Page 42 - A Narrative of the History of Roanoke Virginia

New information about the history of Roanoke
Big Lick to Roanoke from 1874-Part Ten

By Richard Mundy
Sources:refer to New Research Sources-previously posted

There is still work to do with the unsanitary conditions and the mysterious Big Lick Fever that
runs rampant through the citizenry every now and then. But with cooperation the future is
still bright for the city and its new as well as old citizens.

The combination of resentment between the ‘new-towners’ and the ‘old towners’ fueled the
fire along with the increasing reports of the mysterious ‘BIG LICK FEVER’ almost destroyed
the town’s progress.

At least some RL&IC residents, nevertheless, resented the firm’s monopoly on workers’
housing or believed their rents of between $15 and $22 per month were excessive. In early
1883, for instance, a Machine Works employee published a letter in the Roanoke Saturday
Review accusing the company of extortion for charging his family rent that in five years
would cover the cost of constructing their home.

In a sympathetic editorial that followed, the Review claimed that few men who earned a
living by “daily toil” in the shops could afford the “exorbitant rents” of the RL&IC. The firm
cared nothing about its white tenants, the paper complained, and had further alienated
townspeople by building “Red Row,” a cheap, frame, African American housing complex that
was “one of the filthiest holes we ever saw.” “This harlots’ den,” the Review observed, “is
one of the blessings bestowed upon Roanoke by the Land and Improvement company.”

Although the RL&IC funded sanitary improvements for its development, most of Roanoke
existed amidst bogs, cesspools, and polluted streams. As a consequence, there were
widespread rumors that the town was rife with typhoid, scarlet fever, smallpox, and a
fictitious malady known as “Big Lick Fever.” Symptoms of the Big Lick contagion, a
University of Virginia physician claimed in the 1850s, were the “sudden onset of
considerable malaise, aching, chills, fever and prostration.” A spate of recent hearsay, given
credence in regional newspapers, led readers to believe that the mythical fever had erupted
again among those living near the licks. Gossip about real ailments was worse.

In January 1883, for example, newspapers throughout the state reported erroneously that
smallpox was devastating Roanoke. Hoping to put an end to the story, newly appointed
Mayor Lucian Cocke issued a press notice for “the information of parties who are
unacquainted with the facts and may be influenced by rumors.” Doctors, he certified, had
vaccinated all residents and there had been no smallpox in town.

Scores of locals, nevertheless, temporarily left Roanoke to escape possible infection. By