I. In this time of a dangerous, destructive and still mysterious pandemic, the likes of which we have never experienced, we at Saint Stephen’s have chosen this week to look back at the witness of some of our Episcopal ancestors in pandemics/epidemics from the late 19th and early 20th century. We will tell the story of Sister Constance and her companions, the “Memphis Martyrs”-- commemorated by the Episcopal Church on September 9-- who lost their lives nursing the sick and comforting the dying in the 1878 Yellow Fever epidemic in Memphis. And we tell another story from our own Saint Stephen’s church community and its then Rector and their response to the influenza pandemic in Philadelphia in 1918.  The stories are different in shape and context but very much alike in elements, especially the behavior of public health officials, politicians and ill-tempered and ill-informed citizens on the one hand, and the  extraordinary work of the volunteers and medical personnel dealing with overwhelming life and death issues. Given what we are living in now, much of what these stories reveal will sound very familiar.

II. Here, we tell the story of the “Memphis Martyrs.” The Memphis Yellow Fever epidemic began in August of 1878, not long after Yellow Fever cases were reported in New Orleans. Borne by Aedes aegypti mosquitos, the fever travelled northward and by mid-August the first Yellow Fever death in Memphis was recorded. By the time the Memphis Board of Health declared a Yellow Fever epidemic in later August, over 25,000 people, mostly middle and upper class whites, had fled the city of 47,000. One doctor said that the epidemic moved with incredible speed to infect the citizens and “struck with unusual malignity and unusual rapidity.” Several facts are instructive here: (1) Beginning in 1873, Memphis experienced a series of epidemics including yellow fever, malaria and cholera. (2) By 1878, the city still had no waterworks, no sanitation, a huge amount of raw sewage, and a contaminated water supply and abysmal health conditions. The city was described as sickly and filthy. (3) An August comment from a local newspaper:”…there was nothing to worry about. Whenever yellow fever shows itself, as is not at all likely, the board of health will promptly report it. Keep cool! Avoid patent medicines and bad whiskey. Go about your business as usual: be cheerful, and laugh as much as possible.” (4) Those who were left in the city (c. 20,000) were the lower classes, i.e. immigrants (Irish and German) and African Americans. Given the conditions, these people did not have the resources to leave the city, and were left to survive in what had become a city of death. Over 5000 of these people died.  (5) Medical personnel came from all over the country to assist the medical personnel in Memphis, among them the four nuns and two priests from Saint Mary’s, “The Martyrs of Memphis.” 

III. In 1872 the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee asked members of the Community of Saint Mary’s in Peekskill, New York to come to Memphis to manage an orphanage and open a school at Saint Mary’s Cathedral. Four nuns arrived in 1873 during the first Yellow Fever epidemic: Sister Constance (the superior), Sister Amelia, Sister Hughetta and Sister Thecla. When Sister Amelia became ill, she was replaced by Sister Frances. There were also two priests who worked among the sick and dying in the 1878 epidemic, Charles Parsons, Rector of another Episcopal parish in Memphis and Louis Schuyler who came from Hoboken to serve as a volunteer. The group that worked out of Saint Mary’s included two additional nuns from the Community of Saint Mary’s, two matrons who came with the nuns, three physicians, two of whom were Episcopal priests, The Cathedral Dean, and a contingent of volunteer nurses from New York. A support group, the Howard Association, organized specifically to serve the victims of Yellow Fever in Memphis and New Orleans, was able to create a large group of doctors and nurses from Memphis who were assigned to work in different districts of the city. The Saint Mary’s location was the central Memphis relief center with a higher number of sick and dying, and by mid-October and the first frost, the epidemic in Memphis was over. All six of the Martyrs were dead.  (Sister Hughette died in 1922)

 IV. So we are left with many questions about the “Martyrs of Memphis,” more formally called within the Anglican Communion, Constance and her Companions. Because the coronavirus has forever changed our lives, suddenly the questions are more complicated and the landscape more difficult to map. For today, here, perhaps the most important question is just why the four nuns and two priests are commemorated as “Martyrs” when hundreds of doctors nurses and volunteers, died caring for yellow fever victims, whose witness could be seen as authentic as the witness of the “Martyrs.”  If we are to “gain some perspective” the meaning of “Martyr” needs to be seriously reevaluated. At this writing, I don’t know why, given the circumstances, Sister Constance and her companions were commemorated as “martyrs,” except perhaps to honor the Episcopal Church.  In one sense, they were “martyrs:” when they came to Memphis to take care of the sick and dying, they knew the risk was that they would contract yellow fever and die. They chose to take care of the sick and dying but they did not choose to die. And isn’t this precisely how the nurses, doctors serving in their communities and the medical volunteers from all over the country who come to help care for the sick and dying, see their witness? Does this mean they ought to be called “martyrs” as well? Do we need to see the caregivers of the coronavirus as modern-day “martyrs,” or maybe even modern-day saints? That may be the central question for which we as individual people of faith, are responsible for an answer.

We give you thanks and praise, O God of compassion, for the heroic witness of the coronavirus caregivers who, in the time of an overwhelming and frightening pandemic, are steadfast in their care for the sick and dying. They want to live because they cherish their own lives, even as they risk death. This is the witness of the 21st century “martyr.” Amen

 A paraphrase of the collect for the commemoration of Constance and her Companions.

—Father Peter Kountz

About Friday Reflections:

Every Friday, Father Peter and Suzanne Glover Lindsay share written reflections highlighting a particular theme. This week's Friday Reflection explores the topic Gaining Some Perspective.