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In New York, in 1776 conditions in the city soon became unhealthful. The letters of Dr. Solomon Drowne, a hospital mate, to his father— June 4, 1776: We arrived yesterday. We waited for Dr. Morgan today and were kindly received. He mapped out a course of duty for us at the hospital. It is a very elegant building and its situation is pleasant. I have a list of medicines purchased here for the continental hospital to copy for Dr. Morgan, which obliges me to conclude. June 17th: As there happened to be some vacancies in the hospital I have as good a berth as I could have wished for. We drawn $20 a month and two rations a day. We have been closely employed a good part of the time, sorting and putting up medicines for thirty chests. August 9: Our wages were raised some time ago to $30 per month. The pay would be no inducement to stay a minute in this stinking place, at the expense of health, that best of blessings. The air of the whole city seems infected. In every street there is a horrible smell. Dr. Morgan had a reserve of stores collected which, before the evacuation, were sent to Stanford, Connecticut. Had this not been done they would have been captured. Dr. Morgan said, it being in the most violent heat of summer, and so the less wanted, I ordered the greater part of the rugs and blankets, the newest and best beddings, of which I have collected a very large stock, and a thousand sheets, of which I had lately got to the amount of nearly 2,000, many of them new, and a number of shirts, at New York to be set apart for use and a large quantity of heavy hospital furniture, some of the largest bell metal and iron mortars, a number of crates of vials and jelly pots, the largest bottles, with the most bulky articles and those in the least demand. To these I ordered a share whatever we had in so great a plenty, as to not fear being soon destitute of them; to be added with a small assortment of chosen medicines, to be made up and kept together in one or two suitable boxes as a reserve. In 1776 when our army was encamped at King’s Bridge in New York State, our raw and undisciplined condition at that time, we had great loss of clothing and the camp became excessively filthy. All manner of bowel matter was scattered indiscriminately throughout the camp, in so much that you were offended by a disagreeable smell almost everywhere. A putrid diarrhea was the consequence. The camp disease as it was called, running off at the bowel. Medicine answered no purpose. The army was always more healthy when in motion, than fixed in camp. I recollect in the campaign of 1776, while our army was on the peninsula of New York, we were deranged as to be deprived of ovens, and flour was served to the troops instead of bread. We could only make sodden bread and dumplings. Some baked their bread on the hot stones, and others in the ashes. The consequence was that many were afflicted with the jaundice. Being a regimental surgeon at that time I shared the fate of the rest and shall never forget my fatiguing march from the North River to Brunswick, with the jaundice on me. The sufferings of the prisoners of war in New York were long the subject of bitter complaint. The prisoners taken on Long Island at Fort Washington, and elsewhere were crowded into buildings in the city and into old hulks in the harbor, where under the worst sanitary conditions they died by hundreds both of smallpox and typhus— contributed to the death roll of these wretched victims of the war. In the city the principal prisons were: The Middle Dutch Church on Nassau Street, afterward the post office; the Lutheran Church at the northeast corner of Frankford and William Streets; the old Provost Prison, converted into the hall of records in 1831; the Huguenot; the Brick Church; the Friends’s Meeting house, the Van Cortland Sugar House; another near the Dutch Church; and the Rhinelander Sugar House. Sufferings were intense. Col Ethan Allen wrote that he had gone into a church and seen the agonies of death in consequence of very hungry and others speechless and near death, biting pieces of chip— the filth of these churches was almost beyond description. I have seen in one of them seven dead at the same time. 3,000 were crowded into the Dutch Church, but an outbreak of smallpox compelled their removal. Col. Ethan Allen was subjected to the brutality of one Captain Cunningham, who is said to have boasted that he had starved 2,000 by selling their rations. The treatment of the military prisoners at that time was generally inhuman. It was the more so in the case of the colonists who were considered rebels, to be punished as well as imprisoned. Clothing in rage and scarcely covered from the wintry air, crowded in narrow rooms and weakened by disease, the prisoners died by the hundreds. The feeble shivered in the wintry blast; the sick lay down on beds of snow to perish. Food was of the coarsest kind and was served in scanty measures. Smallpox and the deadly jail fever raged unopposed. Every night ten or twenty died. Every day the meager bodies were thrown in to pits, with no burial rites. Even when led out for exchange there was little hope, for many died on the way home, or lingered on for but a few miserable weeks. So wretched was the condition of these exchanged prisoners that Washington refused to consider them fit subjects for exchange. You give us only the dead or dying he wrote Howe, for our well-fed and healthy prisoners, and pointed to the condition in which they reached him, diseased, famished, emaciated and dying, as they were conducted to their quarters. THE NEW HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE of April 26, 1777, said: “The enemy in New York continues to treat the American prisoners with great barbarity. Their allowance to each man for three days is one pound of beef, three worm-eaten biscuits, and a quart of salt water. The meat they must eat raw as they have not the smallest allowance of fuel. Owing to this more than savage cruelty, the prisoners die fast, and in the small space of three weeks no less than 1700 bodies perished. Lieut. Collins says that he was put with 225 men on board the Glasgow, Dec. 25, 1777 to be carried to Connecticut for exchange. They were shipboarded eleven days, crowded between decks, and twenty-eight of their number died through illness.” During the winter the smallpox made fearful ravages. Hundreds of citizens died and the wealthy fled in fright to their country homes to undergo inoculation. The violet putrid fevers of the prisoners spread to the inhabitants of New York. Of thirty persons in one family, only ten escaped. The graveyards teemed with burials. Terrible as the conditions were in the prisons, they were even worse on the prison ships: old hulks moored near Wallabout Bay. The most notorious of these was the JERSEY, whose evil repute is scarcely less than that of the black hole of Calcutta. Her guard was composed of Hessians. Frequently a thousand continental soldiers were confined on board, and there they sickened and died by hundreds. At night the hatches were battened down, in the morning the jailers shouted, “Rebels, turn out your dead.” No aid could be extended to them, not even medical service. Instructions to John Warren, surgeon, New York, June 12, 1776— Sir you are desired to go over to Long Island and to help form a hospital for the reception of the sick in General Green’s Brigade for your assistants, you will be pleased to take over three of the hospital mates. Make out a proper assortment of medicines; order it to be put up from the hospital stores. Keep a register of the sick, in which you are to make an entry of the times of their admission and discharge as well as of the diseases they have. What nurses you require for the sick, you will engage at the price of half dollar a week; the number not to exceed one for every ten persons, sick or wounded. Deliver out no stores of any kind to the regimental surgeons. When the sick require further aids than they can give, let them be reported to you, and if their cases require it, receive them into the general hospital. Take with you at least 1,500 bandages and a quantity of two, with a set of capital instruments, and all suitable dressings in case of action. For any debts contracted for the use of the general hospital, draw on me. You will employ the same person to supply fresh meat at the same prices, as in the hospital in New York. Please get additional 100 blankets and as many beds, applying to the quartermaster for straw, from time to time, and order the nurses, washerwomen, to clean them from time to time. An elderly mate is to take care of the blankets and bedding, and of the hospital furniture every week; to enter into a book for the purpose, what stores of this kind are given out, to examine what each sick person brings with them, and to see that nothing is carried out on their dismission not belonging to them. An orderly sergeant or corporal ought to be stationed at the hospital, to take charge of the arms, etc. of the sick, whilst in the hospital, and to give them up on his death or discharge. A carpenter ought to be constantly on hand to make coffins or perform other work. No blankets or other effects of the hospital to be expended at the funeral of those soldiers who die in the hospital. The potter’s field in Philadelphia shows the fatal effects of the cold weather on the military hospitals in the fall of 1775 and the succeeding winter. Instead of single graves, the dead were buried in large square pits, in which the coffins were placed in ranges, cross and pile, until near full and then covered over. Albany, New York, The main hospital at Fort George had been transferred to Albany late in 1776. Aug. 30, 1777— The city of Albany consists of about 300 houses, chiefly in the gothic style, the gable ends to the street, There is an ancient Dutch Church of stone, a Congregational Church, and an edifice called City Hall, which accommodates occasionally their general assembly and courts of justice. The hospital was erected during the last French War and is situated on an eminence overlooking the city. It is two stories high, having a wing at each end. It contains forty wards, capable of accommodating 500 patients. In those days hospitals had small wards. The 40 wards of the Albany hospital could not have had an average of more than 12 beds each, but this was a decided advantage at a time when it was impossible to prevent the spread of infectious diseases. The hospital at Albany appears to have been a wooden structure which disappeared shortly after the war. © Copyright 2010 by Mifflinburg Telegraph Weekly Newspaper Top of Page |
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