Staunton vindicator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1860-1896, 1879-03-07
Yellow Fever in New Orleans.
HORRIBLE CONDITION OF THE POTTER S
FIELD BEFORE THE EPIDEMIC LAST
SUNMMEE.

HORRIBLE CONDITION OF THE POTTER's
SUMMER. .
| Below are extracts from the annual re-
port to the Board of Health of this city
for 1878, by Joseph Holt, M. D., Sanitary
Inspector of the Fourth district:
| The Locust Grove Cemetery, OF Potter's
Field, is one square of ground in which
are buried the pauper dead Of the entire
CITY. formerly located Sixth street, be-
| tween Locust and Frel ct streets. Having
| been used for m any years, the same graves
were made to receive the bodies OF many
dead-as many as six occupying single
grave!
/, myself, making an inspection, wit
messed the burial OF a corpse. The grave
was prepared by uncovering a coffin, open
ing it, raking the bones together and
throwing them out, breaking up and pry-
ing out the old coffin and depositing the
new in the mould of the former. When
laid in its uncertain resting plt the lid
of the box, like that of the one preceding,
was two inches below the surface of the
earth. To hide it, the earth formerly re-
moved was piled upon the coffisl i'll mound
abont two feet high. In this covering l
counted the skulls of three former occu-
pants, besides observing other bones in
Vulnerable. So filled with other bones was
the earth as to make use of the spade ex
tremely difficult. Another coffin lid, war
ped by the sun, displayed IN bideous reali-
ty the body Of poor wretch who died a
few months before; the stencil was dis
gustingly perceptible. The whole surface
of the ground was strewn with the ribs
and small bones, like pebbles on the hills.
Here and there, huge thigh Bones served
as head and foot sto les to the unknown
dead.
The citizens living in the vicinity pre-
scented a petition to the City Council,
March IS, 1877, wherein they Set forth in
the strongest terms the horrible facts re-
lative to this graveyard; how that in the
summer season. the stencil from human
bodies pervaded their homes; THAT, wheth-
or eating or sleeping, in doors OF out, they
were ever in an atmosphere heavy with
the exhalations from the dead. They pic
tured the disgusting sights presented and
forced upon the gaze of themselves and of
their children.
They referred to their pitiable condition
during an epidemic, when the putretying
dead were piled in heaps, under a blazing
sun, awaiting burial, and the over-burden
ed earth reeked with rotten human flesh,
while crowds of flies swarme,' back and |
forth upon the graves, and upon their |
tables. They urged in this prayer their
constant dread of the infectious and pesti-
lential diseases whose victims were |
brought from all parts of the city and
buried in their midst, hardly covered from
their gaze.
This is now the potter's field, a low
marsh wherein the sexton e;forms his
heavy task faithfully and as best he can;
sometimes floating to their graves the I
dead and weighing them into ti'eir homes,
the whole graveyard being ofttn foot un-
der water. The nature of this field rem
dvrs it impossible to dig these graves deep
er than has been his habit. But THIS is
potters' field. an injurious infection and
an outrage upon the living, a disgrace to
our humanity, to our morals and to our
city-an indecency perpstrated upon the
dead, because they died poorl
Have we not richly merited chastise-
ment, and do we not deserve more? II
our future is to bring forth the spirit CT !
fatal contentment with our sanitary con-
oition which has characterized our past,
Invoking judgment, we will surely receive
it, aud our history shall repeat Itself.