The Barbary Plague

12.­ Ibid., pp. 96–116.

13.­ George Cooper Pardee, Letter to George C. Houghton, Boston, Mass., April 21, 1906, George Cooper Pardee Correspondence and Papers, Call Number C–B400, Box 30, letters written by Pardee from March 9 to April 21, 1906, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley.

14.­ Bronson, The Earth Shook, the Sky Burned, p. 118.

15.­ Barker, ed., Three Fearful Days, pp. 292–297.

16.­ Hansen and Condon, Denial of Disaster, p. 123.

17.­ Letter from the army to James W. Ward, president of the Health Commission, May 8, 1906, National Archives and Records Administration, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 112, Letterman General Hospital, Correspondence and Related Records pertaining to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, Entry 363, Box 1 of 3, Reports (12) of Health Commission, San Francisco.

18.­ Surgeon General of the Army O’Reilly, Telegram to Torney, Chief Surgeon, Presidio, San Francisco, Calif., April 24 and 25, 1906, NARA, San Bruno, Calif., Records Group 112, Letterman General Hospital, Correspondence and Related Records Pertaining to the San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, 1906, Entry 363, Box 2 of 3, Misc. Correspondence and Directives.

19.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Surgeon General Wyman, May 21, 1906, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 3.

“COMFORT THE PEOPLE”

1.­ Walton Bean, Boss Ruef’s San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), pp. 152–153.

2.­ Stranger than fiction, the bizarre denouement of the San Francisco graft trials is too convoluted to detail here. Highlights of the aftermath—including Prosecutor Heney’s attempted assassination, Investigator Burns’s future as head of the eponymous detective agency, Boss Ruef’s and Mayor Schmitz’s appeals and abbreviated jail terms, and the latter’s amazing return to city politics—are told by Bean, above, pp. 300–316.

3.­ Minutes of the San Francisco Board of Health, Friday, August 26, 1907, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco History Center. The incident was also covered in the San Francisco Call, August 27, 1907, p. 14, col. 12.

4.­ F. William Blaisdell, M.D., and Moses Grossman, M.D., Catastrophes, Epidemics and Neglected Diseases: San Francisco General Hospital and the Evolution of Public Care (San Francisco: The San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, California Publishing Co., 1999), p. 62.

5.­ Minutes of the San Francisco Board of Health, September 3, 1907, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco History Center.

6.­ Telegram from Mayor Edward Taylor of San Francisco, quoted in President Theodore Roosevelt’s Telegram to Surgeon General Wyman, on September 5, 1907, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.

7.­ Surgeon General Wyman, Telegram to Hon. Edward R. Taylor, Mayor, San Francisco, September 5, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.

8.­ William Colby Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag: Reminiscences of a Sanitarian.” Unpublished autobiography courtesy of his grandson Colby Buxton Rucker, p. 112.

9.­ Frank Morton Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco: A Report of the Citizens’ Health Committee and an Account of Its Work (San Francisco: C. A. Murdock & Co., 1909), p. 38.

10.­ Chung Sai Yat Po, September 12, 1907.

11.­ Personal communication, Steve Wong, manager of the Hotel St. Francis, photo archives, regarding the hotel’s temporary headquarters in quake-shattered Union Square.

12.­ “No Quarantine Contemplated and No Cause for Alarm Is Found,” San Francisco Call, September 14, 1907, p. 14, col. 2.

13.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, September 22, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.

14.­ Blaisdell and Grossman, Catastrophes, Epidemics and Neglected Diseases, p. 64.

15.­ “Examination of Suspected Plague,” Chung Sai Yat Po, September 13, 1907, p. 2.

THE RATTERY

1.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to “Dear Dr. Glennan,” September 25, 1907, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.

2.­ Rupert Blue, “The Underlying Principles of Anti-Plague Measures,” California State Journal of Medicine, August 1908, reprinted in Frank Morton Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco: A Report of the Citizens’ Health Committee and an Account of Its Works (San Francisco: C. A. Murdock & Co., 1909), p. 217.

3.­ Rupert Blue, Circular Letter to San Francisco on rat extermination, October 1, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.

4.­ Rupert Blue, Telegram to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, October 18, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.

5.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Walter Wyman, November 2, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897– 1923, Box 618, File 1 of 2.

6.­ Rupert Blue, “Rodents in Relation to the Transmission of Bubonic Plague,” reprinted in Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco, p. 259.

7.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, transmitting necropsy of Margaret Bowers, December 30, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 2.

8.­ The tragedy of the Bowers family is told in several contemporary accounts, including a 1908 Harper’s Weekly article by William Inglis, “The Flea, the Rat and the Plague” which contends that six people died, with only a two-month-old baby surviving. What city and federal records agree upon is that Marguerite and Howard Bowers died of plague, while at least three additional family members sickened and a fourth was hospitalized. For the death toll, this account relies on San Francisco Death Certificates, San Francisco Department of Health, and the autopsy report of Marguerite Bowers sent by Rupert Blue to Walter Wyman on December 30, 1907, on file at the NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 2. Documents variously refer to Mrs. Bowers as “Margaret” or “Marguerite.”

9.­ Blue, “The Underlying Principles of Anti-Plague Measures,” in Todd, pp. 218–219.

10.­ “How to Catch Rats,” a circular by W. C. Rucker, reprinted in Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco, p. 225.

11.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, November 30, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 2.

12.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Mrs. Annie M. Blue, November 19, 1907. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.

13.­ Rupert Blue, Letter to Surgeon A. H. Glennan, December 2, 1907, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 2.

14.­ Rupert Blue, Confidential Letter to Dr. Glennan, January 14, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, File 5608: 1908.

15.­ “Citizens Urged to War on Rats,” San Francisco Call, January 29, 1908, p. 7, col. 4.

16.­ Ibid.

17.­ William Colby Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag: Reminiscences of a Sanitarian,” unpublished