Ho arc! of HftMltli 
INTERFERENCE. 
Baneful Interference of the Old Board 
■ 
As Conducted hy the Old Board and City 
Councils, namely: The Flanders9, 
the Wiltz’, and the Leeds’ 
Councils. 
Hive we, is our midst, Kodocs worse thin those of the Livi-heds? 
Hive we, is our midst, Ohosle worse this those of Old! 
* 
J. J. HAYES, Surgeon and M.D. 
NEW ORLEANS. 
18V6. BOARD OF HEALTH INTERFERENCE 
Baneful Interference of Old Board. 
SMALL-POX HOSPITAL, 
jls Conducted by the Old Hoard and City Councils, namely : The Flanders’3 
the Willz’ and the Heeds’ Councils. 
Have we, in our midst, Modocs worse than those of the Lava-beds 2 
Have we, in our midst, Ghouls worse than those of old 2 
J. J. HAYES, Surgeon and M.D. 
An incident pregnant with evil, with thrilling pain and a fatal issue, having transpired 
under view, should dictate a duty, should impose an obligation to submit the same to public 
at ention in order to invoke in relation to it, a public consideration. This exigency becomes 
more urgent should it be deemed a moral delinquency to omit aught that could prevent its re- 
currence; for unless disposed to participate in the ghastly iniquity, the observer who witnessed 
its cruel phases aspects and effects, should resort to due means to prevent its recurrence; 
should trace it to its cause, to its authors, in order to stay the baneful aud melancholy conse- 
quences of this fell, inhuman cause; aud in order to summon its authors for authority and sub- 
ject the same to public scrutiny. 
Recently a female child, in order to see a funeral pageant, Remained exposed for some 
time to wet and cold, and took a cold. Called upon professionally the following day, I rang a 
bell at the dwelling, and a very elegant, very graceful lady admitted me. With much dignity 
and a very commanding address, she appealed to the highest sense of delicacy, of honor, saying: 
she was a lone lady but the sickness of an only child excluded other alternative than to receive 
me; and she conducted me to the retired apartment where her child lay. The child suffered 
from a alight cold and a cough, a “bronchitis” not serious; had nothing of a serious character. 
The child was very beautiful, had very fine proportions of the head; ai d a glance could reveal 
nascent intellectual faculties developed in advance of her age aud in accordance with the physi- 
cal conditions. I prescribed for the indications then present and told the mother the only dan- 
ger was a tendency of the blood to the head by reason of the above favorable conditions. I 
withdrew, not entertaining the slightest misgiving. 
At break of day the next morning, the mother called me and, an ominous trepidation in 
her manner, told me her child vomited blood that night. Knowing how remote from danger the 
child lay, 1 became much perplexed to know what could have happened. When at the dwel- 
ling, the lady told me in accents of subsiding indignation, and yet tremulous with emotions of 
a vague fear, that two policemen had called yesterday and entered her premises against her con- 
se it saying they had “authority,’ and insisted on being conducted to the sleeping apartment of 
the sick child. That, uotwithstarding the pain, the mortification such aggression gave her, she 
submitted, in consequence ol the authority which they claimed; and, though a prey to contend- 
ing emotions of pride and fear, she conducted them to the retired room where her child lay. 
Here, not satisfied with having entered the room and seen the child,they jerked the bed covering 
off her, denuding her and exposing her delicate person to a frozen atmosphere, the day being 
very cold, the temperature being about forty, on the 2d of January, and with their frozen 
impious hands intended only to manipulate criminals they handle and feel the exquisite person 
of this sick child. The savants said they were in quest of small-pox; and behold ! when this 
complaint exists it can be seen on the face, and when not on the face it is nowhere. 
The indignity and mortification hitherto experienced appeared as nothing in presence of 
the dread fear of a forcible parting, wresting and sequestration of the sick child from the 
anxious parent, and vise versa, which now lor a moment, for a time of insane agony presented 2 
itself to the minds of both, only gradually subsiding by the absence of aught that could 
sanction this cruel inquisition. So far I had gleaned from the recital of the mother; but I had 
scarcely entered the sick room when the little gifted being, now speaking incoherently, lisped 
out denunciations of the strange and uncalled intrusion of the previous day. She was now 
delirious and all indicated that the brain was involved—that the brain alone was seriously in- 
volved. Immediately the most active means were put in requisition, but despite all she got 
worse and worse, until 1 o’clock of the second night after the intrusive inquisition, when 
she expired. 
There now transpired a scene of mental anguish, well calculated to thrill the most 
obdurate. The mother, seeing death inevitable, could not brave the last scene. She went on 
foot, at 12 o’clock at night, from canal street to the Third District, in quest of an aged mother, 
to be enabled by her presence to witness her child breathing her death adieu. When she 
returned ihe child belonged to the past, and now fixing her eyes on the inanimate object she 
stood at some distance with clasped, uplifted hands, unable to move; unable to advance; would 
advance a little and again become motionless as marble—an ominous stillness, an awe-inspiring 
dread seemed to impede her, to intervene between her and now that object of clay. This 
transpiring, I withdrew, truly wishing to escape, dreading to witness the extreme agony which 
relentless Fate exacts. Vv hen the mother approached and they met, and the mother found only 
silence, stillness and cold clay, instead of that warm, animated creature whose intelligence lit, 
shone and flashed, and whose soul breathed the spirit and essence of her God. 
I could declare upon oath, that to the best of my knowledge, as derived from the medical 
sciences, this melancholy result was chiefly caused by that rude intrusion, this barbaric in- 
quisition. I would appeal to the medical men having studied in Europe or the North, to say 
if a shock of this character could not, did not cause the tragic end in question. Why! hale, 
vigorous adults have been known to succumb to extreme shocks—surprises, even welcome 
surprises, of an intense character, have often led to fatal results—but unwelcome ones, those 
teeming with a horror, with a dread which inflicts a torment compared with which death may 
be deemed a bliss, namely : the separation of the child from the mother, intensified by tbe 
sickness of tbe child and tbe dreary gloom impending over tbe whereabouts of her new abode. 
Such, I maintain, convey in their track danger, agony and death. 
What! the myrmidions of crime at the bed-side of a god-like child; policemen, peelers, 
whose very name exhales an abnormal dread, invading, desecrating the sleeping room of a 
sick child and denuding, examining, despite the will of the mother, the person of this child in 
quest of something, as if to be sick were a criminal act. Those inquisitors, executors of dark 
deeds, of guilt, violating, desecrating the immunity, the sanctity of a home, of retired apart- 
ments, of sick apartments, contriving by their baneful intrusion to impart to sickness the 
complexion, tbe hue of crime. An inquisition of this character, in the presence of and despite 
tbe will of the mother, transgresses, offers violence to the most sacred relations implanted by 
the hand of God upon the human soul, to-wit : the relations between tbs mother and the child 
—the first, superior, the supreme right of the mother to the person and health of the child; 
those relations which began with eternity and can terminate only with eternity; which origi- 
nated with God and can only cease to have an active existence when God severs the link be- 
tween Him and mankind; yet, hallowed, sacred as those relations have ever been and destined 
ever to be, those culprit inquisitors have dared to ignore, dety and trample upon them by 
denuding and examining the exquisite person of this female child in the presence of her 
mother, without her permission and against her will. Tet, of that overflowing chalice from 
which the moiher, under duress of that dismal authority claimed, was compelled to partake of 
such rich draughts, the most cruel was the harrowing, insane fear of the forcible parting of 
the child from the mother, the severance by military force, per vis et armes, of the sick child 
from the anxious parent, denying the latter the boon of expanding her tender, anxious solici- 
tude in behalf of the child, and denying the little interesting being the comfort, the ecstatic 
balm of the care and presence of the mother; in a word, the arresting by peelers, the 
myrmidions of criminal law, of the little innocent and her incarceration in a fetid dungeon or 
prison, whence the child could not come out and where the mother could not go in. The arrest 
aud imprisonment of a small child for the crime of being sick ! Both the mother and the child 
partook of this beverage, both knowing that officials styled “Board of Health” have been wont 
of late years to arrest children, parents, husbands and wives, to snatch them from their homes 
and from their nearest and dearest, and incarcerate them in a loathsome hovel styled 
Hospital, where death is mostly inevitable and whose prestige is as sinister as that which a 
charn el-house inspires. True, those janissaries, those dogs of war, did not make an arrest and 
incarcerate in this instance; not finding a trail they slunk away, but their baneful intrusion 
exhaling a ghastly menace left a trail. To give solemnity to their mission, they were of 
different hue : one was dark in complexion, hailing from the regions of the sun; the other 
might claim any if not all the colors of the i ain-bow, the ensemble indicating that he came 
originally from the dusky regions where the Polar bear prowls. 
Could an inquisition of this character, surpassing in barbarism any thing known or read 
of in tbe records of the darkest ages, have other than a baneful, fatal effect on a child of sur- 
passing intellectual aud moral developments? Could the perturbed condition of the mother, 
harrowed by an ineffable fear escape a child of such endowments and perceptions ? No, as 
quick as light or lightning her nascent mind, wont to glow, sparkle and dazzle, felt the over- 
whelming shock, and that embyro-luminai y of Heaven glowed, sparkled and dazzled no more. 
From the hitter chalice tendered, there were showered on the mind of the little invalid, already 
contending with, suffering from sickness, all the moral impressions within the order ot the pain- 
ful, baneful aud fatal entailing death, that sequence, that penalty in which an inexorable Fate 
in her utmost and final effort expends her cruelty. At the dissolution a benignant Nature in- 
tervenes, stilling the pain and giving eternal peace to the victim; but the mother who survives 
is ignored, consigned to a torment, to a durable agony. 3 
The above tragic, fatal incident had scarcely transpired when the city press furnished a 
striking illustration, reporting quite an analogous case which happened in Paris, to-wit ; A 
lady of superior rank, unaccompanied, but tastefully, elegantly disguised, at a masquerade ball, 
faltered in her gait after supper, the wine having somewhat affected her. A policeman, a “gens 
d’armes,” thinking her of inferior rank, put a hand on her shoulder as if for arrest, and the 
lady fell—fell dead. The dread horror inspired, the blight of that profane touch killed the lady. 
A few days ago the papers reported the case of an Irish woman who died from excessive happi- 
ness on being furnished the means of returning to her country; having met with only 
reverses in this. 
■No. I—The generous and humane will wish to know who are the authors rf this invasion 
of homes, those barbaric inquisitions and inhuman arrests; of this incarceration in an abode 
where gloomy forebodings impend, where fatal results generally await the innocent prisoners? 
They will wish to know who did or could confer au authority of such an aggressive and 
doleful character? The Board of Health are the agents, the instruments who commit the 
transgressions. The City Administrators have assumed to confer the authority, or jointly 
they have conspired to usurp the authority and perpetrate the acts. Hence, the Board ff 
Health are the perpetrators ; the City Administrators are the authors, or have arrogated 
to themselves the power to confer the authority. 
Some quarter of a century ago the State Legislature, under the belief that yellow fever 
was not indigenous, that it originated in foreign countries, enacted a provision against its in- 
troduction, namely: Quarantine. The act provides a special police for the execution of its 
provisions. The act defined their duties and exacted the indignity that the instruments of its 
execution should be believers in its efficacy—in the efficacy of that barbaric absurdity of a remot) 
time. Some time previous the City Council, contemplating sanitary measures, instituted a 
police board to prevent impurities, substances in decay ftom reaching or sojourning in the 
city. Both corps became merged into one and was designated Board of Health. 
It now remains to be seen how a Board instituted for such purposes could arrogate the 
power to invade homes despite the will of the proprietors; to execute inquisitions; to arrest 
sick children, as if they were criminals; to arrest fathers, husbands and wives; and sever, tear 
the children from the parents, the parents from the children: the husbands from the wives and 
wives from the husbands, and consign, incarcerate them in an asylum where hope seldom 
dared to enter. The Board from its inception became aggressive, and in the opinion of many a 
deleterious nuisance; but, until six years ago, it confined its action and interference to yellow 
fever and quarantine, or the ship and travel detention intended to prevent it. 
In 1870 three events of a sinister character and most cruel results were enacted. The 
City Administration—the Flanders one—passed two ordinances, and the Board of Health mul- 
tiplied itself. Ordinance No. 1 changed the mode of paying for small-pox patients ; instead of 
paying by the day they make it so much per patient. For all previous lime, the pay was $3 
per day; they now make it $5O per patient. Instead of a per diem they make it a per capita. 
The change seemed rather strange, tor patients treated properly, the remuneration being 
much the same; the per capita being very little more. In the latter case, let the patient 
remain one day or one hour in Hospital the pay was the same as if they had remained several 
days. Ordinance No. 2 instructed, authorized the Board of Health to send small-pox to the 
Hospital designated by them, viz : The Anfoux’s Hospital. 
Event No. 3.—The Board of Health responded nrompt’y; it multiplied itself into as 
many Boards as there were Districts in the City, locating the young Boards in the several 
Districts, one in each District. These new Boards were named health offices; they consisted of 
two policemen and an overseer. Tbe overseer or inspector was generally, not necessarily, some 
kind of a doctor, any kind would answer. Strictly speaking they were military posts, consisting 
of a civic military force, viz : two peelers and a peeler captain. The military posts established, 
the strategic positions taken, the civic soldiers are let loose; they scour, scout their respective 
Districts in quest of small-pox patients; they invade the homes of innocent people, establish, 
enact inquisitions, and the object of their search, of their invasions found, they arrest 
him as a criminal, and nolens volens, per fas aut nefas, they abduct, force and convey 
him to the Hospital under City patronage. The Captains take pride in the chase and endorse 
the findings and doings. The peelers execute; the Captains sign their names in approval. 
The Cap.ains come in at the heel of the hunt and say, well done! To state it plainer, the 
peelers make a written statement of the domiciliary visits, inquisitions and arrests made by 
them; under the statement they write the word—Approved. The Captains sign their name 
under, in token of approval. That is their only duty; their only work; and for this the City 
Government pays them $l5O per month—sBoo or $l2OO per month for the Captains. Very 
good for the Captains! 
Now a new era takes place in the history of Hospitals. For the first time since creation 
dawned they become compulsory. For the first time in the history of the world are military 
posts established to operate in their behalf; for the first time are military operations enacted 
against the innocent sick; for the first time are janissaries put in requisition to hunt up 
patients for them. Those humane institutions, ever until now, teeming with benignity and 
patiently waiting the discretion, will and pleasure of the indigent and sick to welcome them 
and confer on them succor, health and relief, now, for the first time, become arbitrary, tyran- 
nical, ignore the will, the pleasure of the creatures, and resort to brute force to compel them to 
enter. Now. assuming the alert, acting on the qui vive, they let loose the dogs of war to scout 
and reconnoiter their respective commands, and the unhap ay sick suspended between life and 
death, and dependent on humanity, thus tracked, hunted uo, unearthed, are seized, arrested as 
criminals of the deepest dye, as felons; and in defiance of the most sacred rights, lacerating the 
most endearing affinities woven by the hand of God, they are torn, severed, the children and 
husbands from the parents and wives, and abducted and imprisoned where death is not sup- 
posed to be far away. When the lot fell onDeKline, of Algiers—a victim to the inexorable flat—at the door of 
his dwelling, leaving for the “City Kefuges,” his wife hailed him, saying: “DeKline, let me 
see you once more, for I will never see you again r Such was the feeling entertained in this 
community for some years in relation to the City Asylum. In a day or two he was a corpse. 
Having received a quasi authority from a corporate municipal body officiating within the 
lines of their charter, to send varioloid patients to the Hospital, they arrogate, thev usurp the 
power to invade homes, despite tne will of the owners; to enact searches and inquisitions; to 
arrest the sick as if they were criminals; to remove them from their homes and incarcerate 
them, as if they were criminals, where a sinister prestige impended; under pretense of being 
invested with a plenipotentiary power on matters pertaining to salubrity, they enact atrocities 
of suon barbaric hue that they seem to run so intimately into crimes called felonies that it 
becomes difficult to detect the line of separation. 
Then the new era becomes remarkable by a compulsory hospital; by miltary strategic 
positions taken to secure patients; by military operations undertaken to capture them; by 
military force to imprison them; by treating sickness as crime and inflicting on the sick the 
vengeance of criminal law, viz: invasion of homes, arrests, imprisonments and mostly death. 
It may be deemed a redeeming feature, an oasis in tne cruelty: A child visited with the 
complaint, one which God made it heir to, is visited with the game retribution—his domestic 
rights, his need of paternal care are no defense; his little affrighted body is searched, inspected, 
a spot, a pimple, a blister found anywhere is evidence enough; the little creature is arrested, 
severed from its parents, abductad and imprisoned where hope parts company with him at the 
door. From an invader of such ruthless tendencies husbands and wives could expect no 
mercy, their only means of defense being tears, prayers, entreaties—weapons seldom effective 
against the steel armour of a military corps—seldom capable of penetrating the traditional 
cruelty of the Captain and his men. The lannissaries having taken their strategic positions 
and detailed expressly to scout, reconnoiter, the incursions and invasions, are unremitteat— 
they are very many, they still figure under the name of “Inspections ” in the Board of Health 
reports. The enemy they were in quest of were the small-pox patients. The pursuit knew no 
respite; the chase was a lucrative one. It was SSO a head—young or old it was SSO a head— 
black or white it was SSO a head—live or die it was SSO a head—live one hour or two it was SSO 
a head—dead or alive it was SSO per head. 
Strange co-incidence the ordinance of SSO a head and the multiplication of Boards of 
Health inaugurated synchronously; strange co-incidence SSO a head and a compulsory hospital; 
strange co-incidence SSO a head and the establishment of military posts to depredate on the in- 
nocent sick; this persecution of the sick as if they were criminals; this denunciation of sickness 
as if it were a crime, and this meting out on the innocent sick the fell vengeance of criminal 
law, viz : invasions, inquisiiions, arrests, imprisonment and all but death. 
A word or two on the invasions, arrests and imprisonments, and then we will take a beep 
at the compulsory Hospital, to which the innocent sick denounced as criminals were committed. 
Domiciliary Visits.—In New Orleans, a City having such intimate relations with Great 
Britain, it is strange that a few officials should proclaim weekly, from an office on Canal Street, 
the great number of domiciliary visits and inquistions which they have made, without creating 
surprise or indignation; that they should promulgate the many incursions and invasions 
inflicted by them on innocent people without incurring reproach or remonstrance; that they 
should arrogate, usurp the power of invading sick homes, trampling upon home security—the 
most cherished right to which every man is wedded—without eliciting a response or a murmur. 
In all nations this sa;red right is entwined with every fibre in the heart and soul of every 
individual. In Great Britain it assumes a magnitude which surpasses that of the Government 
and the Crown. In this Empire, co-exteusive with the track described by the sun on the earth, 
the most destitute, the most humble, feels his home his castle, his kingdom. No matter how 
small, how contracted those precincts may be within them he leels himself a monarch of all he 
surveys, and in consequence feels within himself the pride, grandeur and nobility of lord and 
king. For supreme master within those hallowed precincts, neither lord or potentate can 
invade them without his permission, despite his will. In this Empire this sacred right is not 
an empty vaunt or feeling; it is practically superior to any privilege conferred on or inherent in 
the Aristocracy, the Parliament or the King. In this realm the proprietor has the power of life 
or death over any or every intruder, invader or transgressor, who should have the temerity to 
desecrate the hallowed precincts of his home. The realm recognizes his right to avenge the 
transgression by inflicting on the forcible intruder death, the extreme penalty of the law. In 
this instance the aggrieved becomes invested with the thrre essential functions of supreme 
power—the legislative, judicial and executive—feels with pride the dignity, the power of State 
confered upon him, and responds In emotions of gratitude aud fervent homage to the sovereign 
of those realms, who awards so solemn a recognition to this feeling of home sanctity, so 
entwined in the soul of every man that has a soul Then domestic intrusion, invasion, 
despite the will of the owner, ranks in magnitude of offense with foreign hostile invasion for 
predatory purposes, which naturally incurs, in like manner, a summary vengeance. In mag- 
nitude of offense it surpasses felony, which incurs forfeiture of estates, life and attainder, bat 
only through forms of law, whereas the other incurs summary vengeance at the discretion of 
the aggrieved. 
This home security, home impregnability, except for crime, when the tenant is a 
criminal which assumes such proportions in Great Britain, is echoed in the Constitution of 
the United States, but it appears to sleep tnere without much x-tromiso of waking. 
Arrests.—The home invaded and searched, invasion aud Inquisition enacted, and the 
guilty party found, they arrest him or her or the child—they arrest either as a criminal, for 
the crime of having a simple complaint which m ture entailed on them. Arrest them as 
criminals! The very thought would seem to wake up in the soul a seething indignation. The 
most dire, abhorrent penalties incurred by wretches for penetrating the most atrocious 
crimes, are now meted out on the innocent sick, because they are sick. For being sick first 5 
his home is invaded and searched; and now his person and sonl are taken possession of; are 
arrested and the patient is made a prisoner. A prisoner, he has underwent the torture, the 
degradation of haying become the property of another. For no matter how brutal the fellow 
who has made the arrest may be, the relations of master and slave have now been estab- 
lished between him and his prisoner. Superior and exalted though the prisoner may be, in the 
presence and in the hands of his peeler captor he becomes an inferior, a manacled slave. His 
body is reduced to the condition of an inert mass; his soul humiliated, compelled to seek 
shelter in its own depths, is reduced to a recoiling, abject, tacit, submissive condition; denied 
the power to experience an emotion, to give birth to a thought, or entertain an ambition. 
Thus metamorphosed, reduced to a soulless mass, to a state of inertia, gravitation alone 
remaining with him, he is wrested from home and family ties and consigned to a lugubrious 
dungeon, where the air is redolent of death, and where, against his will, he is compelled to 
enter and stay. Having been arrested he is now imprisoned, which is the state of being 
arrested continued, made permanent; tempered only by the absence of the abhorrent peeler. 
This absence for a moment makes him think that his person and soul are restored to him; but 
the next moment he discovers that their play is but little; that immured, they are limited to 
the walls of his prison—a charnel-house, where sin, dark deeds and death vie for precedence. 
If domiciliary intrusion and search despite the will of the owners, without warrant of 
crime, be an atrocity surpassing felony and entailing the capital, summary vengeance which 
the foreign depredator provokes, what name can define, what retribution can equal the for- 
cible seizure of the person of an innocent man and the extinction of his soul ? No atrocity can 
equal; no retribution can atone for the arbitrary seizure of the person of an innocent man and 
the extinction of his soul—that portion of the divinity which animates him; more grave, more 
cruelly grave when that innocent man is sick and at the mercy of humanity. 
Let us now take a look at the Hospital, the charnel-house or prison, as we have some- 
times designated it. We will begin by giving their own testimony in relation to its site, its 
constructions, its dimensions and its divisions, and see whether, in their own opinion, it was 
calculated to kill or cure the innocent prisoners condemned to go, to enter and sojourn there 
An article in the Republican, of New Orleans, dictated, if not written by Dr. AVhite, President of 
Board of Health, states as follows: “ Dr. Anfoux’s Hospital, which has the special encourage- 
ment of the City Council, is situated far out on Common Street; it is a one-story, oblong 
building, made of rough planks, put together with no art. The interior is little better than the 
exterior, being neither plastered not weatherboarded. It is partitioned off into small apart- 
ments, sufficiently wide to Contain a small bed and standing room for two or three persons. 
They remind one of cells in a look up. On the grounds is not a single tree or anything refresh- 
ing to the eye, save the parched grass. The rays of the sun fall with full force on the building 
and grounds, making the place as hot as the levee.” Another sentence says: “It is wrong to 
send patients to the swamp and confine them in buildings so uncomfortable as to make well 
persons sick.” Another sentence says: “And things were sometimes found to be going 
wrong.” Very candid admissions, indeed! Apartments like cells in a lock up; wide enough 
for a small bed and standing room for two, not more than three; enough to make well persons 
sick; and things were sometimes found to be going wrong. If the contractive cells, etc, to 
which the innocent prisoners were condemned were enough to make well persons sick, they 
could not make sick persons well; especially creatures who have been already subjected ,to 
ultra inhumanities. If calculated to make well persons sick, they must have been calculated 
to make sick persons die. “And things were sometimes found to be going wrong.” Thus, in 
addition to the deleterious effect of the contracted cells, the swamp and sun exposure, other 
means were resorted to to aggravate the condition of the prisoners. Pity they did not mention 
what they were. Patients go to a hospital to get well; if matters go wrong the reverse must 
follow—they die. If things are not such as tend to cure, they must tend to lead to fatal 
results The sick are balanced between life and death; the means they are subjected to must 
tend either way. It must be a strange one, the motive which dictated for patients having the 
same complaint, the division of a long room or house, into contracted cells, like those cf a lock- 
up, with sleeping room only for the patient and three places to stand upon. Tight quarters, 
in, deed. 
THE OPINION OTHERS ENTERTAIN OP IT. 
Mrs. Gravy, a German lady, says: Her babe, nine months old, on the breast, had the 
small-pox; had it nine days, and was all but well, when peelers come to her house and insisted 
that the babe should go to Hospital—the City Hospital, she remonstrated, saying the babe 
was on the breast and that if the babe had to go, she should go too. They answered, the babe 
had to go; she might go if she would—in other words, the babe should go; she could go if she 
would, she went, and says: The place or Hospital was like a stable, no ceiling, nothing over 
head but the roof—it was the greatest picture of desolation, horror and starvation she ever saw 
or heard of. It was in winter—February, 1873—it was very cold. There was no fire to give 
warmth there; there was no nursing or attendance there, and there was no food there, bhe 
had her own bedding. She craved some warmth by fire; they said the stove was broken—there 
was only one stove for the whole house, some two hundred feet long, and no fire in that one. 
After some days the stove was repaired, then there was no wood, and there was no fire at all. 
She craved warm water to wash her child—she could get none She was told to help herself 
from the cistern, which being too cold she would not use. For nine days, while there, her room 
had not been swept; none of the rooms were swept; there was no body at night with the 
patients, and mostly every morning they would be found on the floor dead—some mornings 
six; some mornings four, two and three, and seldom only one. Calling for water all night snd 
no boly answering, they would leave their beds to get some, and notable to return, would die 
on the floor. 
Food.—For food there was none, or so little and so inferior, that what they got could not 6 
be used—was not fit to be used. After four days, for want of food, her milk “dried up”—sbe 
had none. She craved for food for herself and got none; sbe craved for food or meat for herself 
and got none; she craved for food for her child and got none; she craved milk for her child and 
got none. On the ninth day the babe died—died of hunger. The child was fast recovering when 
forced to enter the place; after four days there, the child was perfectly well. She then begged 
and prayed to be allowed to leave and take her child. She was told she might leave, but the 
child should stay. Here, then, a lady of respectability, just from the first civilization on earth; 
from the greatest, most powerful nation on earth, and entertaining the exalted instincts, senti - 
ments and aspirations which the vicinity of thrones, emperors, kings and princes cannot fail to 
inspire; the inevitable concomitants of power, pomp and grandeur, is condemned to a lugu- 
brious prison replete with effluvia, and consigned to starvation, she and her babe, in the thick 
of all the horrors which the dying and the dead can inspire. The motive of detaining them 
when the child was well was a strange one; detaining them to feast on starvation and horrors. 
The death of the babe saved the mother, and she lives to tell the tale. She lives corner of 
Gravier and Salcedo Streets. 
Mr. Hanson, Ho. 122 Spain Street, says: He was taken there by force. They took there 
by force all those similarly affected they could discover. Saw one woman brought there who 
had not small-pox; she died there. He got no food to speak of; he did not get enough to feed 
an ant; he could not have held out were it not for the food he purchased by sending the man 
out for it, and for the food sent to him by his friends; that he only got one-third of the food 
sent him from outside. 
They made him pay $3 per day; he paid in all fifty dollars, and thev kept his clothes 
worth $25—in all $75. This was a perquisite which swelled the benefits of the hunt. $5O a 
head and $75 for a perquisite. A pay patient became a prize. He escaped with his life, but 
lost an eye there. 
Mr. Peterson, Algiers, was taken there. They used imtimidation, force and persuasion to 
take him there. At home he was doing well, had his physician; was in comfortable circum- 
stances—he needed no charitable aid for hospital purposes. He had to go; he lived fourteen 
days there and died on the fifteenth. Mrs. Peterson, his wife, says: The place was teeming 
with horror; the rooms unswept, the smell was very bad; the patients were looked up in small 
rooms, halloing and craving for water—it was worse than an insane asylum. She saw no 
nursing there or so little, she might say so. She went daily to see her husband and never 
found any one with him; he become insane and would stray in the yard; he took a cold there. 
They would permit her to stay and nurse him by day—by night, no. The night he died they 
would not allow her to remain with him. He was only able to take food for a few days, but 
during that time received none fit for use. She used to send and take him the necessary food. 
They made her pay $3 per day and kept a new mattress from her worth $lO and all his 
clothes worth $lO. They allowed her to bring away two quilts and two blankets, by paying a 
fee of fifty cents for each article. She paid $64 in all. A perquisite enhancing the profits of 
the chase. $5O for the head and $6l for the perquisite. What a snug privilege that of capturing 
patients at the rate of $5O per head, and perquisites all they could wring from those able to pay. 
Mr. Sami. Bell resides on Dorgenois Street, between Banks and Palmyra, and says: I 
was mostly well when they discovered me; my employer offered to pay a fine or ransom money 
if they did not remove me. They refused entreaties and money, and forced me into a frightful 
wagon and drove off so furiously that my hands and arms become stripped. I begged and 
prayed the driver to drive slowly; he answered “go to hell,” and he drove more furiously still. 
When I got there they took my bedding from me and gave me very inferior bedding. For sup- 
per they gave me water sweetened with molasses; it looked like charcoal dust. For breakfast 
the same, and for dinner water and grease, which they called soup. I was there three days and 
two nights; the third I made my escape—l ran away. 
Mrs. Mitchell and son were taken there; the son died. She said he died from starvation. 
She saved herself by running away, making her escape by paying for a buggy to bring her 
away. She heard the nurse and a patient fighting there—the patient wanted to get back the 
money he gave him for safe keeping. The nurse knocked him down; the patient was dead the 
next day. This lady kept a paper stand on Carondelet street. I don’t know where she 
lives now. 
The above would seem to be strong evidence that an abundance of proper food was not 
one of the advantages there; on the contrary, that the want of food was such as may create a 
fear if not a positive danger of starvation. 
Colob.—Mrs. Millie Simmons, is a colored lady, resides on Common Street, a few squares 
this side of the Hospital. She lost her husband there. She used to nurse her husband by 
day; they would not allow her to nurse by night—they compelled her to go home at night. 
&he would cover him with the sheet, blanket and quilt on lowing at night; in the morning 
she always found the quilt and blankets to have been removed from him at night and put on a 
vacant bed—the sheet alone would be on him. This was the case every morning; looked as it 
it were done expressly to chill him to death. It was in winter; it was very cold. The nurses 
would play cards all day—if called they would answer insultingly. Said her husband died of 
cold and neglect. That it was done expressly to kill him. In the disease he became blind and 
could not see where the clothes wore put. 
Mrs. Lewis was a patient there and recovered. She said the nurses used to beat the 
patients; that they used to put them on wet mattresses, and on mattresses without sheets; 
that when delirious they would give a medicine to quiet them at night and the following 
morning they would bs dead: that tney would be in a sitting position, and so stiff, so rigid, that 
to put them in the cofflu their bones should be broken with a hatchet or an ax; that then death 
by poisoning was believed. Said the belief was general among the patients that they had a boG 
tie, the effects of which were fatal to those who got it, and that many got the benefit of it. 
Joe Gardner was a patient there. He says: He heard the nurse tell a patient who was 
restless that unless he remained quiet he would give him some of the black bottle; that the 7 
nurse soon after went to that patient’s room and after that the patient remained so still all 
night that he, Gardner, thought he was dead; but he groaned in the morning and died that day. 
That a belief prevailed among the patients, that a tea or a bottle was often used to produce 
fatal effects. * . 
Mrs. Mannack, a colored lady, who lives in the vicinity of the Hospital and is quite con- 
versant with all that transpired there, says: That the nurses used to beat the patients; that 
when only one patient was dead they did not have him buried until they had several, or two or 
three; that, in consequence, the smell and flies in the vicinity surpassed any notion that lan- 
guage could convey of it; that in wet weather the city wagon, bringing the patients there, 
would come down Canal Street and when opposite the Hospital, the driver would make the 
patients get out and walk, rather to wade, in mud and water to the Hospital, a distance of five 
squares. That the nurses did not remain there at night. They would leave there every night 
and before leaving would lock the patients up in their bunks or cells, committing them to 
weal or woe, to the mercy of chance or accident until morning, when they would unlock the 
prisoners—oh, no! the patients. That then the dead were generally found; rather that was the 
time the greatest mortality took place, became visible. That very many were then found dead 
and in a sitting position, as if alive; but so stiff, so rigid that a hatchet or axe had to be used to 
break th ir bones, in order to be able to coffin them; that a white man, named Adolph, told her 
that when patients seemed to be getting on well, they had a bottle to give them at night, and 
that those to whom it was given were always dead in the morning. 
This corroborates the statement of Mrs. Lewis, .found dead in the morning so stiff, so 
rigid—so rigid that an axe should be put in request to overcome tho rigidity. Here the deeds 
of atrocity, of horror culminate and murder will speak. The patients locked up at night; 
found dead in the morning; found in a sitting position in the bed, as if not dead, stiff and rigid; 
so stiff, so rigid that their bones had to be broken with an axe. What can cause a death of that 
character? What can cause a corpse to sit up and become stiff, rigid? What can cause such a 
rigidity when dead? What can cause such a positton when dead? It can be told, it can be 
known, for in the three kingdoms of nature there is but one substance which can do it. Can 
disease, could disease cause it? No complaint can cause a post-mortem rigidity of that character. 
Tetanus alone can give a rigidity during life, but not of the character mentioned. Can a medi- 
cine do it? No; a medicine is what tends to cure a complaint—what kills is a poison. Nothing 
in the animal kingdom can do it; nothing in the mineral kingdom can produce a similar pheno- 
mena. There is only one substance in the vegetable kingdom which can do and which does it. 
Hence that substance can be known, is known—and hence murder will out. 
Mrs. Romero, on Common Street, next to the Marine Hospital, when speaking of the 
Hospital, manifests emotions ami speaks in accents of horror. She says in the dead of night 
a man with only a sheet on him rapped at her neighbor’s house and prayed for water. He said 
he escaped from the Hospital; that they had him in a box for burial; that he broke the lid off 
and escaped. The watchman returned him, thinking he was insane. 
She says another was found lying under a wagon opposite her house, also covered with a 
sheet only. The poor man told the same story as the above. That he was coffined for burial; that 
he broke off the lid and escaped, and he prayed for help. They were afraid of him; he was also 
returned. Neither saw the outside world again. And only a short before the cadaverous 
refuge was closed the City shuddered, became a prey to a surprise teeming with horror, as the 
report of a reputed crime, enough to startle the Christian or pagan world, swayed to and fro 
nameiy, “The Murder of a man in the Coffin,’’ while being taken for burial. Credibility 
became taxed, but the reports reached the consistency of a “True bill,” before the grand jury. 
Then the question presents itself, was death, the extreme penalty, inflicted in this 
lugubrious prison where hunger and cold claimed victims; where accumulated effluvia and 
want of cleanliness contended for their share; where dark, sinister surmises so heavily im- 
pended; where wives, respectable ladies nursing their husbands were denied the privilege of 
remaining by night; where a long room or house, intended for patients having the same com- 
plaint, was cut up. divided into small cells or boxes; where the boxes were locked up at night 
and the inmates, the innocent prisoners, committed to the mercy of accident or chance until 
the following morning—an abode abandoned by all during the night save the sick locked 
up in their boxes; where the boxes, when opened in the morning a crop of corpses st red 
the fiendish jaoler ; where conclusive evidence of having perished by the most deadly 
poison the three kingdoms of nature can furnish, equally stared the horrid culprit; where the 
rigidity approaching that of iron or wood and the accompanying silting posture told, revealed 
in the unrelenting, inevitable language of nature, the poison that was used, administered- 
where many patients of the disease in question, committed to mattresses without sheets’ 
incurred the liability of introducing the morbid matter of one into the other, a very dangerous’ 
and fatal occurrence; where the sick creatures in going thereto, some perhaps in a dying con- 
dition, were compelled to get out of the wagon and wade in mud and water some four or five 
squares in order to reach the ghastly charnel-house? 
should the question be answered in the affirmative, the next presents itself in bold relief- 
Have we in our midst Modocs worse than those of the lava-beds? Have we in our midst ghouls 
worse than those of old. who, not content with their ravages on the dead, have extended their 
depredations to the innocent sick, not yet dead, to increase the number of their subiects and to 
swell their lurid gains ? And yet those gents of the trinity enactment, of the trinity alliance 
while reeking witn crimes that surpass felonies; while reeking with atrocities which no language 
can define, which no vengeance could expiate, pretended to be busy preventing sickness while 
doing their utmost to flood the City with disease—with contagion. This I will explain in the 
next number of this small expose, unless killed in the meantime. 
~ , Bu,cll W‘ls the unhallowed concern as conducted by the City Council and their auxiliaries, 
the planks of health. For eight years, since removed from the Luzenberg Hospital, the concern, 
under the special encouragement of the City Council, though designated City Hospital, figured 
as the property of Dr. Anfoux, under his control and representing his exclusive interest. In 8 
1872 the State Legislature suppressed the thing and restored the unhappy sick to the Luzen- 
berg Hospital, where safety, humanity and science, in their essence awaited them. Then and 
only then the actual power behind the curtain gradually came into view. Mr. Delassen, of 
the Flanders City Council, took advantage of some trivial informality to resist the law, and in 
defiance of it continued the pet hospital. The informality removed, and the Wiltz City Council 
having been installed, they boldly, defiantly, not only resisted, trampled upon the law, but 
took the cherished thing into their arms; took charge of it and ran it themselves. The Wiltz 
Council having expired, the succession fell to the Leeds Council, and they, in like manner, 
found the hospital to be a darling, and ignoring, defying tbe law equally, they embraced it with 
still more tender regards, ran it, dispensing its behests themselves, and only surrendered the 
patients to the Luzenberg Hospital when two decisions of the Supreme Court made it imperative. 
But having surrendered the patients they in no wise have relaxed in their opposition and 
in their efforts to restore the darling pet. Their opposition is a tangible one. They send the 
patients and they keep the pay for themselves. Very effective opposition indeed! Now to 
restore that focus of pestilence, teeming with sin, the first Legislative Session had scarcely 
dawned when the Hon. L. A. Wiltz, quandom Mayor, introduced a bill to resuscitate the 
cherished object, and appealing in a flood of eloquence, and in the name of “truth, economy 
and humanity,” he overwhelmed the House and his resurrection bill passed with a momentum; 
but the Senate, with more success than Canute had, stemmed the tidal wave. As Madame 
Koland once did, well might a person exclaim : O Truth, Economy and Humanity, how many 
crimes are enacted in thy name. The symbols of virtue used to cloak an institution of such 
hue and dye. 
On the 3d of June, 1875, fifteen months ago, they closed their Hospital, sending the 
patients since to the Luzenberg. The disposition of the Leeds Council to the defunct officials 
and retainers is worthy of attention. The strategic sites, the military posts, are yet maintained. 
The dogs of war are kept, in “cash,” ready for the chase. They continue the salary of the 
man who did the doctoring, $250 per month—sl,6oo in all to date. They continue the salary of 
the peeler doctors, the whippers in, S7OO per month; $12,000 in all—sl6,ooo for the fifteen 
months, though not having a patient to stiffen or a hunt to endorse. But they have faith in a 
resurrection day; and the peeler doctors, ever and anon, allow some muffled murmurs, wailings 
to escape them to inspire, “quien sabe,” in the animals eager for the chase, ahope of a restora- 
tion of their sport on an early day, when the formidable chief of the darling Hospital will be 
chief of the Senate of the ensuing Legislature, and when any one having the temerity to 
eviscerate his tidal wave, in order to discover the crime, the guilt, the mortal sin hiding, lurk- 
ing, seething, fermenting within, will meet disaster; will be visited with a fate as cruel as that 
of Lycoan, who doubted the contents of the Grecian horse. 
In review I beg to call attention to the painful incident which attests the baneful inter- 
ference of the Board of Health; to the trinity enactment pregnant with evil; to the horror of a 
compulsory hospital; to the horror of military posts established to feed it; to officers of crimi- 
nal law, peelers being detailed to scout their respective districts in quest of sick creatures, as if 
they were criminals; to the hunting, unearthing of them as if they were beasts of prey; to 
hunting them for fifty dollars a head, as if they were buffaloes, antelopes or other wild ani- 
mals—legitimate sport for the hunters. To the series of aggressions, worse than felonies, per- 
petrated in order to secure their prey; and finally, to their being consigned to the prison at 
which we have just taken a glance and which when unveiled exhibits features surpassing in 
revolting, appalling horror those of the veiled prophet of Koressan, petrifying for a time the 
human soul, body and mind, while contemplating in frigid awe and dread suspense the rigid 
corpses in a sitting posture; the rigidity and position revealing in eternal tones that strychnine 
was administered, and that they, the victims, though corpses, were able to give evidence, 
fathomless evidence, which the three kingdoms of nature could and would sustain. 
END OF THE FIRST NUMBER. 
J. J. FAYES, 
Surgeon and M.D.