1904 typhoid epidemic spurred effort to clean river

Typhoid fever is a frightening disease found mainly in Third World countries with primitive sanitation. The symptoms include high fever, cough and sore throat, abdominal pain, diarrhea and, in complicated cases, intestinal hemorrhaging, meningitis, psychosis and – perhaps you’ve heard enough.

The death rate is about 2 percent in treated cases, but it was much higher in eastern Maine a century ago, where Third World conditions were as normal as they are in much of Africa today.

The epidemic that winter was well-documented.

On the morning of Jan. 29, 1904, fire destroyed the McEwen Block on Penobscot Avenue in Millinocket. In order to build up enough water pressure to fight the inferno, rotary pumps at Great Northern Paper Co. were turned on to suck water from Millinocket Stream into the town’s public water system.

A foul odor was detected as firefighters futilely pumped thousands of gallons of water on the blaze. That was probably because the intake opening for the mill’s pumping station was located just 1,500 feet and 2,500 feet, respectively, downstream from two outlets for the town’s sewer system.

The result was a devastating typhoid epidemic that struck not only Millinocket, but also the downriver communities of Bangor and Old Town, and to a lesser extent, Brewer, all communities which got public drinking water from the Penobscot River, into which the Millinocket Stream flowed.

When the Windsor Hotel burned three weeks later, Millinocket firefighters again built up “fire pressure” by pumping water from the same stream, apparently aggravating the situation.

In early April, Dr. A.G. Young, secretary of the State Board of Health, issued a boil-water order for every town below Millinocket using river water for drinking. But by then the dreaded disease already was out of control. Before it was over, well more than 1,000 people were sickened and dozens died, including 22 in Millinocket and approximately 50 in Bangor. Nobody died in the two fires.

The doctor who investigated the Millinocket outbreak for the State Board of Health felt certain it was caused by sewage having been pumped into the drinking water supply while fighting the two fires. He noted that the disease infected people living in “Millinocket proper,” which was supplied with public water, at a much higher rate than those living in neighborhoods such as Little Italy and Shack Hill who relied on wells.

After the disease spread to Bangor, a debate began raging over whether it was time for the Queen City to find a new water supply. Many people did not want to spend the money, and some skeptics remained unconvinced that the cause of the outbreak was drinking river water, even though the weight of scientific opinion, including the entire Penobscot County Medical Association, weighed heavily against them.

Typhoid had been a problem in Bangor for years. The year before, a severe outbreak had ravaged Kennebec River towns from the Waterville area to Augusta and south, convincing residents to find new water sources.

The river north of Bangor was no longer the pristine stream it once had been. “As it is at present, the sewage from communities with a total of 25,000 or more people empties into the Penobscot River, almost half of which comes in at points but 12, 10, eight and five miles above the intakes of the Bangor water works,” notes a story in the Bangor Daily News. “Within the former limit are two large pulp mills and two woolen mills which also empty the waste directly into the river.”

Dr. Galen Woodcock, a local member of the State Board of Health, told a Bangor Daily Commercial reporter, “In my opinion, the city of Bangor needs a new water supply, some place where the drinking water may be obtained and which can be absolutely protected for 50 years to come.”

The state assayer, O.W. Knight, a chemist by profession, weighed in by describing the water that came out of his household tap: “In spite of the efficient work said to be done by the filter at the water works, I still continue to find fragments of rotten wood swarming with animal life in the filter which I have attached to the faucet at my home.”

Outside experts were summoned. One of them was professor Franklin C. Robinson of Bowdoin College, who concluded the city’s water was unfit to drink much of the time even though he found evidence of the “colon bacillus” only once during a year of testing.

But it was a local study by the Citizens’ League, a new association of young business and professional men interested in municipal affairs, that may have tipped the scales. They interviewed nearly every doctor in Bangor, tracking down 540 typhoid cases that occurred between March 1 and May 24. Then they created a map showing the proximity of the cases with the public drinking water supply. Furthermore, they pointed out that there were hardly any cases in areas of the city without public drinking water, or in towns such as Orono and Hampden where most people got their water from wells.

The committee went on to demonstrate that Bangor had a higher death rate from typhoid than many other places, including New York and Philadelphia and several cities in the Merrimack River Valley in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

“The conclusion is inevitable that something is the matter with our water supply,” asserted the league’s investigators.

Public outrage was growing. “I have a child who goes to school and also is dear to me. … Let us not force them to drink in school hours what is not fit to give a horse,” wrote E.M. Gray in a letter to the editor of the Commercial.

Nevertheless, some skeptics, including Mayor Flavius O. Beal, who was running for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, and the members of the city’s water board were still voicing the opinion that the recent drought, not the river water, was to blame, although how it was possible to separate the two remained unexplained. They pointed to a few cases occurring in people who did not drink river water. The disease could come from other sources such as polluted wells or milk from sick cows.

There was a political element to all this. The hostile criticism was coming from “business interests” who felt they had been dealt “a staggering blow” without sufficient evidence. They called the advocates of change “grafters” who were trying to help certain financial interests get control of the city’s water works, according to a historical account on file at the Bangor Water District.

While it’s a little hard to believe today, Bangor residents continued to drink water out of the Penobscot River until 1959, when it switched to Floods Pond.

Attitudes changed, however, in 1904. Between then and 1910, Bangor built a new water filtration system, which put an end to typhoid epidemics in the Queen City.

Wayne E. Reilly has edited two books of Civil War-era diaries and letters including “The Diaries of Sarah Jane and Emma Ann Foster: A Year in Maine During the Civil War.” He can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.