Added on February 10, 2014 Ray Berg

Fire, Smut and Disease in Manchester, Part Four of Four

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By Ray Berg and Alan Dyer

Smut and Meningitis in Manchester

The removal and accumulation of smut from grains in the mills created more than a fire risk. As recommended by the insurance manuals, small custom mills such as Manchester’s began routinely discharging concentrated smut and other accumulated by-products directly into the air, often from third-floor levels, or down chutes into the nearby river. It was then carried downstream/downwind, and by the 1870s, became linked to the outbreak of several diseases, primarily cerebrospinal meningitis, as determined through the studies of Dr. Henry Brooks Baker.

Henry Brooks Baker was born in Brattleboro, Vermont in 1837, and moved to Lansing as a child. He completed medical training and served as medical officer in the 20^th Michigan Infantry during the Civil War. After the war, he had an illustrious medical career, serving as Secretary of the Board of Health for the State of Michigan, and as the first director of the State’s Vital Statistics program from its beginning in 1870. He eventually developed the first comprehensive application of modern epidemiology practices in Michigan, examining the locations, patterns and distributions of infectious disease cases, and determining the common factors and the root causes of these diseases. Dr. Baker’s September 1874 study “Cerebrospinal Meningitis - Report to the State Board of Health upon an Epidemic in Monroe and Lenawee Counties, Michigan; and a Study of Some Other Facts Relative to the Cause of the Disease” was a comprehensive survey of potential sources, transmission routes and consequences of meningitis, eventually linking the outbreak to discharges from flouring mills, which he termed the “poison of smut”.

Figure 6 – Henry Brooks Baker, center, during Civil War

Dr. Baker systematically mapped every meningitis case by location and date, and began his work with the outbreak in the spring and summer of 1873 along the River Raisin in lower Michigan. He considered whether the disease was being transmitted by railroad, water, carriage and air transmission routes; was the disease communicable from person to person; and what were the possible sources, including the local production of ozone, local atmospheric causes, contaminated cow’s milk, atmospheric humidity, local poisons, ergot of rye, soil impurities leaching into the water, and grain-related smut. His exhaustive mapping showed a clear downwind or downstream prevalence of meningitis cases near the flouring mills, particularly when buckwheat had been processed.

One interesting fact he noted was that cerebrospinal meningitis was much more prevalent in rural areas than in large cities, a surprising fact considering the congestion and presumed filth of urban areas. He noted: “There is one great distinction between the source of the flour used in large cities and that used in many rural districts. Cities are supplied, in great part at least, with flour made at large mills called "merchant mills," while in rural districts much of the flour used is made at smaller mills, from wheat raised in the vicinity. In visiting mills during my investigations, my attention has been called to the fact that there is a very great difference between the elaborate machinery employed for cleaning the wheat in "merchant mills", and the antiquated and imperfect arrangements for this purpose in many of the "custom mills." And while some of this latter class of mills are provided with ordinary smut machines, others have nothing of the kind worthy of mention.”

Dr. Baker drew specific attention to three cases of fatal meningitis at Manchester, [where] “the mill …has no suitable apparatus for separating and disposing of the smut from the wheat.” The doctor placed much of his focus on buckwheat, which was often processed in the spring, contained more smut than other grains and was often not run through the smut mills before processing. He also examined the milk from cows that were fed buckwheat in an effort to determine if it was contaminated with smut.

Dr. Baker’s report then continued: “I was informed that the quantity of smut and other refuse material separated from grain by the smut machines amounted to several tons at each flouring mill. The river Raisin, along which this epidemic occurred, has a large number of flouring mills on its banks. The method of dealing with smut is not quite the same in all of these mills. In many of them the smut is conveyed by a shaft into the river. In others it is simply blown out into the air. At Manchester it is thus disposed of, being discharged on that side of the mill toward the river. The mill is on the west side of the river, and just below the dam. During the summer and autumn of 1873, cerebrospinal meningitis broke out on the east side of the river, not far below the mill. The prevailing wind in this locality is generally from the west and southwest.” He concluded that the cerebrospinal meningitis outbreak around Manchester and other milling sites coincided with the mill owners discharging smut to avoid a fire hazard. With these factors in mind, he also examined railway and river paths between Jackson, Norvell, Manchester and Blissfield, speculating whether the disease contracted in one mill town could be spread by air or water travel to surrounding communities. His studies were not conclusive in this regard as of 1874.

In a prelude to today’s environmental capture and recycle programs, Dr. Baker also noted: “In one of the largest [merchant] mills in Jackson, the smut is collected in a tight room, and a large part of it removed to the country by a farmer who, it seems, makes some use of it.”

The Manchester Enterprise was silent on the subject of mill smut machines and meningitis between 1872 and 1874 when this outbreak occurred. As was common in that period, as summer approached, editor Mat Blosser would warn of the importance of keeping the village in a sanitary condition to ward off disease, but the greatest fear seems to have been from sewage flow and cholera. In the period 1876-1884, however, there were several obituaries in the Enterprise which listed cerebrospinal meningitis as a cause of death.

It is apparent that the limited efforts to control smut removal and discharge at Manchester’s small mill in the 1850-1880 period were influenced by the owners’ lack of capital to invest in proper smut removal and discharge control. This in turn created serious environmental/medical problems for some of those who lived along the River Raisin downwind from the mill. While of lesser impact, these problems are not dissimilar to some of the financial and environmental disasters of today. The mill did make some financial recovery in the later 1800s and beyond by moving into more specialized operations, such as those of Lonier and Hoffer’s Roller Mills and the operations of the Mann Family, until milling ceased in 1981.