The Saffron Scourge

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Yellow Jack walked the streets of New Orleans the summer of 1853, leaving death in its wake. Where it visited a yellow flag or "Jack" was displayed to warn citizens away, but murderers were just as busy as the Grim Reaper. 

---

Bales of cotton lined up on the wharf at the foot of Canal Street in New Orleans, with a steamboat and ferry boat at the landing

New Orleans,
August 17 ,1853

Boys being boys, a group of them meandered about the New Orleans wharf at the head of Gravier Street. They saw a man under the dock who said he was searching for his knife, which he had dropped through the chinks on the boardwalk. Then he appeared to give up his search and left. One or two of the boys went under the wharf, and found a lemon box with the skeleton of a man in it.

The police and coroner were summoned, and a jury was empaneled. It was ascertained the body had been there at least a month or 6 weeks. What was left was a small portion of decomposed flesh clinging to the hips. Sinews of the legs had been cut in order to turn them so the body could be crowded into the box. The feet were cut off. The head was left between the legs. Examination of the skull, found two fine punctures on the occipital bone which penetrated the brain, apparently made by a sharp, slender instrument; something like a shoemaker's awl. The holes were parallel and appeared to have been made by two blows of the same tool. The only clothing left was a remnant of black, fustin pantaloons.

---

Illustration of 2 victims of yellow fever in New Orleans

The jury opined the man was a "returned Californian, who had probably been robbed and murdered in his sleep." It's never explained how they arrived at this conclusion. There were no clues as to the identity of the man, and no one in the area knew of a missing person that matched his description. Without an identity, the chance of finding a culprit was non-existent. Did the stranger looking for his knife have something to do with the murder?

More than likely the victim was buried in a pauper's grave, and he was soon forgotten. But why would the killer take such trouble to hide his acts, like forcing the body into a lemon box? One could almost believe this would enable the killer to come and visit with his victim. Perhaps the hasty decision reached by the coroner's jury owed more to the crisis that enveloped New Orleans during those days.

​The summer of 1853, when this man was killed by having his brain punctured twice, New Orleans lay in the grip of a brutal Yellow Fever epidemic. The city was the fifth largest in the United States, daily crowds of immigrants arrived at the same wharf where the body was secreted, ballooning the population even more.

---

Man is in the final stages of yellow fever, bleeding from his eyes and nose. His skin is yellow from jaundice.

In 1852, the city census measured the population at 145,000.

In May, 1853, the Northampton arrived from Liverpool discharging 314 Irish immigrants. On May 26, four days after he arrived James McGuigan, 27, came to Charity Hospital complaining of feeling ill. Soon he was delirious, and once he expelled black vomit there was no doubt he was contagious with yellow fever. He died two days later.

Three days before McGuigan arrived at the hospital a sailor from the Augusta, also originating in Liverpool became ill. Dr. Schuppert, a German physician attended him and diagnosed him with gastro-duodenites. Two weeks later the sailor recovered, however his skin had become very yellow. Then another crewman, John Haar, grew sick but died. He had black vomit when he died on the 30th.

Dr. Erasmus Fenner performed an autopsy. He found black liquid in his stomach and the man's skin was yellow from jaundice. On the same day that Haar became ill, three other sailors fell sick; two of them died at the hospital. The symptoms of Yellow Fever were unmistakable: oozing blood from eyes, noses, and ears, and vomiting up partially coagulated blood, roughly the consistency of coffee grounds. 

---

A boy from an Irish immigrant family, the Harrises, shown suffering from yellow fever in New Orleans

Dr. Fenner found the Augusta had traveled up the Mississippi River along with the Camboden Castle which originated in Kingston, Jamaica. It was no coincidence that Kingston was in the grip of a yellow fever epidemic. The ships had docked barely a hundred yards from the ship McGuigan had arrived on.

The Camboden Castle had lost seven of the crew while still docked in Jamaica. Seven English and American sailors were obtained to replace them. The captain ascertained that since leaving Jamaica there had been no other cases of the fever among anyone traveling on the ship.

One thing the natives of New Orleans had learned was that foreigners were the most susceptible to the fever. In 1853, immigrants accounted for 90 per cent of the yellow fever deaths, even though they were less than half the city's population. Most of them were Irish and German nationals. The smallest amount of victims were the Creoles and other natives from New Orleans.

​The Charity Hospital where McGuigan died during the summer of 1853, had patients lined up on the floors, since they had run out of beds. Morgues and cemeteries were overwhelmed, and the laborers who stayed in the city, could not work since they had to care for their own sick family members.

The epidemic waned in October. Of the 40% of the city's population which contracted the fever, 12,000 people died which equaled to about 10% of those who fell sick.

---

Illustration of yellow fever c.1819

Other cities in the South were also hit by the fever, places like Mobile, Baton Rouge, Galveston, Natchez and Vicksburg. At that time it was unknown that transmission occurred via mosquitos, who  could transmit the viral disease 10 to 12 days later to anyone else it bit.

Those who lived in New Orleans had acclimated to the sub-tropical temperature and the mosquitos, thereby building up an immunity from prior yellow fever spikes, unlike the recently arrived immigrants.

There was good reason to fear the fever since it has no cure, even present day. A person who survived an attack could claim immunity which was highly prized among the residents of the southern coast states that were frequently battling yellow fever.

It 1900, the Walter Reed Commission verified transmission came by the common mosquito, which bred in any open water container. A Cuban physician, Dr. Charles Finlay, had developed this theory twenty years earlier in 1881, but skeptical colleagues dismissed his published findings. The last known yellow fever epidemic in the United States occurred in Louisiana in 1905. The first epidemic occurred in 1769, which claimed 7 percent of the population which totaled a little over 8,000 persons.

​Even though certain years stand out for the severity of the infection, between 1800 to 1900 there were 67 summers where New Orleans was hit by the fever named the "Saffron Scourge". The disease targeted recent arrivals, either from out of the country or from the northern states. Due to this it became known as the "stranger's disease". ​

---

Corner of Ursuline and Dauphine Streets, New Orleans

In August, 1853, as the fever raged in New Orleans an inquest was held regarding the murder of Juan Silva, 32, a native of Cadiz, Spain. He was found dead in a house between Ursuline and Hospital Streets, across from the vegetable market. The jury returned a verdict that he came to his death from three knife wounds administered by a man named Pascual when both fought.

Captain Baldwin of the Second District police made an affidavit against Juan Pascual. Two months before, Silva with another man named Ortiz got into a fight with a Sicilian named Figaro, in the vegetable market. One of them drew a pistol to shoot the Sicilian, but a stranger stood between the men and seized the pistol. Figaro was saved but the stranger was shot through the hand. Silva and Ortiz were arrested. Juan Pascual was never caught, or perhaps he was, by Yellow Jack that is.

---