Our Brisbane History

The Plague

In 1901 an insidious threat hung over Brisbane in the form of a threatened outbreak of bubonic plague. The disease which was thought to have died out in Europe in the Middle Ages had re-emerged in Asia and swept south towards Australia.

Brisbane was ill-prepared for such an epidemic. Public health infrastructure was practically non-existent. There was no State Health Department, hospital facilities were inadequare and knowledge about the plague ad how it was spread was very sketchy. In 1900 a plague hospital was constructed at Colmslie and in 1901 Dr Bernard Ham was appointed as Commissioner of Public Health specifically to deal with the epidemic.

Brisbane's first plague victim was Mr James Dreveson of Woolloongabba. Mr Dreveson and 22 people with whom he had been in contact were removed to Colmslie in a special horse-drawn bus. A galvanized iron stockade was erected around his house and it was subsequently demolished. Between 1900 and 1907, 464 cases of plague were reported in Brisbane, 195 of them being fatal.

Bubonic plague is spread by fleas carried on rats, although his was not clearly understood at the time. It was accepted that rats were involved in the transmission and that the deplorable sanitary standards which were common were also a factor. A Vigilance Committee was established to control ships coming into the Brisbane River and to implement measures to stop rats from the ships bringing the infection into the city. It was difficult to prevent them entering the sewers and it is possible to track the spread of the disease out from the river along the main sewer lines.

A serum to treat the plague was available. However, it was declined by many people as its side effects were so horrific. Cocaine and strychnine were used to deal with various symptoms. Visitors to plague areas had to submit to a triple carbolic bath. Special arrangements were required for the disposal of the bodies of people who had died. Bodies were wrapped I a sheet soaked in carbolic acid and then placed in a coffin containing slaked lime and buried on Gibson Island at the mouth of the Brisbane River. Later burials took place in established cemeteries, but special precautions were still required

In 1900, the Board of Health offered a bounty on dead rats of 2/- per dozen. Rat catching became a profitable practice for school children. The bounty, like many other precautions, had little impact on the spread of the disease. It reoccurred each year until 1909 and again in 1921 and 1922