HISTORY | ARCHIVES
A History of Mobile in 22 Objects An airtight coffin is the ominous symbol of a city paralyzed by a fearsome disease. photos courtesy HISTORY MUSEUM OF MOBILE
CHILD’S CAST-IRON COFFIN text by DR. DARYN GLASSBROOK
T
his ornate cast-iron coffin was made to be used by an affluent family to bury an infant in the mid- to late-19th century. Patented by Almond Dunbar Fisk in 1848, this type of coffin was sculpted to fit the body and had a glass window so that the face could be viewed during the funeral. Its airtight design enabled the body to be transported long distances and prevented odors and germs from escaping. A Fisk coffin would have been especially desirable for interring a victim of yellow fever, one of the most common and fearsome communicable diseases in Southern coastal cities throughout the 19th century.
80 mobilebaymag.com | july 2021
Caused by the Flavivirus that is found in some mosquitoes, yellow fever can result in jaundice, severe vomiting, hemorrhaging, organ failure and death within six days of infection. For centuries after it was first reported, physicians were unable to agree on its origin or method of transmission. The disease spread rapidly and traveled far inland, frustrating many attempts by public health officials to contain it. It is generally accepted that yellow fever originated in Africa and was introduced to the New World through the Atlantic slave trade by Christopher Columbus in the 1490s. The virus crossed the ocean on Columbus’s ships inside desiccated (but still viable) eggs of the Aedes aegypti mosquito. It adapted to other mosquito carriers and flourished in the rainy, temperate subtropics of the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast. Yellow fever was one of many communicable diseases of the Columbian Exchange that proved devastating to Native Americans. For the next 350 years, outbreaks
shaped the history of Mobile. In 1704, the French ship Pélican arrived at Fort Louis. On board were 23 unmarried women who were to be matched up with male settlers at the request of Governor de Bienville. Tragically, the ship was contaminated with yellow fever. The virus ravaged the colony, killing 40 of the 225 settlers, including Henri de Tonti (“Tonti of the Iron Hand”), the Italian soldier and fur trader. One hundred years later, a yellow fever epidemic in Saint-Domingue (present-day Hispaniola) discouraged Napoleon Bonaparte from following through with his planned conquest of North America, instead selling the Louisiana Territory to the United States at a bargain price of $15 million. As Mobile grew, outbreaks of yellow fever became more frequent and intense. In addition to smaller outbreaks nearly every year, there were 11 epidemics from 1819 to 1853. It was during the 1819 epidemic that the city hastily purchased land to establish the Old Church Street Graveyard, in which many yellow fever victims were
