Happy Choleric New Year, From 1851!

The New Year, wherever or whomever you are, naturally prompts us to look back and see how far we've come. Usually we only review the last 365 days, stop at the previous January 1st, then swing our eyes back around and head down the trail of our current nascent year.

Gold Rush San Franciscans did the same. Though most were still not convinced that the city was going to be their permanent home (they had families to get back to to share their gold - or gambling - riches with), they still felt that a pausing-to-reflect was in order, if nothing else than to take a quick break from rebuilding their burnt out homes or mapping out which geographic region of the street was the least muddy to cross. These are people who worked on the Sabbath (!) mind you, so taking a hiatus to recall the past year was no small deal.

The big newspaper at the time was the Daily Alta California. On the morning of January 1st, 1851, the residents of San Francisco awoke, plunked a coin into the hand of a shouting Alta hawker, opened to page 2, and started reading a retrospective about the month of December that had just passed. (The year of 1850 was so fast and fluid that an accounting of the entire year would have exhausted the literary efforts of the editorial staff.) There was plenty on which to reminisce.

"Since our last Monthly Summary we have no stirring events to notice," the article started, then nonchalantly added, "We have, however, one item as pleasant to send to our friends in the states...It is the entire cessation of the cholera."

It was just your average December in 1850.

There were more than a few San Franciscans who would have found this a rather big deal. As the first whiffs of industrialization wafted into the mid 1800s, cholera was the scourge of cities that saw people pack into tighter and tighter spaces with few, if any, allowances for adequate sewage or clean drinking water. The disease, especially in areas like the South of Market area called Happy Valley, ran rampant.

"Squatters had pitched their tents here, and had given it the name of Happy Valley," a ship captain recalled upon landing in the city. "Here the cholera and dysentery raged with the greatest virulence, and it was here that Messrs. Carr, Williams, Tappan and young Thurlo, breathed their last."

"Cholera," explains the World Health Organization, "is an extremely virulent disease. It affects both children and adults and can kill within hours....the bacteria are present in their feces for 1-10 days after infection and are shed back into the environment, potentially infecting other people."

Perhaps as a surprise to no one, the Alta was premature in declaring an end to the epidemic. Cholera would be a part of San Francisco life for years to come.

Other items from the 1851 New Year retrospective included:

Our business men have awakened to the importance of the fine field opened for whaling from this port, as the emporium. Unfortunately, the first vessel fitted out for that business, the Popmunnet, has been lost, with a part of her crew.

Another large fire has visited us, but its ravages are so little, compared with previous ones, only about $60,000, that it has scarcely been noticed, except by the unfortunate sufferers.

There are some three hundred thieves in this city, who live by their profession entirely, and who prefer to live so rather than work. Our police arrest them, but it avails nothing.

Of course, newspapers tend to report heavily on the bad news. Not all was bad, so let's end on a positive note from 1851:

The first jewel on the brow of the New Year, is shining upon us. While its light is reflected from the memories of the past, and mingles with the hopes of the future, with all the anticipations which the great untried times that are before us, excite in our hearts, with all to encourage, and nothing to create a doubt of the "Good time coming," we most sincerely wish our readers and patrons our friends and the public, a "Happy New Year," and many joyful returns of it.