The Black Death in Australia

The first time I heard of the plague coming to Australia was in a cute children’s historical novel called “The Ratcatcher’s Daughter” by Pamela Rushby which is set in Brisbane during the plague in the 1900s. I love a good kid’s book and this one has some great themes like wealth, class and women’s rights. I also found mention in a newspaper of an old Irish dance called the Ratcatcher’s Daughter, sadly I couldn’t find any footage of the actual dance, so it may not have survived the test of time, but I imagine it includes a lot of hopping and thwacking. Feel free to film yourself doing the “Ratcatcher’s daughter” and put it on TikTok.

Now if I was teaching the Black Death in 2019 or before, I would usually have to explain what the word ‘pandemic’ meant, but the Coronavirus, has improved everyone’s vocabulary by at least one word, so instead I will dive into some etymology. Pan- comes from Greek origins meaning all and demos meaning people. So, in this case a pandemic endangers all of the people. As opposed to the word pandemonium which means all of the evil spirits or demons or panorama, all that can be seen or even pancreas which translates as all of the flesh- kinda gross. But this is not a linguistics podcast, this is a history podcast, so let’s get cracking.

Like any pandemic worth its salt, the Black Plague travelled to Australia by boat.

In 1895 a Tasmanian newspaper published one line under the heading Plague, “The Bubonic plague is raging at Hong Kong, and the mortality is very large.” I guess this tells us they were aware, but it is a bit vague, and clearly not enough of a threat to report on in any depth.

By the 1^st of January 1900 news reports were getting a little more specific, and the fear of the arrival of the pandemic on Australian shores was becoming more intense.

“The Board [of health] have accepted the Press telegrams as to presence of the plague at

Hawaii as being correct, and their executive officers have been instructed to be on

the alert in regard to vessels which may have touched any port in the Hawaiian

group, so that they may be promptly quarantined on arrival here.”

The newspapers on New Year’s Day of 1900 were chock full of reports of cases in the Pacific Islands including Noumea, Hawaii and Polynesia- which is a group of about 1000 islands that includes Samoa, Tonga and the Christmas Islands and there were urgent calls for an anti-plague vaccine.

In an article headlining, “Sydney Passengers Still at Large” a journalist reports “No further Information has been received with reference to the whereabouts of the eleven passengers from New Caledonia who landed in Sydney from the steamers Pacifique and Maroc.” Just to compare, this was a by-line from a March 2020 news article, “At least 440 passengers from the liner have fallen ill since being allowed to disembark without checks in Sydney.” Oh history, Shirley Bassey was right! You do have a habit of repeating yourself.

Another Sydney newspaper article gives us a real insight into the living conditions, race and class distinctions that existed in Sydney in the 1900s. This was just one year before Australia became federated and introduced the Immigration Restriction Act which limited non-white immigrants to Australia and remained in place for 70 years. The article says, “If the plague comes to Sydney … It [will] invariably visit the tenements of the slovenly, dirty, and poor. The reason is that it is propagated by uncleanliness. It has been aptly called the poor man’s plague.” The journalist then goes on to visit the Chinese quarters of Sydney and states, “All of the Chinese whose establishments face George-street are dirty in habits and environment.” So, although in this case, the Chinese were not being blamed for starting the outbreak, this journalist seemed to be ready to throw them under the bus in the case of an impending outbreak.

By February 1900 there were 2 reported cases in NSW and also a report that a Sydney town clerk was denying that any cases existed in the colony. But by April, private schools were being hit hard by the plague panic, because parents were pulling their children out of schools so they could be home schooled from their country estates.

Two years later, newspapers were getting more specific in their case number reporting, “The outbreak of plague has become more serious…and for the past couple of weeks scarcely a day has passed without providing one patient…No less than eight suspicious cases were reported to the health authorities, and of this number seven were definitely decided to be bubonic plague in its worst form…At present there are about a dozen patients at the… Hospital, the largest number ever in the place at one time.”

So far, we have uncovered apathy toward the plague, denial that it existed, class and race blame for the spread, ships bringing it to Australian shores, schooling from home, a race for a vaccine, economic ramifications, quarantines and overloaded hospitals. I could easily be talking about 2020, but no, it was 120 years ago.

But two things are different; panic buying and toilet paper. Although there was panic, people were not rushing out to stockpile, probably because they were a bit more self-sufficient, back then and didn’t have the unfettered access to credit cards that we do now. In fact, many people were actively avoiding the markets. You know, fear of rats and all that!

Another marked difference is the lack of toilet paper hoarding. Toilet paper wasn’t actually a household staple back then. It had been invented, but it wasn’t common. There are a couple of references in the imports section of the paper about a few cases of toilet paper coming into Australia, but general use didn’t seem to pick up until the end of the of the decade.

In case you need to know the symptoms of the plague, they are as listed by W. J Simpson M.D in a newspaper of the time, “The general symptoms of a typical case are shivering, high fever, nausea, vomiting, intense general or frontal headache, painful and tender bubo, staggering gait, …congested eyes, anxious expression, coated tongue, except on tip and edges, and restlessness, with uncontrollable desire to wander aimless to some distant locality.” I have looked at the plague a bit, but that is the first time I’ve heard of wanderlust being a symptom.

So, what does a government do in a pandemic, they create a “plague department”, and their job was to clean and disinfect premises and drains and destroy any articles that may be infected. By April of 1900 they had visited more than 11 000 properties and handed out 1500 notices in Sydney. Cases of imported fruit, over 1000 rabbits, 1400 barrels of fish, quarters of beef and sides of bacon were all destroyed in the cleansing. People were also ordered to remove rubbish, filth and manure and replace defective toilets.

But it wouldn’t be a bubonic plague without a few rat stories.

In Bendigo, the council was offering 3 pence per dead rat. I am not great at understanding ye-oldie money, but it was not a lot. A Brisbane newspaper even printed a recipe for killing rats and the journo bragged about his recipe killing 600 rats in 3 nights. If you can kill 600 rats in 3-nights, they must have been absolutely everywhere. The recipe only had 3 ingredients: flour, oatmeal and plaster of Paris. Apparently, when the rat eats it, the fluid from their gastrointestinal system, mixes with the plaster of Paris and then hardens and sets in their stomach killing them. The instructions do warn you not to use it if small children are around.

When you look up “rat-catcher and plague” on Trove, there are quite a few stories of local rat-catchers who had contracted the plague and obituaries of those who had died from the plague, so not only was is not a well-paid job, there was the very real danger of ending up infected. Looking at some historic photos of rat-catchers it seems a prerequisite was to have a dashing moustache and a jaunty hat, an added bonus was a Jack Russell terrier who are apparently boss at catching rats.

Another similarity between the past and present, which can be seen in the historic photos on the State Library of Queensland website, is the PPE (or Personal Protective Equipment) of the medical staff. There’s a fascinating photo of some doctors and nurses from Maryborough wearing their specially designed overalls, which are more of a floor length dress cape with a hood and a respirator. There is also of shot of two nurses delivering meals to some patients in isolation. The building is a tiny brick structure with two doors that have massive bolts on the outside, a barred window above the door and a slot for delivering food. You can see a poor person peeking out through the food delivery hole in the door. Maryborough also houses a memorial fountain that is dedicated to two nurses who died after volunteering to nurse some children who had contracted the pneumonic plague. From what I could see of recent photos, I am not sure that the fountain flows any more, but I could be wrong. I suppose I could find out by taking an 8-hour return trip to Maryborough, but I might let that remain a mystery for now.

To put the numbers into perspective, in the 10-year period that the plague was in Australia, there were only 1371 reported cases and 535 people died. In comparison, at the time of recording this episode, to give you a little history timestamp, in the 9 months that the Coronavirus has been circulating in Australia there have been more than 27 000 cases and 870 deaths.

Just a brief note on the song Ring a-ring a-Rosie, from which I use a sample in my composition. Some people have said that it hails from the black death and that the “a-tissue, a-tissue”, is referring to the symptoms, the pocket full of posies is to ward off the foul stench, or flowers to put on a grave, the “rosies” are the buboes and “ashes we all fall down” is the excessive death toll and cremations. But other historians argue, that sneezing is not a symptom and buboes are black not a rosy red colour, and it did not appear print until 1881. So the origins are contestable, but my song takes a little artistic licence. 

This is Kelly Chase, on the case.