(spooky music) - 'Twas a dark day when
the ship came to harbor, a ship of death, they say. Aye, a ship that delivered
a great pestilence upon these hills, as if by magic. I shall never forget the bodies and the acrid smell of
sulfur in the streets, as if from the devil himself, the year of Our Lord, 1900. ♪ The Middle Ages were ma- ♪ (projector whirring) ♪ The Bubonic Plague in America. ♪ When you think of the plague, most of us think, the Middle Ages, dark, filthy pits of
pestilence, dead in the streets, a horror show of ye olden times. ♪ Dead bodies in the carts, girl ♪ ♪ Skeletons in the art, girl ♪ But at the turn of the 20th century, the bubonic plague made its way to San Francisco, California, the modern cosmopolitan
heart of the American West, a bright, new world that nobody
believed could fall victim to a disease of another
time, another place, until it did. Let's take you back to 1900
in San Francisco's Chinatown. Remember, this was the era
of the Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882. The act was the first
major U.S. legislation that essentially banned
a specific ethnic group by denying immigration and citizenship to all Chinese people. There was already vicious
anti-Chinese sentiment, but the Exclusion Act made it much worse. As a note, there's been a
real uptick in the comments saying, "I respect you, but please don't make this about race. This is a human story,
not a racist story." Listen, folks, my hands
are a little tied here, because you know which type
of stories tend to involve a strong through line of race? Like, all the stories from history. It's not like we're
twisting ourselves in knots trying to make fetch happen. - Gretchen, stop trying
to make fetch happen. It's not going to happen. - Discrimination largely confined the Chinese people of San Francisco to living in Chinatown. But in 1900, ironically,
the Year of the Rat in the Chinese Zodiac, I'm a rat, Is that bad news for me? what happened in Chinatown
did not stay in Chinatown, bursting forth into San Francisco while the whole nation paid attention. (bouncy music)
(projector whirring) Right here on the corner of
Grant and Jackson in Chinatown is now a Citibank, but in
1900, it was the Globe Hotel. The Globe Hotel was basically a flophouse, four stories tall, with over
300 people living in it, and some of the worst living
conditions in San Francisco. Living in these terrible conditions was 41-year-old Wong Chut King. Wong lived below street level here in a squalid room, with two roommates, where they shared one wooden bed. Sewage was seeping up through the ground, the toilet was a hole in the dirt, and there was a rat-infested sewer pipe running through the room. In February of 1900, Wong
became seriously ill. He was at death's door, so his two roommates took him away to a coffin shop and funeral home and left him there. (bouncy music) Halls of tranquility were,
in fact, pungent places where the dead and dying would
lay next to their coffins, waiting to go to the cemetery, just biding time until the
dying person became a corpse, and it was time to go. Wong, a man who had
been sending money home to his family in Guangdong,
China, for 20 years, died alone, delirious and in pain. (bouncy music)
(projector whirring) This is 806, 813, 817. It would be about right here where the old Wing Sang Coffin Shop was where the roommates brought
Wong as he was dying. But it just so happened that
while Wong's body was here, a city health inspector came
by for a routine inspection. And what does he see? This huge, black lump
on Wong's right groin. And he goes, "This doesn't look good." So he calls in his supervisor,
who comes to see the lump and goes, "Oh, no!" It was a textbook bubo. A little buboes 101 here. The bubo is the bubonic
plague's calling card. When you're infected, your lymph nodes become swollen and painful to the touch, developing into the plague's
signature egg-shaped, pus-filled, bacteria-filled lumps. Those lumps can be
found in the groin area, the armpits, on the legs. Where there be lymph
nodes, there be bubos. The look of the plague was undeniable; sores, fever, delirium, the
body just evacuating itself. The disease does merciless
and efficient battle in a person's body. ♪ You'll get acral necrosis ♪ ♪ From the Yersinia Pestis ♪ ♪ And it makes your
tongue all black, girl ♪ ♪ Gonna bury you out in back, girl. ♪ - When the plague bacillus,
Yersinia pestis, moves in, it craftily hides itself
from the immune system. Shh. It then moves into the lymph nodes and destroys the white blood cells. Before long, the body
is teaming with plague, and sepsis takes over. Eventually, the internal
organs hemorrhage so badly they appear to liquefy. I'll just say that one again. It looks like your internal
organs are liquefying. The victim's blood pressure
plummets, and then blessedly, they descend into a coma and then death, usually within a few days. Needless to say, an outbreak of the plague in 1900 San Francisco would be disastrous. But this wasn't out of nowhere. What we call the third pandemic, basically the third
huge wave of the plague in world history, was already taking place
in Southwestern China in the late 19th century, with tens of thousands of people dying. Now, it wasn't the 50 million people of the second wave of the
plague in the Middle Ages, but it was very bad, and it was already spreading to Hong Kong. The ships that brought immigrant
workers to San Francisco came from Guangdong, the
province in southern China, often stopping in Hong Kong,
and then Honolulu, Hawaii, and then arriving in San Francisco. If the plague made it into San Francisco it would be no time at all before it spread through North America via the transcontinental railroad. Who was gonna stop this from happening? This guy, Joseph Kinyoun. Kinyoun was the rising star bacteriologist in the Western hemisphere. He had studied with Louis Pasteur, he had been a leading voice in establishing germ theory
as a legitimate science, and he was the first American to study samples of the plague bacterium. On paper, there was no
more qualified person to safeguard San
Francisco from the plague. Prior to San Francisco, Kinyoun had been living
the high society life in Washington, DC, but there were disagreements,
and drama, and jealousy with the U.S. Surgeon
General, Walter Wyman, So Kinyoun was banished
to isolated Angel Island, San Francisco's quarantine station. He thought this post was beneath him, and backwater, and podunk, and there were only
dummies practicing medicine in California (laughs). Surely that hubris would not come back to
bite him in any way. (bouncy music)
(projector whirring) Here on Angel Island, this
cove is now called Ayala Cove, but it used to be called Hospital Cove, and it's the place where
Kinyoun probably let the plague into San Francisco. It was a quarantine station, which means it was designed to make sure that people and goods
infected with the plague did not get in. In June of 1899, the Nippon Maru anchored in San Francisco Bay. It was flying a yellow flag, which is the international symbol for Disease Aboard, like
Baby on Board, but less fun. The Nippon Maru had
originated in Hong Kong, but had to stop in Yokohama,
Japan, and Honolulu, Hawaii, because people were dying of the plague. Two more passengers died before
it made it to San Francisco. They also found two stowaways
from the Nippon Maru floating dead in San Francisco Bay, wearing Nippon Maru life jackets, and the local health officials are like, "Well, we think they drowned, but they also look like
they have the plague." But Kinyoun was like,
"No, I am the medicine. I am the authority. You local health officials don't know what you're talking about. I'm gonna let the boat
and all the passengers into San Francisco." Welcome. (projector whirring) This first time, Kinyoun
may have gotten lucky, because despite the literal
floating plague corpses, the disease didn't seem
to infect the city. But then, about six months later, the bubonic plague infected
Chinatown in Honolulu. Plague paranoia hit Honolulu so hard they decided to burn
down certain buildings where plague had been found, but the wind spread the fires, and all of Chinatown was engulfed. It burned for 17 days, leaving nothing behind
but smoldering ruins. Honolulu was a mess. When he heard about this,
Kinyoun became pensive, waiting for when, not if,
the plague would make its way from Honolulu to San Francisco. (bouncy music)
(projector whirring) For months, Kinyoun would
gaze out on the ocean, vaguely in the direction of Hawaii, and wonder when the plague
was coming to San Francisco. Which boat would be the boat? Which passenger would be patient zero? (bouncy music)
(projector whirring) The city's first
bacteriologist was called here to Wing Sang Coffin Shop to collect samples from Wong to take to Angel Island
for Kinyoun to test. But while that was happening, the Board of Health issued
an emergency measure to quarantine all of Chinatown. Wong's clothes and bedding were
thrown into the street here, and fumigated with pots of sulfur, and Wong was wrapped in a shroud dipped in bichloride of mercury before his body was
placed in a lead coffin lined with chloride of lime. He was taken to the Odd Fellows Cemetery where his body was incinerated. Meanwhile, back at the
Globe Hotel, residents fled, fearing that their home
would be burned down, just like in Honolulu. Instead, they were fumigated
with sulfur and formaldehyde. It was said that the whole district smelled like rotten eggs. While all this is happening, and the health officials and
the residents of Chinatown are panicking, the white citizens of San
Francisco barely batted an eye. That's because most people believed, including the governor, who
we'll get to in a moment, that the plague was a Chinese disease. - The China plague. - This is what the Navy's
Surgeon General said. "It's a disease peculiar to the orient, and seldom, if ever, attacks Europeans. There's absolutely no danger
of the plague getting here." I feel like if there's one thing we know, it's that the plague
attacks Europeans, right? Like, it's the plague! Didn't it take out half
the population of Europe? ♪ This plague is bubonic ♪ ♪ B-U-B-O-N-I-C ♪ While the Chinese in San
Francisco prepared for the worst, a San Francisco Examiner headline read, "Why San Francisco is Plague-Proof." They also believed white people
were immune to the plague because they ate lots of meat,
and Chinese people ate rice. - The China plague. - So that's a reason. Back on Angel Island, it
was going to take three days to get a conclusive diagnosis
of the plague from Kinyoun. But instead of waiting three little days, the Mayor of San Francisco, James Phelan, lifted the quarantine, because he didn't think it was the plague. Plus, he was a slumlord who needed his Chinatown tenants to pay rent (chuckles) so... But Kinyoun was already worried, and so he telegrammed Wyman, the Surgeon General in Washington, with a coded message, "Suspected bumpkin," bumpkin being code for the plague. One day after the quarantine had already been lifted from Chinatown, Kenyan confirmed that Wong
had indeed died of the plague. During this time, volunteer doctors had been going door-to-door,
looking for plague victims, but they were encouraged not
to find anything incriminating, thereby minimizing the chance
of finding more plague. "Oh, that bump there? Uh,
that is what we call egg leg. That's not a plague bubo, to be sure!" One week after Wong's death, and just after the Chronicle announced, "The Bubonic Scare has Collapsed", the body of Chu Gam was found
at 723 Sacramento Street, and Kinyoun confirmed that he
had also died of the plague. That's eight days, two plague deaths, quickly followed by two more
suspected plague deaths. The authorities weren't the only ones trying to minimize the plague. The Chinese residents in
Chinatown were terrified of what might happen to
them should plague be found. Remember Chinatown in
Honolulu getting burned down? So they began to hide
both their living and dead with any symptoms. The Chinese didn't want
there to be plague. The government didn't
want there to be plague. The press didn't want there to be plague. So everyone just goes, "No plague here. Just egg leg again (chuckles). So many cases of egg leg this year!" Until April 24th, May
1st, May 15th, May 17th, plague death, plague death,
plague death, plague death. Then after that, eight
more people in a week. An experimental vaccine was
brought out, the Haffkine serum. It was fine. It worked half the time (chuckles). It's in the name. Riots and protests took over Chinatown. The Chinese did not wanna be
guinea pigs for this serum. Local tongs, which are organizations that both protected and terrorized
the Chinese in Chinatown, think a benevolent society
run by Tony Soprano, threatened violence to any Chinese who dared take the serum, and most white San Franciscans
refused to take the vaccine because it was... - The China plague. - But word was slipping out that San Francisco was
dealing with the plague. Texas and Louisiana
threatened to quarantine all people and goods
coming from California, a move which would have
ruined the California economy. William Randolph Hearst, renowned newspaper man and shit disturber, published a headline, "The Black Plague Creeps into America." Kinyoun and the Board of
Health had only one recourse. (bouncy music) Here at the intersection
of Kearny and Broadway is where the plague barriers were erected to keep Chinatown quarantined. Now, the California Board of Health wanted to burn Chinatown down, but they had to settle
for just quarantining it. Eight-foot-tall wooden
fences, barbed wires, and 150 police officers,
surrounded Chinatown. No goods, services,
people, food, or the dead could go in or out. Then there was the Governor
of California, Henry Gage. A rancher with a Bowie knife, a huge walrus mustache, and believed to be under
the thumb of big railroad, Gage was widely disliked by
voters and lawmakers alike. But most of all, Gage hated all
of the plague press coverage and called it the plague fake. Uh, can't make that up. - The plague fake. - Gage believed the
plague was a conspiracy against his power and was furious that all this bad press would endanger $25 million
of fruit crop earnings in California. To fight what he believed
were conspiracies against him, he started more conspiracy theories, like saying that the
microscope slides Kinyoun had from the San Francisco plague victims were secretly switched out for samples from Japan or India. - The plague fake. - Governor Gage was furious that doctors dared challenge
his medical knowledge. He was not a doctor, he was a former sheep dealer. (sheep bleating) He refused to fund any
sort of state quarantine, and told the state Board of Health to withhold news and
sanitation information from any other states. - The plague fake. - Gage had it out for
Kinyoun, specifically, seeing him as the plague's
chief conspirator. Gage and the press
constantly attacked him, calling him suspicious Kinyoun, and Gage successfully
made Kinyoun the villain of the San Francisco plague story. But Kinyoun had one final hope for the plague to be taken seriously. In January of 1901, a commission of scientists
were sent from Washington, DC. Of course, Governor Gage was not happy that DC had not let him
personally choose the doctors, complaining that he
had intended to pack it with doctors he considered allies. - The plague fake. - "Plague," they wrote, "was present beyond a possible doubt." Gage railed against the committee, accusing them of carelessness
and contamination, calling the whole inquiry
unjust and unfair. Here's where Gage was smart. He knew that Surgeon
General Wyman also wanted to cover up the mishandling
of the plague under his watch, so they secured a deal. San Francisco and
California would have to pay for Chinatown's sanitation, and in return, Wyman and
the federal government would never go public with the commission's findings of plague. California got to save its economy, and Wyman got to save face, and Gage got to dunk on Doctor Kinyoun. Speaking of Kinyoun, he was replaced with a man named Doctor Joseph White, and then he was demoted
and transferred to Detroit. The most reviled man in San
Francisco was sent packing with his tail between his legs, and for the time being,
Governor Gage had won. Unfortunately, you can only
cover things up for so long. The plague was still in San Francisco, let's not lose sight of that, and nobody could find any
rhyme or reason to its spread. With Kinyoun ousted, who
would save San Francisco? Drum roll, enter Doctor Rupert Blue. Rupert Blue was a young Southern man from a well-to-do military family. The rap on Blue, pre-plague,
was that he was average, not a great scientific brain like Kinyoun, just a nice guy with an easy-to-like way. Blue was sent to San Francisco
to head up sanitation and find all those living plague victims that everyone had been hiding. But to be honest, Blue was
really sent to San Francisco to fail, or at least hold the nothing-to-see-here status quo under Kinyoun's replacement, Joseph White. Blue ended up surprising everyone. (bouncy music)
(projector whirring) It was in this Merchant Street alley that Rupert Blue rented a small room to serve as a makeshift
morgue, laboratory, and headquarters. He came to practically live
here, surrounded by the corpses, but the thing was, there
weren't enough corpses. The people of Chinatown
were still hiding them. Blue had to try several tactics. The first was his own
private hearse service that went out to pick up the bodies and bring them back to him for autopsy. Second, Blue and his
team had to build trust with the people of Chinatown. They started taking the
Haffkine serum themselves, which did not sound fun, it made them delirious and feverish, but it did build trust with the people. I'll take the serum, you
take the serum, right? Blue also hired Wong Chung, the man who had previously been so vital in helping the plague
commission find bodies. Wong could explain the
Chinese culture to Blue, and then Blue could, in turn, be more sensitive to their needs. It was this trust being built that allowed more bodies to be revealed. But then, in the fall of 1900, something happened that
changed everything. Two white plague victims
outside of Chinatown, 50-year-old Alexander Winters, and 53-year-old Marguerete Saggau. Winters survived, but Saggau did not. Blue had to rack his brain. What in the world connected
Winters, Saggau, and Chinatown? There's a car coming, so I
have to do my dramatic reveal. It was rats. (dramatic music) It was rats. (dramatic music) Rats. It was rats. Rats. Rats. Rats. ♪ It was rats. ♪ It was rats. (projector whirring) Rats were everywhere
in 1900s San Francisco. Rats are still everywhere. There's probably a rat near you right now. Check under the couch, seriously. Rats are the most common
mammal in the world and are built to survive. They can find food anywhere, smell poison down to
the parts per million, squish through an opening
the size of their skull, survive a 50-foot fall, breed like crazy, jump four feet in the air,
and swim better than you. Rats are great (chuckles). Unfortunately, they're also very good at carrying the plague. Well, they aren't, their fleas are. The bubonic plague is zoonotic, a disease that can be spread
between animals and people. Say a rat gets the plague. Fleas on that rat will bite it and suck up all that
yummy rat plague blood. Then the flea jumps to the
next closest blood bag, maybe you, a human, and bites you, and gives you the plague. Rupert Blue has been
obsessed with the plague, working non-stop. His marriage is over. He can't figure out the connection between rats and the plague, even though he knows there is one, and he feels like a failure, so he requests a transfer
away to Milwaukee to clear his head. But when Blue leaves, San Francisco descends into chaos. The city health inspectors are
in cahoots with Governor Gage and just stop attending the
autopsies of plague victims. The powerful companies in Chinatown are still refusing to cooperate, and hiding bodies, and
lying about autopsy results. But then, San Francisco gets a new mayor. Amazing! Finally! We've been waiting for this! Oh, cool, he's a plague denier who believes the plague never
existed in the first place. Great. That guy, Handsome Gene Schmitz, takes the funding away
from the Board of Health and stops any sanitation
efforts in the city. With garbage and rats piling
up, the plague goes away? No, obviously not, it's 1902, and the plague is surging. Rupert Blue is gone, and poor Wong Chung, his counterpart in Chinatown, is still desperately trying to keep tracking the
plague and saving lives, even though both white officials
and Chinese company bosses are against him. Someone even tries to kill him. Finally, it's getting so bad
that the federal government, remember the folks who agreed to help California cover up the plague, they send in another investigator who sends back one line. Please send Blue as soon as possible. In February of 1903, Rupert
Blue returned to San Francisco after being gone 14 months. People are dying, other
states are threatening to refuse imports from California, and Blue is back with a mission, stone cold rat killer. Blue immediately puts a sanitation plan into effect in Chinatown, disinfectant through the streets, soaking basements with carbolic acid, mercury dichloride, and lye, and paving streets for street sweepers. But he now believed
the most important task was rat catching. Autopsying rats became
his lab's primary purpose. He even paid freelance rat
trappers 10 cents a rat, dead or alive. How's that for a gig economy job? Each rat would be nailed
to a roof shingle, autopsied, and then incinerated. And you know what? Blue's rat crusade
actually started to work. While cases still appeared,
they began to dwindle. And that may have been
the end of the story if... (sighs)
(fingers snapping) Wait, what was that other thing
about San Francisco in 1906? Oh, right, in April of 1906, an earthquake registering
a magnitude of 7.9 hit San Francisco. 80% of the city was destroyed, over 3,000 people killed,
400,000 residents left homeless. It's still the deadliest natural disaster in California's history. Over 35,000 people made their way to parks like the Presidio, and refugee tent cities sprang up. The close quarters of these tent cities caused one small problem. Can you guess what it was? I'll just tell you. It was the plague. The camps were rat heaven, rotting food, human waste, poor hygiene. Rupert Blue was sent into the fray and immediately began sanitizing the cooking and the toilets, and burning garbage, and killing rats, like Rupert Blue likes to do. Wyman, the Surgeon General, believed that Blue had done it again, yes, king, and sent him away, back to Virginia. But within a year, the
plague had returned again. It's getting exhausting (chuckles). (bouncy music)
(projector whirring) When Blue returned to San
Francisco in the summer of 1907, it was a city in disarray. The plague was everywhere
except, ironically, Chinatown, which was the only place in the city that was mostly ratless,
rat-free, sans rats. Blue obtained a house here
at 401 Fillmore Street to turn into central
headquarters for rat eradication. Rats were brought here and piled up to be dissected, assembly line style. If a rat was thought to have the plague, its tissues would be cultured, and those cells injected into guinea pigs to confirm the diagnosis, and then the rats would be incinerated. Blue and his team began to
call this place the Rattery. I wonder if these people
here now know that they live in the most iconic rat slaughter
and dissection location in American history. But while Blue and his team were killing more rats than ever, at least 13,000 per week, the plague continued to
appear all over the city. If Blue was gonna beat this
most virulent incarnation of the San Francisco bubonic plague, citizens were going to have to commit to actually changing their habits and giving some consideration to their fellow San Franciscans. Catch a rat, save a human. It seems so simple. Plus, the great white fleet was coming. The great white fleet was an
armada of 16 U.S. Navy ships that were sailing around the world, essentially showing off America's military and economic power. Coming to San Francisco would prove that the city was back,
baby, after the earthquake, even if it wasn't, and back after the plague, even if it wasn't. But if San Francisco couldn't
get its act together, the armada would go up to Seattle instead. Ooh, bummer. (bouncy music)
(projector whirring) All these big corporations,
like Wells Fargo, Levi Strauss, the
Southern Pacific railroad, got together and decided to privately fund Blue's rat killing and
public health campaign. Blue now had an extra 400 workers catching and killing rats in the streets, plus 3,000 pounds of cheese
for the task of rat catching. Why didn't we think of
cheese before (chuckles)? There was also a committee that was offering 25
cents for every male rat, and 50 cents for every female rat. In 2020 dollars, that's 3.29 for male rats and 6.58 for female rats. Citizens went rat wild. Boys roamed the streets
in rat killing squads. The press published pieces about
rat killing best practices. Blue wasn't quite ready to celebrate, but with pressure, he relented and gave the city a clean bill of health. On May 6th, 1908, the great white fleet made it to the Golden Gate, ushering in a new era for San Francisco. By fall of that year,
Blue really had done it. He had beaten the plague in San Francisco. (projector whirring) But what is our takeaway? Is it that we learned our lesson about the handling of
the spread of disease? - And this is their new hoax, and the risk to the American
people remains very low. It's going to be under control. It's like a miracle, it will disappear. I'll be right eventually.
(interviewer laughs) - No, it's not that. But I won't leave you on such a dire note. If history has proven anything, it's that despite the guys in
charge throwing up roadblocks and the masses being in denial, we have triumphed before. If Blue and the rat squad can kill hundreds of thousands of rats and stop the literal plague, we can, I don't know, wear a mask? This video was made
with generous donations from Death enthusiasts, just like you. (spooky music) Just obviously a plant. Hold on. Ooh, ah, medieval Bluetooth speaker. Get a latte when I'm done. ♪ When I'm done, I get a latte, oh ♪ Vibrato, that's why I
get paid the big bucks. The bubon, the bubon (laughs), the bubonic plague in America. ♪ The bubonic plague in America ♪ (laughs) That was too- The bubonic plague (laughs). That was a little too throaty. Can you hear that? Extreme, like (imitates saw squealing) That's sawing. They must just be sawing a
man's corpse to hide his body. The world is so loud. The Navy Surgeon General
said it is (burbles). It's like my bangs are
bad, but they're not bad. It's a good bang day. I want the film to reflect that. Wells Fargo, Levi Strauss,
the Southern Pacific rail, the Southern Pacific railroad. And he was furious that all this brad, brad, brad, brad press. Hey guys, we have a real problem with all this brad press. Dang, Brad, stop with all this press. Answer, Doctor Rupert Bellayo. That's- Why would I use that voice (laughs)? Suck up all that yummy rat plague blug. And suck up all that
yummy rat plague blug. Bluh, bluh, yummy rat plague blug. My whole mouth is getting tired. Oh, it's pooping. We love nature. Sir. It was rats.
Just like the opioid epidemic. Nobody had compassion for drug addicts until white suburban America became ground zero for heroin abuse.
Ran across this video on YouTube. It’s an interesting story that hits a little too close to home today.
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