Strategic Plan
2014-15 through 2018-19


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Antebellum Louisiana I: Disease, Death, and Mourning


Sick Child of the Harris FamilySick Child of the Harris Family
c. 1855

As photography became more widely available, portraits of sick and even dead children became more common. They were a last chance to preserve a remembrance of a child.
Gift of Mrs. W. Johns


decorative iron Casket Lid, 1853Casket Lid
Almond D. Fisk

The use of cast iron for coffins allowed a wide variety of shapes.
Gift of Leonard Huber




Many native Louisianians who had been exposed to mild attacks during childhood were immune to yellow fever, malaria, and cholera and were accustomed to their frequent visitations. One such native even praised yellow fever for checking "the tide of immigration which, otherwise, would have speedily rolled its waves over the old population, and swept away all those landmarks in legislation, customs, language and social habits to which they were fondly attached."

Attempts to Control Death
Businessmen and politicians who wanted goods and people to keep coming to Louisiana ignored or purposefully covered up the problem of disease and death. To maintain a wide-open port free of quarantines, business interests tried to convince newspapers and directories not to publish negative news or publicize the astounding number of deaths in New Orleans.

Whig and Know-Nothing politicians who controlled New Orleans during much of the period were reluctant to spend money on preventing or stopping the spread of pestilence. After all, they reasoned, most of the people dying from yellow fever and cholera were Irish, German, and French immigrants who usually voted Democrat.

Because people in the nineteenth century were not aware of what caused many diseases, their cures ranged from the ridiculous to the accidentally logical. Halfhearted efforts, such as poisoning stray dogs and discharging smoke bombs to supposedly kill harmful disease-causing vapors, were tried occasionally. All efforts were unsuccessful until the 1860s, when there was a push to provide the city with more efficient garbage disposal and cleaner markets and slaugherhouses.

Newspaper Advertisement from The Daily Delta, 1852Newspaper Advertisement
January 9, 1852
From the Daily Delta

One of the most popular cures for all illnesses was blood-letting to release "bad blood," achieved through the use of leeches and lancets. This ad is for Hungarian and Swedish leeches, guaranteed healthy.

Established in 1855, the Louisiana State Board of Health was the first state board in the United States. New Orleans had created its own board of health four decades earlier, in 1817. In an effort to reduce skyrocketing death rates, the Louisiana State Board of Health implemented and oversaw measures relating to quarantine and public health.

Doctors and state officials tried to improve the quality of medical care and their understanding of diseases. After the 1830s Louisiana was the only southern state to require medical licenses for physicians. In response to the 1817 yellow fever epidemic French speaking physicians in New Orleans formed their first professional organization, La Société Médicale de la Nouvelle-Orléans, and English-speaking physicians created the Physico-Medical Society in 1820. Members of both groups devoted their talents and resources to study the recurring pestilence of yellow fever.

Some doctors and pharmacists saw an epidemic as an opportunity to turn a profit. People desperate for relief during the 1853 yellow fever epidemic lodged complaints that pharmacists were charging unreasonably high prices for medicines. In addition, doctors and druggists allegedly conspired to prescribe expensive and unnecessary cures and then shared the profits. Coffin and ice dealers also engaged in price gouging.

Burial and Mourning Customs

St. Louis Cemetery No. 2St. Louis Cemetery No. 2
George François Mugnier
c. 1895

This view shows the arrangement of tombs and wall crypts, or "ovens."



marble statue of Child with Drum, by Florville Foy, 1840Child with Drum
Florville Foy
c. 1840

Florville Foy, a free man of color, was one of the most successful marble cutters and sculptors in antebellum New Orleans. He produced this piece as a tomb ornament. The high mortality rate kept marble cutters like Foy and funeral contractors in business.


Mourning Brooch and Earrings, 1866Mourning Brooch and Earrings
c. 1866

Gift of Mariquita A. Wolfe

African-American influences on Louisiana mourning traditions included the celebration of funerals with dancing, music, and singing. The wearing of white at funerals and other celebrations involving the dead had religious symbolism and was most likely an African-American cultural carryover. In 1819 English-born architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe encountered a funeral procession in New Orleans for an old Congo slave woman and wrote:



According to Latin Catholic tradition, the living also remembered the dead on All Saints' Day (1 November) and All Souls' Day (2 November). They cleaned burial sites, adorned them with flowers and ornaments, and held feasts. Louisianians continue to observe All Saints' and All Souls' Day in much the same way today.