Recent news, filled with fears of a pandemic, brings to mind earlier epidemics. Settlements in hot and humid Florida, for example, endured a number of Yellow Fever outbreaks until about a century ago.
In this 1888 illustration, a woman on a train has fallen ill. Her terrified fellow passengers, believing her contagious, are stampeding out of the railway car. Yellow Fever had broken out in Jacksonville in July, and most of the city’s inhabitants fled, fearing for their lives. Of the nearly 14,000 who remained, confined by a quarantine, 4,700 sickened and 430 died before the epidemic ended with the arrival of cold weather in November.
A few years later, Miami also endured a Yellow Fever epidemic. For three months the tiny, new city was quarantined. Of the less than 2,000 residents, more than 200 people fell ill and 14 died. The crises passed with the arrival of cool weather in January 1900.
Returning to this picture, I wonder. Has the woman caught Yellow Fever or has she fainted from a too-tight corset?
“Scene on a Refugee Railway Train in Florida—a Case of Yellow Fever: the Stampede,” from a sketch by James Mott. In Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, September 28, 1888. Image 2005-271-1.
-- Rebecca A. Smith, Curator of Research Materials
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