25. Rupert Blue, Letter to Kate L. Blue, March 11, 1908. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
26. “S.P. Men Hunt Rats,” San Francisco Call, February 19, 1908, p. 7, col. 4.
27. “Thousand a Day Cost of Crusade,” San Francisco Call, February 15, 1908, p. 4.
28. “Women Continue War on Rats,” San Francisco News, February 19, 1908, on file in Scrapbook of Citizens’ Committee on Plague Eradication, San Francisco Public Library, History Room.
29. Death Certificates of Rachel Voorsanger, January 15, 1908, and Harry Regensburger, January 3, 1908, San Francisco Health Department.
30. Annette Guequierre Rucker, “Woman’s Part in the San Francisco Sanitary Crusade.” Thanks to Colby Buxton Rucker of Arnold, Md., for sharing his grandmother’s essay.
31. “Public Health Up to People,” San Francisco Call, February 8, 1908, p. 5, col. 3.
32. W. Colby Rucker, “Frisco’s Fight with Bubonic Plague,” Technical World Magazine, 1908, p. 262.
33. Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco, pp. 82–83.
34. Rupert Blue, Letter to Mrs. A. M. Blue, February 18, 1908. Collection of J. Michael Hughes.
35. Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag,” p. 122.
36. Daniel, “Robert Langley Porter,” p. 50.
37. The rebuilt hospital became the model of public health response to the AIDS epidemic, as discussed in Blaisdell and Grossman, Catastrophes, Epidemics and Neglected Diseases: San Francisco General Hospital and the Evolution of Public Care (San Francisco: The San Francisco General Hospital Foundation, California Publishing Co., 1999).
38. This alfresco fruit feast was recounted in two contemporary accounts in the San Francisco press: “ ‘Clean-Up’ Cheered at Fruit Dinner,” San Francisco Examiner, March 22, 1908, and “Spread Feast in Sanitary Street,” San Francisco Call, March 22, 1908.
“AIN’T IT AWFUL?”
1. Rupert Blue, Letter to Miss Kate L. Blue, March 11, 1908. Collection of Michael Hughes.
2. Guenter B. Risse, “ ‘A Long Pull, a Strong Pull, and All Together’: San Francisco and Bubonic Plague, 1907–1908,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 66 (Spring 1992): 282.
3. Pauline Jacobson, “Specialist Not Blue over the Plague,” San Francisco Bulletin, February 21, 1908.
4. Ibid.
5. “San Francisco Will Not Be Quarantined,” “Great Unit Fighting Filth in Metropolis,” and “Laboratory Method of Fighting Plague,” a three-part series by Herbert Bashford, San Jose Mercury, March 5, 1908, to March 7, 1908.
6. Edna Tartaul Daniel, “Robert Langley Porter: Physician, Teacher and Guardian of the Public Health,” University of California Medical Center Library, Archives and Special Collections, Regional Oral History Office, the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, p. 40. This tart recollection came in an oral-history interview Porter gave Mrs. Daniel at the age of ninety.
7. By the end of the campaign, Blue’s cheese purchases alone totaled four thousand pounds a month. Letter to the Surgeon General, December 7, 1908, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, Folder 5608, File 2 of 3.
8. “Look Out for Colored Rats,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 8, 1908.
9. Walter Wyman, Personal Letter to P.A. Surgeon Rupert Blue, March 18, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 1 of 3.
10. Coroner’s Report of the Death of H. A. Stansfield, April 15, 1908, Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, City and County of San Francisco, Calif. See also “Shoots Himself When Grief Is Unbearable,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 17, 1908, p. 9, col. 2.
11. “A Mad Scientist,” Wasp 59, no. 17 (April 25, 1908): 4–5.
12. William Colby Rucker, “Under the Yellow Flag: Reminiscences of a Sanitarian,” unpublished autobiography, courtesy of his grandson Colby Buxton Rucker, p. 113.
13. Ralph Chester Williams, The United States Public Health Service, 1798–1950 (Washington, D.C.: Commissioned Officers of the United States Public Health Service, 1951), p. 264.
14. C. H. Woolsey, Letter to Rupert Blue, June 24, 1908, National Archives and Records Administration, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 3 of 3. See also “Rat Inspector Tears Up Flooring for Fun,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 18, 1908, p. 5, col. 2.
15. Risse, “ ‘A Long Pull, a Strong Pull, and All Together,’ ” p. 275.
16. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, April 27, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 3 of 3.
17. Ibid.
18. Gray Brechin, Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), pp. 162–163.
19. Rupert Blue, Personal Letter to Surgeon General Walter Wyman, May 11, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 2 of 3.
20. Rupert Blue, to Walter Wyman, page 2 of undated fragment, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, Folder 5608: 1908.
21. Rupert Blue, Letter to Walter Wyman, June 19, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 3 of 3.
22. “Bubonic Plague: The Menace of Centuries,” New York Times, June 14, 1908, sec. 5, p. 2. The victory was prematurely reported in a sidebar headlined TWO LITERARY CLASSICS AND THE PLAGUE.
23. Letter of Rupert Blue to “My Dear Kate,” June 26. Collection of J. Michael Hughes. Year not specified, but events discussed and the style of Blue’s handwriting sample would place it in 1908.
24. Diary of William Colby Rucker, July 4, 1908, courtesy of Dr. Rucker’s grandson Colby Buxton Rucker.
25. Ibid., July 7, 1908.
26. Ibid., July 19, 1908.
27. Mayor Edward Taylor (San Francisco), Letter to Theodore Roosevelt, July 16, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 618, File 3 of 3.
28. Colby Rucker Diary, entries of July 27 and 28, 1908.
29. Rupert Blue, Letter to the Surgeon General, August 10, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, Folder 5608, File 1 of 3.
30. Ibid., August 28, 1908, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, File Folder 5608, File 1 of 3.
31. Thanks to Colby Buxton Rucker for sharing his grandfather’s typed manuscript of his essay “The Wicked Flea.” Additional details on the mating habits of fleas from personal communication, Dr. Kenneth Gage, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fort Collins, Colo.
32. Charles T. Gregg, Plague: An Ancient Disease in the Twentieth Century (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1985), pp. 75–77.
33. Carroll Fox, Letter to Rupert Blue, August 26, 1908, NARA, Records Group 90, Central File 1897–1923, Box 619, Folder 5608, File 1 of 3.
34. Rucker Diary, entry of September 16, 1908.
35. Colby Buxton Rucker, personal communication.
36. Rucker Diary, entries of September 17–28, 1908.
37. Frank Morton Todd, Eradicating Plague from San Francisco: A Report of the Citizens’ Health Committee and an Account of Its Works (San Francisco: C. A. Murdock & Co., 1909), p. 9.
38. Rucker Diary, entry of October 14, 1908.
39. Rucker Diary, entry of October 20, 1908.