The Barbary Plague

1897–1923, Box 636, Folder 5608, File 1 of 2.

9.­ A. H. Glennan, “Dear General” Letter to Wyman, January 14, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 1 of 3.

10.­ “The Plague Conference Held at Washington, D.C., January 19, 1903,” American Medicine, January 31, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 624, File 1 of 2.

11.­ Walter Wyman, Telegram to A. H. Glennan, January 28, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, Folder 5608, Chinese Mortality, ’97–’02, File 2 of 2.

12.­ A. H. Glennan, Telegram to Surgeon General Wyman, January 29, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 636, Folder 5608, Chinese Mortality, ’97–’02, File 2 of 2.

THE PERIMETER WIDENS

1.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Miss Kate Blue, January 31, 1903, Collection of J. Michael Hughes.

2.­ A. H. Glennan, Letter to the Surgeon General, February 12, 1903, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 626, Folder 5608, 1903, Glennan.

3.­ Rupert Blue, entry of February 15, 1903, in the Plague Journal 1901–1905, of Drs. Currie, Blue, et al., National Library of Medicine.

4.­ “Chinese Complain of Unsanitary Conditions,” San Francisco Examiner, April 5, 1903, p. 28, col. 7, and “Legal Obstruction to Chinatown Cleaning,” San Francisco Examiner, April 7, 1903, p. 6, col. 2.

5.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, July 23, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897– 1923, Box 616, File 1 of 2.

6.­ Rupert Blue to Walter Wyman, August 17, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 616, File 1 of 3.

7.­ “Only Chinatown’s Removal Will Bring the City Security,” Merchant’s Association Review, August 1903, p. 2, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 646, File 4 of 6.

8.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Lilly Blue, San Francisco, September 23, 1903. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.

9.­ Walton Bean, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), p. 41.

10.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Walter Wyman, December 9, 1903, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897– 1923, Box 616, File 1 of 2.

11.­ “Says City Is Seat of Satan,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 1904.

12.­ Sacramento Bee, March 1, 1904, p. 1.

13.­ Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Wyman, January 15, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.

THE SEAMSTRESSES

1.­ Telegrams regarding the case of Irene Rossi list her address as 18 Verraness or Versaness, probably a misspelling of Varennes St., an alley in the Latin Quarter. Running between Union and Green Streets, it is still lined by wood-framed Victorian row houses, nearly identical to and just a block from Jasper Place, where Pietro Spadafora and his mother died.

2.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, February 24, 1904, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.

3.­ Rupert Blue, Telegram to Wyman, February 17, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.

4.­ Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, February 23, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.

5.­ Ibid., March 2, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.

6.­ Ibid., November 30, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 2 of 2.

7.­ Ibid., July 12, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.

8.­ Ibid., July 21, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 1 of 2.

9.­ Ibid., August 18, 1904, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, File 2 of 2.

10.­ Ibid., January 7, 1905, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 617, Folder 5608.

11.­ Resolution of San Francisco Board of Health, February 16, 1905, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 646, Folder 5608, 1901–1907, Misc., File 2 of 4.

12.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Miss Kate Blue, April 26, 1905. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.

13.­ Ibid., July 18, 1905. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.

14.­ From William Colby Rucker’s unpublished autobiography, “Under the Yellow Flag: Reminiscences of a Sanitarian,” p. 8, graciously shared by his grandson Colby Buxton Rucker.

15.­ Pauline Jacobson, “Specialist Not Blue over the Plague,” San Francisco Bulletin, February 21, 1908.

16.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate Lilly Blue, September 3, 1905. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.

17.­ Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag,” pp. 83–87, courtesy of Colby Buxton Rucker.

18.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Miss Kate Blue, September 3, 1905. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.

EARTHQUAKE

1.­ Gladys Hansen and Emmet Condon, Denial of Disaster: The Untold Story and Photographs of the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire of 1906 (San Francisco: Cameron and Company, 1989), pp. 13–14. Ms. Hansen, archivist of the city of San Francisco, posted additional quake research on the Web site of the Museum of the City of San Francisco, at www.­sfmuseum.­org.

2.­ William Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1986), p. 43.

3.­ Arnold Genthe, As I Remember (New York: A John Day Book, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1936), pp. 88–89.

4.­ Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, p. 49.

5.­ Malcolm E. Barker, ed., Three Fearful Days: San Francisco Memoirs of the 1906 Earthquake and Fire (San Francisco: Londonborn Publications, 1998), p. 137.

6.­ Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, pp. 32–33.

7.­ Ibid., pp. 73–74.

8.­ Ibid., p. 43, weighs the reports of atrocities—the real and the apocryphal—as does Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned, p. 51.

9.­ George Cooper Pardee, Telegram to Senator George C. Perkins, May 4, 1906, George Cooper Pardee Correspondence and letters, Call Number C-B 400, Box 31, the Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. (Other estimates of losses ranged from $350 million to $1 billion, according to Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned, p. 108.)

10.­ Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, pp. 152–153. Ms. Hansen’s research revised the mortality figures from 498 to about 3,000 dead.

11.­ Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned, p. 83.