Acrobatics in the Time of Cholera

by Jack Neely

It had first shown up in Calcutta around 1820 and crept across Asia and Europe. It made its way across the Atlantic on a ship in the '30s. In August, 1873, it was killing hundreds across Tennessee.

One victim was a young woman named Smith who lived in an untidy shack on Clinch Avenue near Second Creek. She died only 10 hours after she began vomiting. Many were old enough to recall the cholera epidemic of '54, which had killed a dozen Knoxvillians a day. But this time, we were losing only a few each week, maybe 30 since June. No one knew what caused cholera, but some speculated that since most of the victims lived in Knoxville's underside, down along the creeks, that the problem was moral in nature: a matter of "imprudence." It was easy to blame on the bad habits of the victims, many of whom were poor people on the fringes of society, living down near the water.

Doctors were convinced cholera was caused by "the promiscuous and reckless use of vegetables and fruit": specifically, watermelons, cucumbers, and sweet corn, which were banned in Knoxville and for a mile outside city limits. But there was a healthy black market Knoxville's small police force couldn't handle. Almost daily there came sightings of people flagrantly selling and eating melons right downtown, in plain view. Offered a black-market muskmelon by one desperate grocer, one man examined it carefully with opera glasses for what he called "sporads." He finally concluded he'd "take her, sporads or no sporads."

Doctors debated whether or not cholera was actually contagious. Dr. Frank Ramsey believed he had a sure cure: an ounce of sulfuric acid with about half as much of laudanum, the popular opium derivative.

Both Knoxville dailies ran columns on the editorial page headed Cholera Notes, citing the latest tolls from Chattanooga and Jonesborough. Refugees from more afflicted parts of the South arrived at the train station daily; Knoxvillians regarded them warily, looking for signs of disease. The Chronicle duly reported a description of one disembarking passenger, a man with a large boil on his nose.

The arrivals themselves were equally wary of Knoxville's liberties with food. At the Atkin House across Depot Street from the train station, one refugee insisted waiters keep the corn and butterbeans far from his table.

Those trying to forget the threat found diversions. In the lobby of the Lamar House, a crystal fountain on display featured "arched glass tubes through which alternate globules of air and water are forced." Said to be stunningly beautiful and ingenious, "not one drop of water falls upon the carpet." A Mr. Magee was taking orders.

As usual, German immigrant Peter Kern and the Jewish-Hungarian Spiro brothers were competing to meet Knoxville's demand for cool refreshments, both offering fresh ice cream and cool drinks. And J.C. Duncan launched his handsome wooden racing boat from the wharf, prompting hopes that Knoxville would become a rowing capital. Duncan named his boat after the fastest thing he could think of, the Telegraph. That might have seemed like a great escape from a cholera-anxious city, except that in 1873 the river still received a lot of raw sewage. People knew untreated sewage wasn't necessarily good for you, even if they didn't yet know it was the leading cause of cholera.

If you wanted to get away from the cholera, you could catch the next train for Wyoming. By one estimate, half of Knox-ville's population had left town for the summer. Or you could climb on top of a building.

On a Saturday evening in early August, some 4,000 Knoxvillians were crowded onto Gay Street, from the Lamar House two blocks over to Clinch, looking up. Across Gay Street, 40 feet up in the air, strong men stretched a single rope, from the roof of the three-story Ramsey Block building to the top of Dr. Hunter's Drug Store.

Just after 7:00, as the Mechanics Cornet Band played, the celebrated Professor D'Orville, standing on top of the Ramsey Block, stepped out over the crowd. He walked right out there, "with all the ease and nonchalance of a Blondin"—a reference to the Frenchman who'd tightroped across Niagara Falls.

There was no net, just a sea of upturned faces. After walking across, the professor went through a series of stunts: He walked across blindfolded. He walked across with a wheelbarrow. He stood on his head. He did something on stilts. "When he walked across with plucky young Woody Bowyer strapped to his back, neither flinching a muscle, the enthusiasm of the spectators was boundless." Money collectors hustled among the crowd, collecting silver dimes and quarters.

The professor imitated "a tipsy and weather-beaten female" and went tottering out as if ready to fall. But he/she carried a black bottle, and a placard labeled "Hunter's Stomach Bitters." Repeated swigs from the bottle appeared to give the character the strength and composure to go on. Dr. Hunter apparently sold a few bottles of the stuff that evening.

When the show was over, the crowd turned its attention to a group of "young Arabs" who'd climbed out onto a Gay Street awning to watch the performance and found themselves stuck there after someone closed and locked the windows behind them. In the papers, the event would be remembered as "The Tightrope Soirée."

The joy of the big crowds on Gay Street surprised some, who took it as a good sign: "capital evidence that no cholera excitement exists here," the Chronicle editorialized.

The self-righteous may have felt obliged to revise their theories about the low-life moral sources of the disease when, two weeks later, Judge T.A.R. Nelson, former congressman and retired state supreme court justice, died suddenly. Judge Nelson would be among the last victims of what may have been America's last cholera epidemic.