The Bloody Flux of 1775, with Judy Cataldo (episode 181)

Music

Jake Intro:
[0:04] Welcome To Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the Universe.
This is Episode 1 81 The bloody flux of 17 75.
Hi, I’m Jake. This week we’re talking about an epidemic that hit Boston and much of New England in the late summer of 17 75.
As the Revolutionary War ramped up and the siege of Boston reached its peak, both armies faced an invisible enemy.
The bloody flux, which we might know better by the name dysentery or shigella, was a diarrheal disease that took a terrible toll on the region’s Children.
Today, though, it’s barely remembered as it’s overshadowed by a smallpox outbreak of the same year to tell us about this forgotten disease. I’m gonna be joined today by Judy Cataldo.
Judy is an independent scholar and a volunteer with several local organizations, including Minute Man National Park.
Since 1974 Judy has either attended or presented at every History Camp Boston but one, and she was scheduled to present this year in March until our current circumstances forced a delay.
Judy’s also a historical spinner and a reenactor with the westward Colonial Minutemen, which is only appropriate since this episode will air on Patriots Day.

[1:26] But before we talk about Boston’s experience with the bloody flux, it’s time for this week’s Boston Book Club selection and our upcoming historical event.

[1:35] Since this is our Patriots Day episode, my pick for the Boston Book Club this week is the road to Concord.
How four stolen Cannon Ignited the Revolutionary War.
It details the cat and mouse game. The Colonial officials and red coats played against the revolutionary shadow government in Massachusetts over four small brass cannons that had previously belonged to militia units in Boston.
It was intelligence indicating that some of these cannons were hidden in Concord.
That led General Thomas Gage to order his men to march into the countryside 245 years ago today.
Here’s how a reviewer for the U. S. Army’s Military Review Journal describes the book.

[2:16] Between the fall of 17 74 in the spring of 17 75 there was an arms race between the Patriots of the Massachusetts colony and the British Army.
Both sides were pursuing possession of all artillery in the region.
Unlike muskets. Artillery had no use other than for war.
It was a weapon of war, and there was a sensing that war was on the horizon.
Author Bell documents that Justin September all publicly owned cannons in Boston and Charles Town had been taken by one side of the other and in some cases taken back.
Gage was not only attempting to secure material of war, but he was also determined toe Locate the cannon and discount the embarrassment of losing the cannon in the first place.
Through various sources, he believed the cannon to be located in Concord, Bell posits It was on this 17 mile journey to Concord to regain control of the artillery that a skirmish between approximately 250 British soldiers and 70 colonists,
fueled the start of the American Revolution.
The road to Concord was written by past podcast guest JL. Belle, who’s a local historian and the writer behind Boston 17 75 dot net, where he writes a fresh story about the revolutionary era in Boston.
Every single day, we’ll have a link to purchase his book, and this week’s show notes.

[3:39] And for upcoming virtual event. This week, we have a book talk hosted by the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Thomas Whalen is an associate professor of social science at BU.
He’ll be speaking on Friday, April 24th about his book Cooks and Degenerates on Ice Bobby or the Big Bad Bruins and the Stanley Cup championship that transformed hockey.
Here’s how the inmate just describes it.
During the 1969 to 1970 season, the big bad Bruins, led by the legendary Bobby Orr, brushed off their perennial losing ways to defeat the ST Louis Blues in the Stanley Cup finals for their first championship in 29 years,
Thomas J.
Whalen brings to life all the colorful personalities and iconic players from the Stanley Cup racing team.
Whelan situates this winning season into its historical context as the United States struggled with issues of war, race, politics and class,
making this book a must read for sports enthusiasts, hockey fans and those interested in 20th century American history.

[4:45] The talk begins at 2 p.m. If you’re interested in joining, you’ll need to register through the image s website to get connection details.
And if you’re listening to this on Sunday evening. When it comes out, I just want to remind you about the virtual event coming up tomorrow from the Lexington Historical Society.
Instead of the traditional reenactment of the Battle of Lexington, this year’s Patriots Day will be celebrated virtually.
The Lexington Historical Society is hosting an online reenactment.
They say many of us know the story of the Battle of Lexington that the plucky band of local militia faced off against the mighty British Army on the town comin on April 19th 17 75.
But what actually happened on the battle green that day and how did we get to that point?
Join us for a deeper dive into the story of that day as we show our award winning short film First shot The day the Revolution began.
Following this viewing, local reenactors with experience recreating the battle will be available to answer your questions about the history of the battle, the context of the Revolutionary War and what it’s like to step back in time and relive the past.
Rounding off the program will be a performance by Diane, Tara’s founder and leader of the Lexington Historical Society, Colonial Singers.

[6:05] For all the details of the Lexington reenactment and the big bad Bruins talk, Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 1 81 We’ll have the links you need.
And before I talked to Judy Cataldo, I just want to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who sponsors Hub history on Patri on,
were acutely aware of the fact that as of this recording, 22 million Americans have lost their jobs since the covert crisis began.
If you’re one of them, don’t hesitate for a moment to reduce our paws, Your contributions. We get it. Times are tough all over.
If you are still working, please be charitable. Consider donating to a historic site you’ve enjoyed in the past because they’re struggling without visitors.
If you’re still up for it after that, we appreciate your continued support.
If you haven’t supported the show in the past and you’d like to start, just go to patriot dot com slash hub history or visit hub history dot com and click on the support link.
We appreciate your support now more than ever, and now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Jake Interview:
[7:14] Judy Cataldo. Welcome to the show.

Judy Interview:
[7:16] Thank you. Good to be here.

Jake Interview:
[7:19] You are another one of our what? I’m calling our history camp refugees. So you are scheduled to talk at history. Can’t Boston in March on the topic of the bloody flux of 17 75.
And then, of course, history camp got postponed at least till July.
And I asked you to come on to the podcast to talk about the bloody flux.
So could you start us out by just telling us what in modern language we mean by the bloody flux?

Judy Interview:
[7:46] The bloody flocks is very likely shigella, which is a disease process where people have bloody diarrhea and cramping.
That is quite severe, and it’s most common in places where there are large concentrations of people with limited,
access to hygiene.
So resettlement camps, Ah, refugee camps.
That’s where you will see a lot of shigella.
Even today, people are still dying of this in developing countries.

Jake Interview:
[8:30] So shigella. I’ve did a recent episode fairly recent episode about cholera epidemic in Boston in 18 49 and that is characterized by clear or mucus e diarrhea.
Not bloody, but it is also a specific disease specific disease process. And then shigella, it sounds like, is a similar diarrheal disease but characterized by bloody diarrhea.
Does it fall into more broadly when we say dysentery? That’s more of a collection of symptoms than a specific disease process, right?

Judy Interview:
[9:06] Yeah, dysentery is actually I have the O e d deck definition a disease characterized by inflammation of the mucous membrane and glands of the large intestine.
Ah, company by gripping pains, mucus and bloody evacuations.
So it’s yes. And it is also just epidemics that are usually characterized by diarrhea in general.

Jake Interview:
[9:32] Today we know that shigella is Ah, bacteria. Minutes carried through untreated water tainted water. What did people think caused a disease like shigella? The bloody flux in the 18th century.

Judy Interview:
[9:40] Uh huh.

[9:47] In the 18th century, there was what people called, Ah, the summer complaint.
And that waas various dysentery sze It usually would be, um, a small number that would get it.
You’ll see one or two deaths in a summer of Children from dysentery, usually not even dysentery. Just something some kind off.
Um, g I disturbance.
Dad let Gotham dehydrated, and they died.
So it was something they just accepted as something that happened in the summer.
And they also blamed it on bad air.
Um, it was, um I as small. Even one of the, uh,
commanding generals suggested that Oh, yeah, we had a lot of illness in camp, but we moved the camp to a different area, and since we’ve moved here, the air’s much better,
and the disease is going away, and it’s yes.
And of course, we understand that it’s not so much that the air got better, but that they weren’t in the crowded conditions and they probably were ableto wash.

Jake Interview:
[11:13] It’s interesting that it was considered a summer complaint. I look at a lot of the other epidemic diseases of the 1918 flu are current.
Hopefully, our current Corona virus is will turn out to be seasonal to some extent, and a lot of those are seasonal in the fall and winter in the 1918 flu was that its deadliest in sort of the October November time period?
Do you have any sense of why dysentery is more deadly in the summer?

Judy Interview:
[11:37] These because people are together and in farming communities, your group activities air gonna happen, Mawr In the good weather in the spring, you’re spending a lot of time planting, caring for animals,
getting things up and running on the farm,
you know, and the next thing would be hanging in June, and then you’re just watching things grow and making sure everything continues to grow.
So there’s time to be more together and doing things together. Like Haing, um, neighbors might come together to Hey, the kids are gonna play together.
And as it gets into fall, you now have all the fall activities that are more centered on the farm off getting the harvest in.
And the mothers are going to be very busy because not only is the harvest coming in, which is a lot of work, but that has to be preserved to get you through the winter.
So it’s very likely that it’s more in the summer because that’s when people are near each other.
So social distancing actually ended up being something that just happened in the 18th century, and it ran its course.
Also, it was technically an epidemic, which again, according to the official definitions is an epidemic is something that is short lived.

[13:01] And in a specific area versus the pandemic, which is on multiple continents in areas at the same time.

Jake Interview:
[13:11] Now, As you say, an epidemic effects a specific area. And I don’t think we’ve even said yet that the 17 75 outbreak of Shigella or the bloody flux was really focused on Boston and the surrounding countryside.
What was more effect was the town of Boston most affected? Or were the surrounding areas more deeply impacted?

Judy Interview:
[13:33] Yes and no. In 17 75 Jonathan Sewell was stayed in Boston, and so we have a lot of our information about Boston comes from him,
and he said Death has so long stocked among us that he has become much less terrible to me than he wants.
Waas funerals are now so frequent that for a month passed, you meet many more dead folks as live ones in Boston streets, and we passed them with much less emotion and attention.
Then we used to pass dead sheep and oxen in days of yore, when such sites were not were to be seen in our streets.
So Boston was heavily hit. There’s some newspaper articles that say something about 3000 British soldiers.
I honestly don’t know if there were that many British soldiers there.

Jake Interview:
[14:29] That that sounds high.

Judy Interview:
[14:31] You know, I think it’s propaganda, which, yes, that’s important. It’s propaganda. That’s a C. They’re all dying.
Um, and that’s propaganda on both sides, which the propaganda on the other side is much like 1918.
There’s not much in the newspapers because, well, for one thing, the newspapers air kind of exiled and still getting there their circulation back.
And secondly, it’s not news if you already know about it,
even on the newspapers for April 19th regarding the battle, there’s the Boston newspapers kind of aren’t there cause they’re in transit.
But the New Hampshire newspaper has kind of a minute by minute. They keep updating the story. This just in.
Seriously, it says this just in. But one of the Boston newspapers that stayed there, one of the Tory newspaper says, We’re not gonna bother telling you anything because you already know about it.
So the bloody flux was something like that. People already knew about it.
And you don’t want to put too much in the newspapers because the only thing they put in the newspapers were these advertisements for cures that weren’t.

Jake Interview:
[15:47] S o. What sort of things will be advertised? It scares at that time.

Judy Interview:
[15:51] Um, the advertisers for cures or for things that were like, you know, try this cure.
Um, Doctor, Dr Ogden’s celebrated anti dysentery pills.
This is not gonna tell you what’s in them. You might figure it out.

Jake Interview:
[16:05] They’re still preparing a pill and taking a pill, which sounds similar, Except it wouldn’t be pharmaceutical in any way at the time.

Judy Interview:
[16:13] Another one is saying, You know, a cure is to take, um, new churned butter, um, without salt and skimming off the curd part.
Ah, when melted in a clear fire, take two spoonfuls.
Um, twice a day is clarified. Butter.

Jake Interview:
[16:32] Clarified butter. Amazing. I didn’t know that could cure dysentery. It’s perfect.

Judy Interview:
[16:34] Yeah. Clarified butter.
I know. Well, hey, it sounds good.
And the doctors were saying things that weren’t much better.
Um, with other cure, Other strange cures pot Wesley had His book is the same way that we have Dr Internet.
They had they had books like Wesley of the Poor Planters physician and different advice books for medicine. And Wesley actually says clear broth like, Yes, actually, yes.
That’s what you need.
He had a pretty good idea of what to do. But that didn’t mean that everyone had his book and some people might have another. And one of the soldiers in a the camp a Cambridge, said he wasn’t feeling well, so he went to the surgeon.
Thio get ah purgative.

Jake Interview:
[17:28] Oh.

Judy Interview:
[17:28] Yeah, he took a laxative.

Jake Interview:
[17:31] To help with the diarrhea.

Judy Interview:
[17:33] And he felt better in a couple of days, which he would have anyway.

Jake Interview:
[17:37] Right? Assuming you survive the dehydration.

Judy Interview:
[17:38] Because in an adult, Yeah, in an adult you don’t dehydrate is quickly the thing that I never quite completely understood in nursing school or after was fluid and electrolyte balance.
But the part I remember is Children dehydrate more quickly, and so do the elderly.
But the average healthy soldier would have been able to shake this off in a couple of days.
It’s self limiting. The one thing about shigella is self limiting, and after a few days you start to feel better as long as you don’t become dehydrated and die.

Jake Interview:
[18:16] If somebody were to get shigella. Are a similar diarrheal illness today? Would it mostly be managing the symptoms with ivy, rehydration and things like that? Or would we be able to treat the disease itself today?

Judy Interview:
[18:28] What they actually suggest is to treat it with over the counter remedies first, like one doctor said to me, Pepto Bismol and Pedialyte and use that.
And then if it persists on Lee, then that they want you to do anti biogas.
Because actually, shortly after I did this same presentation at the second history camp, there was an article in the newspaper that,
they had found a an antibiotic resistant strain.
Oh, shigella, um, in somewhere around the American Midwest.

Jake Interview:
[19:10] That’s all we need. First we have the Mersa and Nell stuff resistant shigella. That’s all we need.

Judy Interview:
[19:11] Hemp. I don’t know,
shigella, and I actually I kind of went I almost punched the air.
Not that I was happy, but that it was Yes, it was like C c over the counter first. The CDC is right.

Jake Interview:
[19:24] Vindicated.

Judy Interview:
[19:31] Um, so yeah, it. And today with a child, most parents without being told are going to give the child Pedialyte.
And if it gets that severe, yeah, they’re going to be put in the hospital and they’re going to be put on I V s.
And they’re going to get rehydrated, and they’re probably gonna get antibiotics so that we wouldn’t lose the number of Children we do today.
And the Children that are lost are those in places where they can’t get that Where they, um they don’t have access to it.
Like the refugee camps. Yeah, for us, it probably wouldn’t be as bad Because we have good nutrition already.

Jake Interview:
[20:15] Were Children the most affected in 17 75 for our listeners, can you give us a sense of how widespread mortality was or how much additional mortality they’ve been at this time?

Judy Interview:
[20:18] Yes, yes.

[20:28] There’s an uptick, and it’s in some towns.
It was as much as 2% of population that died in other towns.
It zero it hits someplace, is harder than others.
For instance, dead, um, had a population of 17. 50 and it had 42 deaths.
29 of those were Children.
And then, of course, what I really studied was Westford, because I live here.
Westford. With population of 11. 93 we had 27 deaths.
23 of those were Children. When was a refugee from Boston?

[21:12] And, of course, how this all started for me is I grew up in Needham.
That was where I first saw a gravestone with the mother and six Children on it, and I I didn’t know anything. I didn’t know anything about the American Revolution at that point.
I just looked and saw a long list of names and said Who epidemic And that was it, that this is far as I knew.
I had actually been trying to document the epitaphs in the old part of the cemetery and then found out that I had been beaten to it by 100 years.

[21:48] Pie pan named Charles Curtis Greenwood, who did it in the 18 sixties, and he had put a note on that grave to describe it. It’s actually it’s from the Reverend Samuel West.
The information from him is what is how I found out about this.
And he said the dysentery soon prevailed in the American Army and extended itself Maur or less through the country.
Although it prevailed most in the towns near Camp, my parish part took largely of the calamity. We buried about 50 persons in the course of the season.
Some families were dreadfully bereaved, one in particular. Ah, Mr Joseph Daniels buried an amiable wife and six very promising Children. In about six weeks, we often buried three or four in a day.
My time was wholly devoted into visiting the sick. Attendance on the dying and the dead.

[22:49] Now, when I looked at Needham, Vital Records. Ah, with a population of 912 24 died 11 child deaths.
So 20 four’s a little off of burying 50 or 60 people.

Jake Interview:
[23:06] On anecdotal front listeners to the show will not be surprised to hear me reference. The Adams family and their papers air wonderfully searchable Abigail, right? So about just being surrounded by death in Braintree and Johns.
Brother Abigail’s mother and I think aunt died A family servant died, Abigail said.
She went to four funerals in the day they lost, I think five friends in six weeks, and she said it was just the mortality was so great that they had trouble getting somebody to help them care for the sick.

Judy Interview:
[23:38] That to me is that’s the most important. Part of what she’s saying is that she couldn’t even find someone to help her take care of her own Children,
that they were sick enough that it required her to be there as and caring for them.
And she needed help. She couldn’t do it alone.
That tells you a lot about this illness.

Jake Interview:
[24:05] It’s interesting, given how how many households experienced so much illness and death very close to them, either.
In the Householder certainly would have known somebody who was sick or had passed away during this few month period.
It’s interesting that we don’t remember dysentery or the bloody flux in 17 75.
What all the books talk about is smallpox during the siege of Boston, and you have notes from George Washington concerned about this refugees being sent out of this town of Boston with smallpox,
arguments for and against inoculation among the Continental Army and among the British soldiers and everybody’s chattering throughout all the historic records about smallpox.
Why do you think that overshadows dysentery or the bloody flux to such a great degree?

Judy Interview:
[24:56] It’s reportable. And so in Boston in the 18th century, it’s a re portable disease.
Paul Revere, you know, had to quarantine asshole family and put the flag on his house because there was smallpox.
Even though dysentery deaths outnumber smallpox deaths throughout history, it’s the thing we don’t talk about.
The thing we don’t talk about is the sad stuff. Children dying.

Jake Interview:
[25:31] And it’s hard to deny having had smallpox because it’s scarring and it’s very visible. And I guess shigella are a diarrheal disease. If you survive, there’s no really.

Judy Interview:
[25:44] And And it was It was Thea. Other thing is is like it was the summer complaint. It was so common that people just didn’t give it a lot of thought in between to smallpox epidemics, they’re waas the bloody flux.
And it’s not all one smallpox epidemic. It’s this, and we know it is because we have people telling us it was the bloody flux and, um, that people were dying and lots of people were dying.
You, my my favorite diarist,
is ah, woman from Sudbury, and she says, you know, oh, the terrible judgments we have in the land besides the war, we have the bloody flux, and a great many people die with it.
She’s saying the words. We know what was the bloody flux, but it it sometimes gets.
Smallpox gets the credit.

Jake Interview:
[26:39] I wonder also, to some degree, it’s because smallpox it’s this sort of ancient human nightmare, and it’s it’s known around the world. And the bloody flux or the 17 75 plenty flux is fairly local epidemic.

Judy Interview:
[26:54] And who wants to talk about dysentery? Yeah.

Jake Interview:
[26:56] Well, apparently I do, because I asked you to be here today. Uh, how do you have a sense of how widespread the epidemic was in 17 75?
I know it was in the town of Boston and the surrounding towns and might have been carried further by people who are coming into the continental camps to visit their friends and relatives than going home.
Was it all across New England, or was it really tighter in?

Judy Interview:
[27:19] It’s It’s It’s New England in that it gets into southern New Hampshire.
There’s, Ah, one of the cures that, um, was in the newspapers was actually from a New York newspaper.
So whether it was just their annual outbreak or whether indeed someone had carried it to New York, So I have found, um, a few deaths out as Faras Deerfield.
So if I went to Hadley, would I find them? Possibly, um, I just haven’t found their cemetery yet.

Jake Interview:
[27:59] I found myself doing something very similar to that is during this time of social distancing.
One of the ways I could get out of these four walls and not lose my mind is to go for a walk in my neighborhood cemetery and of just the past week or so really noticed in one section. How many?
A cluster of 1918 headstones, including one a family, a Polish American family. There was four 1918 deaths in 1919 all on the same stone.
So I’m sort of doing the same thing. I’m noticing these clusters of 1918 deaths and saying that that must be the flu.

Judy Interview:
[28:35] Pretty likely because we lost more people to the influenza. Then certainly we did, too.
The actual war, since we were only there for really only at the front lines for a few months.
The one thing about this particular epidemic of in 17 75 skins, mostly Children And, um, the great we don’t talk about this,
even though we can’t see what these parents thought about the child that they lost.
And there’s no way to really tell. Nobody wrote anything down.
Um, people didn’t feel that they could speak about it.
They needed to get on with life. But I always wonder, as I stand at a grave.
How often did your mom come here? How often did Dad stop by on away on his way by, um, one of the things for Westford, That’s I.
As far as I know, this is pretty unique.
Is that all but one of the people who I can document died during that dysentery period.
I have a gravestone where, as, um, So Lexington had 17 deaths, and they’ve got possibly one graystone.

[29:57] Um, and that’s if you count the modern one for Captain Parker because he happened to die within that time.
Um and that’s it, Um, I think. Or they have yet. That’s it.

[30:08] Out of 11 Children who died, they have one. Graystone versus Westford, which is out of 27. Who died?
23 Children. We have 23 gravestones.
They’re all the same Stone Cutter Park’s family of Groton.
It’s not common. It’s just not common to have that many gravestones for Children that you can document.
You know, you can document when they died and they’ve all got gravestones.
But again, that tells you something that parents were willing to spend the money.
It was not inexpensive. Um, they’re they’re smaller stones. They’re not.
They’re not the big grand stones that the parks did.
They’re very simple designs, but they paid the money to put a gravestone in.
And this is during war time when the economy is just about so they would not have been able to likely by the gravestone and put it in because the ground would have started freezing.
Um, shortly after that time. And it takes a while to get a gravestone so they may not have gotten the Graystone until the spring.
Um, and that’s right around the time that there’s a lot of war profiteering going on.
They were There were there were are. There were editorials in the newspaper complaining about war profiteering.

[31:37] So it’s It’s more interesting when you think of it that way.
You know? How many times did parents come here? What were they thinking? Did they come on their birthday?
Did they leave flowers on their anniversary?
Um, like, I see so many parents doing today.

Jake Interview:
[31:54] Well, you just mentioned the fact that this war profiteering was happening as the parents were trying to put up these gravestones in the,
That reminds me that we’ve barely acknowledged that this terrible disease was hitting Boston during wartime was during the peak of the siege of Boston.
Are you comfortable talking about how shigella dysentery, the bloody flux, would have affected the two armies and whether it effected ready, miss it all?

Judy Interview:
[32:22] It’s unclear there’s a lot of men.
I think the other part about that tie in time in the war is that and all the people from C should Boston will get mad at me.
But it’s it’s there’s not a lot that happens.
You know, we get Bunker Hill and we get the evacuation of Boston in March.
And there’s all these little tiny skirmishes in between them that make less waves in the history books than the bloody flux.
Someone might occasionally mention the bloody flux or disease in the camp.
They always talk about the disease in the camp, um, but not acknowledge what that disease waas.
But you don’t hear about, um, like trying to get the sheep or whatever off a sheep island, it’s You don’t hear about those things you don’t hear about, Um,
we really just don’t think much about what was going on in the siege specifically, but it was certainly on the minds of people.
Another one of the diaries, it’s from situated. He keeps mentioning this person died in this person, died this person died,
and then he goes on to, um mentioned that you know what The Sunday Sermon Waas. And you know, this was wth E.

[33:47] You know this? You know, the reverend preached on this on this scripture, and I looked them up, and as I looked them up, I’m like, Well, are they talking about the dysentery?
You know, when people dying from that or are they talking about the war?
Because both of the same. I mean, even that That quote from, um, experience White Richardson where she says, You know, if it’s not bad enough, we’ve got the war Now we’ve got the bloody flocks, these air, two things.
Both of them seem to be off equal concern.

[34:22] Dead, um, had a day of fasting and prayer because they had lost so many to the bloody flux.
But that’s the only one I have noted so far. Not that my don’t be in someone else’s diary.
So the war seems to be the bigger thing on their mind, even though they’re going through this.
So their legs said, there’s that newspaper that says there were all these cases off British soldiers who died, and there are indeed soldiers who died at camp in Cambridge.
Actually, a couple of them are right next door in Chelmsford? Um, yes. I was looking at their war memorial, and I read their names, and I kind of Yes, I like up.
You’re Yeah, I know what you died of, cause I know when you died, um, and it’s so yes, there were some,
and there was certainly a lot of sickness because they note that, and like they said, they noted that when they moved the camp and said all the air’s better.
If everyone feels better now, they it affected both camps. What we don’t know is because again, nobody’s writing about it.

[35:32] What was it like when those soldiers came home and had lost family members?
So in Western, we have, um, Colonel John Robinson, who was the highest ranking officer at the North Bridge on April 1917 75 and he lost three daughters.

[35:53] Did that happen because he came back home on furlough? Did it happen because it was just in the area.
And then he comes home to three dead little girls.
Um how did that affect him?

Jake Interview:
[36:08] So remind me. I know you said this when we started our conversation, but the this epidemic breaks out first in is it June of 75?

Judy Interview:
[36:17] It likely started in Boston with the troops, it seems to start again. Seems because other deaths were happening because of Bunker Hill.
So it seems to happen sometime late June into July in Boston.
There also seemed to be the occasional death in a town in July, which could have been just normal.
Or could have been that first case that someone died.
Which is why, when I when I compiled my numbers, how I did it was, too.
Um, I realized that the epidemic really goes from July, starts sometime in July and can also um, and there’s also people that likely died from it in November.
But there’s also people in an epidemic who just happened to be die.
There’s still accidents, there’s still natural causes, and and we’re seeing that in the news today.
So I looked at it. So when I looked at it, um, I only looked at deaths for August, September October.
So that way I was better able to get an idea. Four. By eliminating two months, I likely eliminated some of those natural causes.

Jake Interview:
[37:41] And so from that range of August, September, October, what did you come up with? Four mortality numbers.

Judy Interview:
[37:48] I did it by town, so it’s it’s it’s very different, depending on where you are.
Um, in towns that were hit hard. It’s 2%.

Jake Interview:
[37:55] Mmm.

[38:00] That’s not 2% of cases, which is what people talk about with the influenza epidemic. And maybe with our current right, that’s 2% of the total population, which is enormous.

Judy Interview:
[38:03] Right. This is population. Yeah, total population.
Um, and but then you have others where it’s will need him. Actually, as far as we know from recorded in vital records, it works out to 1.5%.

Jake Interview:
[38:16] Yeah.

[38:22] So you you focused on the deaths between August and November, And then I think the though death rate drops off pretty quickly as we get into.

Judy Interview:
[38:30] Pretty quickly. In October, it drops. It starts dropping off in October.
It’s actually the The height of the epidemic is the last two weeks in August, the 1st 2 weeks in September.
And that’s where towns air recording three and four deaths at a time, except in towns where it maybe hit a little bit later. And so they have a kind of a different two weeks, which I think is it’s a little bit later for a think Weymouth.

Jake Interview:
[38:55] Yeah, Braintree and Weymouth. Kono ab Abigail Adams was was writing in October about not being able to keep up with the funerals.

Judy Interview:
[39:02] Yeah, her mother.

Jake Interview:
[39:03] 00 my bursting heart. My mother? Yeah.
For a lot of the other epidemics I’ve I’ve looked at for 18 49 cholera epidemic.
There was a really strong public health reaction that was credited with bringing the epidemic under control and same thing with the flu in 1918. And there were all social distancing right now.
Was there some widespread effort to fight dysentery? The bloody flux and that’s what helped bring it to an end. Or was it just it’s natural, the course of the disease in the course of the season.

Judy Interview:
[39:33] He was the course, the disease in the course of the season, they didn’t know how cost it.

Jake Interview:
[39:37] Yeah.

Judy Interview:
[39:39] The main prevention for shigella is to wash your hands and to wash any raw fruit.

Jake Interview:
[39:44] Hey.

Judy Interview:
[39:48] That’s what we know today. But they didn’t understand that they you.
If you had told them that they’re carrying of the disease on their hands, they would have laughed at us.

Jake Interview:
[39:59] It wouldn’t have made a lick of sense.

Judy Interview:
[40:01] What do you mean? It’s in the air into my asthma. It’s It’s the weather.
It would never have occurred to them. And across Children are the the biggest culprits for putting their hands in there. Miles, um, and touch ends mostly hands in their mouths. Because this is one that’s ingested.
Burst is inhaled. You have to ingest the bacteria to catch it.
So I mean, it’s just it’s it’s just made for little kids.

Jake Interview:
[40:31] Before we start to wrap up, what’s our listeners? Take away from this story about the epidemic of the bloody flux? What? What what’s the lesson to be learned?

Judy Interview:
[40:40] One of the lessons is in history.
We look at battles, we look at names and dates and the big picture off history.
And this makes us look at the little picture.
The one that didn’t change the outcome of history. It did change the war.
It changed the people. Yes, sure. We don’t know exactly. We don’t have anything written toe what they’re saying, but we know how parents feel when they lose a child.
I think that sometimes as historians, we lose track of the people for the events and the other take away from this is using vital records. Two.
Learn about your town, um, that you can look at the patterns for what years things happened in, whether they’re more births or one of their more deaths.
And there’s a lot to be learned, and then you can go and look for the next thing.
If it weren’t for seeing that one gravestone I never would have known did. There was a bloody flux epidemic.
I wouldn’t have had a name for it.
Look here, Vital records. Um, because the things that didn’t make it into your town history are in there.

Jake Interview:
[42:00] I appreciate your joining us today to talk about the bloody flux in all its gruesome detail. If people want to learn more about the bloody flux or hear more from you, what should they do?

Judy Interview:
[42:11] Toe. Learn more about the bloody flux. There’s not a lot out there I will be.
Putting together is probably some, um, some links on my much neglected blawg mom, which is colonial spinning be to point people to where they can look for vital records.
So keep looking for the little pictures. Is the best advice.

Jake Interview:
[42:33] All right, well, I will link to your blawg in this week’s show notes so folks can have some of those threads to pull on themselves and thanks again.

Judy Interview:
[42:40] Okay, that’s great. Thanks for having me.

Jake Outro:
[42:45] To learn more about the 17 75 bloody flux, check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 181,
We’ll have a link to Judy Cartel does Blawg, her reenacting group and an article she guessed authored for Jail Bell’s bust in 17 75 Log.
I’ll also throw in links to letters written by Abigail Adams at the height of the epidemic, describing the atmosphere of sickness and sadness that surrounded her family in the summer of 17 75.
And, of course, we’ll have links to information about our upcoming events and jail bells. Road to Concord, this week’s Boston Book Club pick.
If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast of hub history dot com.
Were hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram? Or go to hub history dot com and click on the Contact US link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing a separate for view.
And if you do drop us a line and we’ll send you a hub history sticker is a token of appreciation.

Music

Jake Outro:
[43:54] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners.