By Jericho Walter, Museum Educator
Editor’s Note: In our new exhibit, Underwater Archaeology: Diving into the Stories of People and Canal Boats on Lake Champlain, we use archaeology and research to shine a light on lesser-known stories of people who lived and worked on canal boats in our region. Yet even our exhibit space isn’t big enough for all the stories our team has found. This piece and others on our blog will share even more stories of people from the canal era in the Champlain Valley. They can be enjoyed as standalone articles or as a continuation of our exhibit, open May–October.
When there are new ways for people to travel, there are new ways for sicknesses to spread. By 1825, both the Champlain and Erie canal systems were completed. Together, the canals provided new pathways from Quebec down to the Hudson River. These canals were largely immigrant-built, and their completion attracted more immigrants, many of whom hoped to work one of the new jobs that were created along the canals. Many of these immigrants were Irish. Britain imposed tariffs on passage to the United States, but not to then-British Canada, so Irish immigrants often used Quebec as a waypoint on their journey to the United States.[1] Although the immigrant population was quickly growing, they were still in many cases distrusted by Yankees.
The increase in immigration combined with an expansive canal system, growing populations, and lack of widespread medical knowledge was a perfect storm for an epidemic. In 1832, just seven years after the canals were completed, cholera swept through the canals and ports. Cholera, also known as the blue death, is a bacterial infection that causes quickly fatal diarrhea in the sufferer. It is spread through food or water that has been contaminated by contact with the feces of someone who has the infection, which comes from the bacteria Vibrio cholerae. Since the contact doesn’t need to be direct, it’s an illness that is quick to spread and hard to trace.
The alarm bells first started ringing in Quebec. An uptick in immigration and travel combined with news of cholera in England left many Canadians fearful of when the disease would arrive. After keeping a tense eye on the situation throughout the winter of 1831 into 1832, an official quarantine was implemented as a preventative measure by May. A Board of Health was established in Quebec province along with a quarantine station on Grosse Isle, which is in the St. Lawrence River, northeast of Quebec City. The idea was to redirect traffic there to quarantine before being allowed to enter Quebec. But the small island quickly became overwhelmed. Hospitals across Lower Canada didn’t have enough space, and authorities turned to emphasizing sanitation in an attempt to prevent a land-based outbreak. Fifteen men in Quebec City were appointed Health Wardens and required to visit each house in their assigned sector three times a week and report to the Board of Health daily. They distributed medicine, rounded up squatters, and overall tried to regulate living conditions.
Yet in Montreal, no preparations were made, despite a general knowledge of increasing sickness. In the first weeks of June, everything came to a head as Montreal residents became more and more paranoid with the arrival of twenty-five thousand new immigrants. On June 12, Montreal officials released the information that 94 people had died due to cholera, breaking their previous complete silence.
June and July were months of sickness and death. People thought that cholera came from miasma, or ‘bad air,’ or that it affected those with moral failings.[1] Though cholera was introduced with immigration, people equated this to immigrants themselves being the cause and saw them as morally impure and not to be trusted. This thought was bolstered by religious differences—Ireland is and was a majority Catholic nation, while America was experiencing a fervor of Evangelicalism.[2] The disease, and this fear, quickly made their way into the United States, by way of Lake Champlain.
On June 15, 1832, in Whitehall, New York, the first cholera death in the United States was confirmed. The sufferer was John Larned, who had been aboard the steamboat Phoenix II. In 1866, Larned’s death was reflected on in the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine:
‘He was seized with the cholera in the night, when going from St. Johns to Whitehall. He died soon after the boat reached her dock, the passengers and every person on board fled, but with the aid of physicians in the village, the corpse was buried on an island in the lake. Immediately the pestilence spread through the village and killed one hundred and thirty-nine of the inhabitants.’
The death of Larned, an American, surprised the public who largely believed cholera to be a disease that only targeted immigrants. Even so, the quarantine rules enacted in Whitehall did not allow immigrants to land.[3] This harmful and inaccurate bias that the disease was directly related to moral failings and immigrant status had indeed also spread to the US. A sick individual on an unnamed Vermont steamboat was assumed to have the disease as a result of being intemperate, as recorded by Dr. Lewis Beck.[4] Intemperance meant being sinful or having vices, such as ones listed on Benjamin Rush’s moral thermometer. Dr. Beck himself had deduced how cholera is spread, but he discredited his own model in favor of supporting his belief in moral failings as a root of disease. Allegedly, Vermonters armed themselves to fend off any immigrants they might meet.[5] At this time, Vermont had a notable Irish population in places like Burlington, Fairfield, and Underhill,[6] and we can imagine the tensions that might have arisen during this period of fear.
The epidemic eventually ended. The death toll was substantial, and cholera remained a feared disease throughout the rest of the 19th century. The rapid spread due to the canals helped physicians understand how diseases are transferred. A few short decades later, the Civil War brought massive medical advancements and a new understanding of how infections originate and take hold. By the end of the century, miasma was no longer a common belief. As diseases boom, so do our understandings of them.
The cholera epidemic of 1832 remains an interesting case study on how people rationalized the sickness, spread false information, and the long-lasting implications and consequences of those actions.
[1] Vincent Edward Feeney, “Pre-Famine Irish in Vermont, 1815-1844”.
[1] Geoffrey Bilson, “The First Epidemic of Asiatic Cholera in Lower Canada, 1832”.
[2] UShistory.org
[3] Dr. Carolyn Kennedy.
[4] Ashleigh Tuite, Christina Chan, and David Fisman, “Cholera, canals, and contagion: Rediscovering Dr. Beck’s report”.
[5] G. William Beardslee, “19th Century Responses to Cholerae Vibrio.”
[6] Vincent Edward Feeney, “Pre-Famine Irish in Vermont, 1815-1844”.