appears to me as well from the Representation of the Commissioners of the Health Office of the City of New York, as from other Evidence, that an infectious Disease does at present unhappily exist and in some measure prevail in the City of Philadelphia and which is said to have been lately brought there from the West Indies Now therefore in pursuance of the Authority vested in me by the Act of the Legislature of this State entitled “an Act to prevent the bringing in and spreading of infectious Diseases in the State” I do order and declare that (until this order be revoked) all Vessels arriving in this Port from Philadelphia shall ^be^ subject to Quarantine. And of this the Health Officer, the Commissioners of the Health Office, the Master and Wardens of the Port, the Pilots, and all others whom it may concern are to take notice and govern themselves accordingly—.
Given under my Hand and the privy Seal ^of^ the State the seventeenth day of August 1797
John Jay
By His Excellency’s Command David S. Jones Priv. Sec’y
“A Proclamation,” 17 Aug. 1797, LbkC, N: Governor’s Lbk 2 (EJ: 03269); Minerva (New York), 18 Aug.; Greenleaf’s New York Journal, 19 Aug. 1797.
39. , 105–6; Bayley to JJ, 1 Dec. 1797, , 63–69.
40. , 105–7, 131–33; this document, note 10, above. See also JJ to John Oothout and the Health Office, 20 Nov. 1798, below.
41. Oothout to JJ, 10 and 28 Aug. 1798, , 76–77, 80–81.
42. Varick to JJ, 24 Sept. 1798, below; , 106–8; , 76–83. On leaving or avoiding the city, see JJ to PAJ, 2 Sept. 1798, below; JJ to PJM 18 Sept. 1798, ALS, NNMus (EJ: 00460), where he says, “they only ought to visit it [New York City] who may find it to be their duty”; and JJ to Clarkson, 1 Oct. 1798, ALS, NNYSL (EJ: 02870), in which Clarkson is allowed to postpone inspection and keep his family safe.
44. , 108–9. See also 72–74; and , 5–48, for a detailed summary.
45. Paraphrase of 2 Esdras 16: 19. JJ to Jedidiah Morse, 4 Sept. 1798, Dft, NNC (EJ: 09535); C, NN: Bancroft (EJ: 01078). See also Morse to JJ, 19 Nov. 1798, ALS, NNC (EJ: 09548).
46. JJ to John Oothout, 4 Oct. 1798, below.
49. James Tillary (1751–1818) studied medicine at Edinburgh and was appointed surgeon in the British Army. Tillary came to New York during the war of independence and apprenticed with Richard Bayley, Wright Post, and Richard Kissam. He was appointed a surgeon at New York Hospital in 1792 and served as a trustee for the College of Physicians & Surgeons, 1807–11. , 184.
50. The act amends the Clinton Act of 1793. N.Y. State Laws, 22nd sess. 2nd meeting (1799), 587–95; New-York Gazette, 16 Apr. 1799.
51. For more on the Furman and Tillary appointments, see 420. See also Richard Varick to JJ, 19 Feb. 1799, ALS, NNC (EJ: 09296); John Rodgers to JJ, 26 Feb. 1799, ALS, NNC (EJ: 08653); JJ to Rodgers, 4 Mar. 1799, Dft, NNC (EJ: 08987); and JJ to Rodgers, 16 Mar. 1799, C, NNC (EJ: 08988), in which John Rodgers (1727–1811), Presbyterian minister, advocated, unsuccessfully, to get his son John R. B. Rodgers of Columbia College the post of resident physician. See also D. O. Thomas, ed., The Correspondence of Richard Price, vol. 2 (Cardiff, 1991), 234n5. On rotten provisions, see JJ’s Message to the New York State Senate, [18 Feb. 1799], , 48; , 2: 435–36.
52. Richard Varick to JJ, 24 Sept. 1798, below. J.J. Lansing was sheriff from 29 Sept. 1795 to 28 Dec. 1798; , 26: 99.
53. JJ to Richard Varick, 3 Oct. 1798, below.
54. JJ to Richard Varick, 13 Oct. 1798, ALS, CtY-BR (EJ: 05230); JJ to Robert Troup, 20 Nov. 1798, ALS, CtY-BR (EJ: 12337); and JJ to PJM, 20 Nov. 1798, ALS, NNMus (EJ: 00462). In the letter to Troup, JJ notes that the sheriff may have “retired I think to Bergen [New Jersey],” which took him not only out of his county of jurisdiction, but out of state.
55. Richard Bayley, in his report to the City Council of 21 Jan. 1799, listed the causes of the late epidemic as “Deep Damp Cellars and Filthy Sunken Yards … Unfinished Water Lots … Public Slips … Sinks and Privies … Burial Grounds … Narrow Streets … Sailors Boarding Houses and Tipling Houses … Digging Up Made Ground … Putrid Substances … Water … Tents.” An expanded version of this report was published as Bayley, Letters. This was followed by the Medical Society of the State of New York (1794–1807), Report of the committee, appointed by the Medical Society, of the State of New-York, to enquire into the symptoms, origin, cause, and prevention of the pestilential disease, that prevailed in New-York during the summer and autumn of the year 1798 (New York, 1799; , series 1, no. 35933). Both volumes pointed to the old enemies of filth, poverty, refuse, miasmas, and bad weather, but came no closer to understanding yellow fever and its spread. Instead, they provided a blueprint for urban reformers for the next century.
57. John B. Coles was involved in this scheme. He sought to build water-driven flour mills. See note 26, above.