Eyewitness 1802: Water, water everywhere, but little of it safe to drink
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With its population approaching 1,600 in 1802, Pittsburgh was taking a few tentative steps to improve the quality of life for its residents.
"The Freeholders and other Inhabitants [and] householders of this Borough, are hereby requested to attend a Meeting ... at the Court-House on Monday next, the 2d of August at 4 o'clock P.M.," the July 30 edition of the Pittsburgh Gazette informed readers.
The topics to be discussed at the meeting included a plan to "restrain Horses from running at large within the Borough." It was an effort to make walking less treacherous for those using the muddy "Foot-ways in several of the streets of the borough."
A second subject was water. "It is also expected that some proposition will be made for better supplying the Borough with water," the legal notice said.
Although it wasn't on the agenda for the August meeting, at least one resident wanted the community to do something about packs of vicious canines.
Many otherwise kind and friendly neighbors "keep about their houses troops of Dogs that infest the streets to the great disturbances and danger of the peaceable inhabitants," an anonymous letter writer complained in the Gazette on Sept. 17.
While community leaders may not have been ready to enact a leash law, public officials -- decades before the acceptance of the germ theory of disease -- saw an apparent link between deadly maladies and the environment.
The July 30 edition of the Gazette included two reports from Philadelphia. The first noted that a "malignant fever," centered around the city's Vine Street wharf, had carried off at least nine victims during the first half of July.
But there was nothing to worry about now, according to Cornelius Comegys, president of Philadelphia's Board of Health. In a follow-up statement dated July 22, he said the disease -- most likely mosquito-borne yellow fever -- had abated, and "the city and liberties are now as healthy as at any former period."
First Published July 25, 2010 12:14 am
