It’s late September 1924 and a group of
migrant workers from Mexico are sitting in a small neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles
having a beer and listening to a tale that is being told by a day laborer for the Los
Angeles Railway. His name is Jesus and he regales his buddies
with the hilarious story of how he’d been living with a terrible stench in his house,
but he had no idea where it was coming from. Jesus got to work, turning his house upside
down, but he couldn’t find anything rotten. Then he wondered, what about under the house. He soon found the cause of the awful smell. It was a rat…a dead, rotting rat. He picked the thing up and threw it in the
trash can. One week later and people were no longer laughing…they
were now crying at the death of Jesus and his daughter. Soon others in the neighborhood would drop
like flies. Jesus had started a plague. His full name was Jesus Lajun and that neighborhood
contained a vibrant community of people mostly of Latino descent. He lived at 700 Clara Street, which would
later become known as “The Death House”, but as you will see, it wasn’t the only
death house on that street. Worse things would happen a few doors down. The neighbourhood was a bustling place back
in the day, but as you all know, busy places are not so great when a virus breaks out. You see, Jesus had contracted the bubonic
plague from that dead rat, and what happened after was the last plague epidemic in the
USA. We’re guessing a lot of you are thinking…wait
a minute, isn’t the bubonic plague that thing from the Middle Ages that wiped out
good chunks of Europe…wasn’t the plague dead and buried centuries ago? The answer is no…it’s still here…it’s
been here all the time...it’s still in the good ole USA right now, but there aren’t
many cases these days. In fact, if you look at the CDC’s website
you can see that in 2018 there was just one confirmed case of plague in the U.S..
2015 was a bad year regarding the American plague, because 16 people got it that year
and 4 of them died. One of the victims was just 16 years old. This wasn’t called an outbreak because the
cases happened in various states in the U.S. over the entire year, so the 1924 plague was
what we now call the last outbreak of this pestilence. Ok, before we get back to Jesus and the chaos
he unknowingly caused, we think you need to know just a little bit more about the plague. Here’s a short plague 101 for you, just
so you don’t get panicked when there’s already a panic-demic going on right now. Over 80 percent of plague victims come down
with the bubonic form. The other forms of plague are Septicemic plague
and Pneumonic plague. They relate to infections of the blood and
of the lungs. If you get the bubonic plague, you’ll feel
like crap and get a fever and a headache and you won’t have any energy. You will then get little bumps on your body. These are swollen lymph nodes and we call
them buboes. That’s kind of a cute word, fitting for
a cartoon character of a cute puppy, but buboes are nasty things and they hurt a lot. The bubonic plague, as was discovered by millions
of people hundreds of years ago, can be deadly. The bad news is, it’s estimated that if
it's left untreated it will kill 66% to 93% of its victims. The good news is these days we can treat it
with antibiotics and the mortality rate now for treated people is anywhere from one to
15 percent. Ok, so, on the first day there was Jesus,
and Jesus picked up a rat. That rat had fleas, and Jesus was bitten by
one of them. That terrible flea was only doing what fleas
do, and it certainly wasn’t aware that it was carrying something called the Yersinia
pestis bacteria. It passed this ungodly bacteria to Jesus,
and on the second day, Jesus spread the word of his rat story to others and others later
died. On the sixth day, Jesus was a dead man. So, within the rat community of this poor
Los Angeles neighborhood there were fleas carrying the plague, and you certainly didn’t
want to get up close to one of them. By the way, when animals transmit a disease
to humans we call this “zoonosis”. Jesus was what we called the “Index Patient”,
which means he was the first reported case. Soon after he found the stinky dead rat he
developed a painful lump in his groin and felt really unwell. The problem is, that bacteria had spread to
his lungs, and so Jesus was capable of spreading the plague around through airborne droplets
of the bacterium. It then turned into the more deadly pneumonic
plague, which is transmissible to humans. His doctor didn’t believe he had the plague,
and said instead he had some kind of venereal disease and that was why he has swollen lymph
nodes. That was a deadly mistake that doctor made,
because Jesus passed the pneumonic plague to his daughter. Her name was Francisca and she experienced
respiratory problems and the doctors said she had pneumonia, not the plague. A week later and she was dead. The cause of death was wrongly stated to have
been double pneumonia, but any medical professional should have had plague on their mind. You see, in the year 1900 it’s thought that
a ship that landed in San Francisco which had come from China had a rat living on it. The rat, or rats, disembarked at the city
and then went scurrying around, all of them carrying deadly fleas in their fur. People later started dropping dead from what
certainly looked like plague, but the city didn’t close the port and tried to convince
people there was no plague on U.S. soil. A plague outbreak was very bad for business. Most of the media did the same and wrote headlines
like this one, “No Genuine Plague: Sensational Stories Are Without Foundation.” The headline was wrong, and from 1900 to 1908
there were 280 plague cases and 172 deaths in San Francisco. The city did a good job of exterminating the
vermin, but those fleas had a habit of jumping onto other animals. Those animals, including those dear cuties
the squirrels, travelled around a bit and the plague eventually reached LA in 1924. Shortly after Francisca died, a pregnant woman
who’d been taking care of her also died and she had the same symptoms. Her name was Lucena Samarano and soon her
entire family of eight would all be dead. Her house, 742 Clara Street, was called “The
Death House.” Lucena’s cause of death was listed as “heart
disease.” Soon her husband became ill, and died...her
friend got it, and died, and eventually all her kids got it, and died. In fact, a lot of folks who went near that
house got very sick and died within days. So really...heart disease... Then a Catholic priest who had given last
rights to some of the deceased came down with the exact same symptoms. And guess what, he did the talking at Lucena’s
funeral service at 742 Clara Street, and as you can imagine, in that small tight-knit
community a lot of folks turned up to that service. The priest died, too. These people had no idea what was going on
and looked up to the heavens and asked God for answers, when they should really have
been looking under their floorboards. The authorities should have known sooner,
since one doctor that travelled to that poor neighborhood, a place where people lived in
absolute squalor, noticed that there were a lot of very sick people. Some of them could hardly breathe, and some
were deathly ill. A few people were taken to hospital but still
the diagnosis was not plague, with different doctors saying it must be meningitis, or influenza,
or pneumonia, or even typhus. Ok, so you’d think that people would have
been shouting plague from the rooftops by now, but it wasn’t until one month after
Jesus kicked the bucket that a Los Angeles County Hospital pathologist identified the
disease and announced, “Hey guys, we’ve got a plague outbreak going on here.” That doctor, a guy named George Manor, stepped
up and said this looks like plague. With the help of a colleague, he looked through
a microscope and what he saw was the deadly Yersinia pestis bacteria. "Beautiful but damned,” said Manor after
seeing the true cause of deaths in that community. Meanwhile, friends and relatives of the deceased
kept dying, either in hospitals or in their own homes. People panicked…they isolated themselves. The blame game came next, and quite a few
not so intelligent people from outside the neighborhood started saying things such as,
“This is a Mexican disease.” 90 percent of those that died were indeed
Mexican, but that didn’t mean it was a Mexican disease. They had just been the unfortunate folks who
had no choice but to live in squalid houses where there were lots of rats. Quarantine then began and the neighborhood
where the disease had started was sectioned off and guarded by police and volunteers. No one in, no one out, was the order given,
in what they called, “The Mexican District.” Around 1,800 to 2,500 people were confined
to that district, and at the same time panic ensued all over the USA, especially when people
read headlines like this one which was published in the New York Times, “Pneumonic Plague
Takes Seven More Victims.” “How has the ancient disease gotten here
in the new world,” people screamed. “The Black Death is on our doorstep,”
others shouted. LA, for many outsiders, was the picture-perfect,
postcard paradise of the USA. Health authorities soon started telling all
people in the city to keep their homes clean. An announcement was then given. “Gatherings of all nature must now stop.” Movie houses were empty and kids were kept
away from school. LA was in the grip of a great panic, and when
trolley cars went near the damned neighborhoods the conductors shouted, “No one gets on
and no one gets off.” The Los Angeles mayor, one George Cryer, called
an emergency meeting. Present were health officials, and also anyone
with big business interests in the city. The question was, should they shut the city
down, and how much would that damage business. Some emergency procedures were set in place,
but there was no city shutdown. Anyone suspected of having the plague had
to be sent to a special part of the county hospital. Funeral directors were ordered not to embalm
the bodies of Mexicans, or anyone else whose death was of undetermined causes. Soon five urban districts were cordoned off
by rope and around them stood 400 quarantine guards. Some of those guys had fought in the First
World War, so those were some tough dudes. No one in, no one out, and another order,
“No Shooting.” Well, they did shoot any dogs, cats, or chickens
that got too close to them. Charities got together and delivered essential
items to those in quarantine, and brave medical workers visited the neighborhoods. Meanwhile, rumors persisted in the U.S. that
hundreds of Mexicans were dying in those sectioned off neighborhoods. The cleanup started, and it was fierce. Houses were ripped apart; some entire shacks
were burned to the ground. Petroleum and Sulphur were sprayed in houses
and lime and rat poison were scattered everywhere. Within months, around 2,500 buildings had
been completely destroyed, and yet, no compensation at all was granted to the people who had been
displaced from their home. One LA resident later commented on what he
saw from outside one of those neighborhoods. He said, “It was an eerie sight to see the
‘sky high’ flames at night and the reflections in the river, as well as the shadowy figures
of firemen running around the quarantined area.” The neighborhoods in the “Macy Street District”
and “Little Mexico,” with their ramshackle dwellings were pretty much burned to the ground. It was the best of times, and the worst of
times, because some people were kind and helpful to those quarantined people, but others were
not so nice. LA’s Chamber of Commerce chief actually
implied that the problem was Mexicans and how they lived. Some people risked their lives going into
those neighborhoods to help out. Mexican bands turned up outside the quarantined
areas and played music for the people inside. At the same time, others used the disease
to propagate xenophobia and racism against Mexicans and other minorities, something that
we often see in times of crises even today. What happened next was the great rat extermination
program. The city spent a whopping $250,000 on finding
and killing those flea carrying pests. That amount is close to four million in today’s
money. It wasn’t only the Mexican neighborhoods
that got the treatment, poor neighborhoods consisting mostly of Russian, Chinese and
Japanese immigrants were also part of the program. In fact, a neighborhood that was back then
called Chinatown was also pretty much destroyed. What's surprising, is that it was only when
the occupants of those quarantined neighborhoods saw this going on that they found out that
rats were the problem and that they had been dying of the plague. They’d actually been kept in the dark as
to what was happening. In fact, the media had been told not to make
a big issue of what was going one. Certain media urged people not to join in
the hysterical gossip about a plague killing hundreds of people. One LA official had a meeting and warned the
attendees, “No disease known has such an effect upon the business world as the plague." Some journalists wrote that the Los Angeles
Chamber of Commerce had tried to play down what happened because of the possibility of
economic collapse and land values dropping. Remember that the City of Angels back then
was seen as the place to be, and if it became the place of the plague people would leave
and tourists would turn their backs on the city. The quarantine and rat extermination program
worked, and in the end around 30 people lost their lives to the plague. The main problem was that it was turned into
an ethnic disease and many people lost their homes and got nothing back. Now go watch this show, “What Made The Black
Death (The Plague) so Deadly?” or this show, “Why Spanish Flu Killed Over 50 Million
People - Deadliest Plague in Modern History.”
