Transcriber’s Note:
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The Committee appointed to investigate the causes and extentof the late extraordinary sickness and mortality in this town,
That they have carefully attended to the duties assignedthem, and have examined all the wharves, the docks, and vessels,the buildings and lots near the river, as well as in otherparts of the town, and find in their examination numerous localcauses, which, under the co-operating influence of the lateseason, might, in their opinion, have produced the fever, independentof the supposition of its foreign importation.
Some of the most prominent we will mention, and first, thecondition of the wharves, built with hewn timber, closely laid,confining the water within the outward dimensions of thewharves, and filled up with rotten logs, bushes, shavings, andother vegetable matter, covered lightly with swamp mud ofearth, presenting to view an immense mass, in the most noxiousstate of decay. Two of these wharves, about 450 feet inlength, and 30 to 40 in breadth, were commenced in the spring,and the work of filling them up with logs, mud, and bushes,was carried on during the summer, till the storm on the 28thJuly, and the sickness of the workmen put a stop to it. Theywere, however, nearly filled up to the length and breadth mentioned,and to the depth of four to ten feet, and the surface ofabout a third part covered with pieces of swamp marsh, cutin convenient sizes for the purpose, and marsh mud. Whenthe committee viewed these wharves, the sight was most disgusting,and the smell so offensive, that they felt their healthendangered by delaying about them.
The other wharves, five in number, also deserve a moreparticular notice. Three of them appear to be built upon theplan of the former; and with like materials, two are partlybuilt upon piers, giving a more wholesome circulation to thewater. One was built during the spring and summer, butchiefly destroyed by the storm of July, the others from one tofour years since, each of them, affording a mass of decayingvegetable matter, from 200 to 400 feet in length, 25 to 30 inbreadth, and 3 to 10 in depth, covered with a thin layer of earth,4or mud. Such a quantity of noxious materials collected togetherin a state of decay, must necessarily produce m