While these colonies were enduring suspense and starvation a French vessel, called the Indienne, from Morlaix, was wrecked at the mouth of the Miramichi near the “Baie des Vents”—a name now corrupted into “Baie du Vin.” Tradition states that this ship, before coming to America, had traded in the Levant, and that a large number of bales of old clothes had been taken on board at Smyrna. The clothes were strewn upon the beach after the vessel went to pieces, were seized by the inhabitants, dried, and afterwards worn. However this may be, it is certain that from that date arose a most terrible pestilence among the Canadians, who were already decimated by famine. The first victim of this malady was M. de Beauhair, and he, with eight hundred others, it is said, were buried at Point Beauhair. The survivors abandoned Miramichi and fled, some to l’Ile Saint-Jean—now Prince Edward’s Island—and the greater number settled along the western coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where they formed scattered hamlets under the names of Niguaweck, Tracadie, and Pokemouche, combined in one parish—that of Caraquet.
For eighty years, although it was known that isolated instances of leprosy existed in the different colonies, they attracted little or no public attention up to 1817, when a woman named Ursule Laudry died of the disease.
An account written by one of the nuns of l’Hôtel Dieu attributes a somewhat different origin to this scourge. This good sister writes that the disease was carried to New Brunswick in 1758 by a ship from the Levant; the vessel having made the port late in the autumn, the crew were paid off and dispersed, many seeking a temporary home in Caraquet. Unfortunately, this crew was afflicted by a malady that was unsuspected by any one. The colonists were kind to the sailors; the women washed their clothes and in this way contracted the disease, which was transmitted from one to another and from father to son, and in time acquired its peculiar features. Hamilton Gordon, the Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick in 1862, has assigned a similar origin to the malady in an interesting pamphlet entitled Wilderness Journeys in New Brunswick in 1862-3.
“A vague and uncertain tradition exists,” he says, “that somewhere about a hundred years ago a French vessel was wrecked on the coast of Gloucester or Northumberland, and that among the crew were some sailors from Marseilles, who in the Levant had contracted the hideous leprosy of the East, the veritable elephantiasis Græcorum; however this may be, it is beyond all question that for many years a part of the French population of these two counties has been sorely afflicted by this mysterious disease, or by one that closely resembles it, and which may be, indeed, the form of leprosy so well known on the coast of Norway.”
“It is difficult,” says in his turn M. Gauvreau, curé of Tracadie and chaplain of the lazaretto, in a letter published in the Journal de Montreal, November 30, 1859—“it is difficult to persuade one’s self that this malady could be the spontaneous generation of the locality where it now exists. The geographical position of Tracadie is on the sea-coast, with the fresh currents of a river close at hand, the waters of which are salt for eight or nine miles above the mouth. The soil in some portions is sandy, in others clayey; in the vicinity are no marshes, no stagnant water, consequently no injurious malaria. These facts seem to justify the opinion which I have long held, and which as yet I see no reason to change, that the poisonous virus was not the growth of this spot, but was brought here by some traveller.”
These traditions are, in the main, probably correct as to the origin of the scourge in this Canadian village. The inhabitants of other villages than Tracadie subsist almost entirely on fish, are equally poor, equally ill-fed and insufficiently clothed, living in the same damp and foggy atmosphere; but it is only in Tracadie or its vicinity that a leper is to be seen. The inhabitants of Labrador and Newfoundland eat fish almost exclusively, and live amid similar climatic conditions, paying no more enlightened attention to hygienic laws, and yet the “maladie de Tracadie” does not attack or decimate them.
From the date of the introduction of this disease into the village it increased slowly but steadily until 1817, when certain precautions began to be taken; but not until 1844 did the authorities try any active precautions. In that year a medical board was organized, who made a report of their investigations to the government, and later in the same year an act of the Provincial Legislature was passed, renewed and amended in 1850. It authorized the lieutenant-governor to establish a health committee. This committee recommended the erection of a lazaretto on l’Ile de Sheldrake, an isolated spot in the middle of the Miramichi River eighteen miles above Chatham. “Whoever was found to be unquestionably tainted by the disease,” says the article, “must be torn from his family, using force if needful. The husband must be taken from his wife, the mother from her children, the child from its parents, whenever the first symptom of leprosy declares itself. An eternal farewell to all they hold most dear must be said, and the poor creature is sent to the lazaretto. It often happens that a leper refuses to go quietly; he is then dragged by ropes like a beast to the shambles—for none is willing to lay a finger upon him. Often the unhappy beings are driven with blows to the very door of the lazaretto.” Things, of course, could not long remain in this brutal condition. The lepers, driven to desperation by their physical and mental sufferings, by a wild longing for the liberty denied them, and for the sight of their loved ones, sometimes effected their escape.
An attempt was finally made to ameliorate their condition, and in 1847 the lazaretto was removed to the spot where it now stands, about half a mile from the parish church of Tracadie. A large tract of land was here purchased by the government, and the present building was erected, surrounded by a wooden wall twenty feet high, set thick with nails to hinder the escape of the lepers. The windows of the lazaretto were barred heavily with iron, and thus added to the melancholy aspect of the building. The lepers, weary of the revolting resemblance to a prison, themselves tore most of the bars away, and, when the nuns arrived there they at once ordered the remainder to be removed.
In 1868 the nuns from the Hôtel Dieu of Montreal took possession of the lazaretto of Tracadie. For some few years a strong necessity had been felt for the reorganization of this institution. A wish was expressed that it could be placed under the care of the Hospital Nuns. I have now before me a letter from the Rt. Rev. James Rogers, Bishop of Chatham, in which is given an account, for the Conseil Central de la Propagation de la Foi at Paris, of the steps that had been taken up to December, 1866:
“Since my first visit to the establishment,” says the bishop, “I have always thought that it would be most desirable to place it under the care of the Sisters of the Hôtel Dieu, who would watch over the souls and the bodies of these sufferers, whose number varies from twenty to thirty. But so many great and pressing needs claimed my attention—while my resources were insufficient even for the alleviation of physical suffering, and also, perhaps, for the spiritual wants of certain souls—I was compelled to postpone my plans in regard to the lazaretto, until my diocese could satisfy the religious needs of its inhabitants by an increase of the number of priests, and by the erection of chapels in places where they had long and earnestly been demanded, and also by the establishment of schools for the Christian education of youth. Another obstacle to the immediate execution of my intention was the lukewarm approbation and co-operation of the government. The total lack of suitable lodging for the nuns, as well as the uncertainty whether the Protestant element which pervades our government and our legislature would be willing to grant us funds or permit us to make needful preparations for the sisters to take charge of the lazaretto—all conspired as hindrances to my desires.