Many of the negroes who handled the bodies fell from fright and nausea. White volunteers took their places and the work went on. The volunteers bandaged their mouths and noses with cotton cloths saturated with disinfectants and were relieved by other volunteers every hour.
Fires could not be started every place where bodies were found. The usual plan was to collect all bodies within two blocks in one spot and then build the funeral pyre. On the remains of many women were valuable rings and jewelry, but the men did not attempt to remove the jewelry. It was burned with the owners.
Officers Mass and Woodward reported that their two gangs burned 100 bodies, the majority women and children. The percentage of deaths among children was frightful. Sheriff Thomas and his negroes burned forty bodies on the beach near Tremont street.
Catholic priests in charge of gangs reported 120 bodies burned. The sanitary experts pushed the work of burning the dead. No other disposition was considered. People who had lost relatives and friends made no objection and looked on the plan with favor.
Disinfectants were used as never before in the world. The smell of the charnel house was driven away and the whole city was filled with the fumes of carbolic acid and lime in solution.
This is general order No. 9, issued by Brigadier General Thomas Scurry, commanding the city forces:
“Guards, foreman of gangs, and working parties or others acting under the authorities of this department will use diligence toward preventing any hardships on private individuals or impressing men for service. The conditions, however, are so critical, and it is so necessary that sanitary precautions be taken to preserve the lives and health of the people of this stricken city, that individual interests must give way to the general good of all. If it is found feasible to secure volunteers, general impressment will be avoided, but, the medical fraternity being a unit in the opinion that further delay or procrastination will bring pestilence to finish the dire work of the hurricane, the interests of no individual, firm, or corporation will for one instant be spared to secure volunteers for work, but, failing this, every able-bodied man is to be put to work to clear the wreckage, burn the hundreds of bodies under it, and save, if possible, the lives of those who yet remain. I trust this position may be thoroughly appreciated and understood, so that all people will govern themselves accordingly.”
BOY FLOATS MILES ON A TRUNK.
The miracles of Galveston were many. Some of them will not be received with full credit by readers. In the infirmary at Houston was a boy whose name is Rutter. He was found on Monday morning lying behind a trunk on the land near the town of Hitchcock, which is twenty miles to the northward of Galveston. The boy was only 12 years old. His story was that his father, mother, and two children remained in the house. There was a crash. The house went to pieces. The boy said he caught hold of a trunk when he found himself in the water and floated off with it. He was sure the others were drowned. He had no idea of where it took him, but when daylight came he was across the bay and out upon the still partially submerged mainland.
ESCAPED IN BATHING SUITS.