Yellow Fever Epidemic

Santa Cruz de Tenerife · Category: Memory · Subcategory: Testimonies · Year: 1810

Between 1810 and 1811, in two consecutive outbreaks, Santa Cruz de Tenerife endured with drama and exhaustion the consequences of a devastating yellow fever epidemic. It was the most violent that the city had suffered up to that point. Of a population of approximately 7,000 inhabitants, 2,642 fell ill, of whom 1,622 died. A true disaster from a demographic and economic point of view; a genuine setback for Santa Cruz in its then-aspiration to become the most thriving population in the Canary Islands archipelago.

Yellow fever or black vomit is an infectious disease whose clinical picture manifests through high fever, jaundice or yellowish skin coloration, dark bloody vomiting, headache and, in its critical phase, delirium, convulsions, coma and death. Its incubation period is 3 to 6 days. 

The disease landed in Santa Cruz in September 1810. It possibly arrived on a ship from Cádiz bound for Puerto Rico. The first case noted by local doctors was diagnosed on 12 October in a woman in labour who lived in an inn located on Tigre Street (now Villalba Hervás), a place where a good number of travellers disembarked from the suspicious ships had lodged. The disease had been rampant in the population for almost a month without being detected. By the end of that same October, just two weeks after the first case was identified, there were already 45 infected and five deaths. Quickly, the city became a contagious territory and was closed both by sea and land. Santa Cruz was placed in total isolation by means of a sanitary cordon to prevent the spread of the disease both to the interior of the island and to the rest of the Archipelago.    

By mid-January 1811, the measures imposed by a health board established for this purpose began to bear fruit and the epidemic started to subside. It was officially declared over on 26 January, more than three months after the first case was detected. The sanitary cordon was maintained for two more months as a precaution, which caused tensions and riots among the chicharrera population due to the lack of basic and fresh products. Santa Cruz was definitively freed by order of the general commander on 1 April. It had been closed for almost six months.

When it seemed that everything was returning to normal and the city was beginning to recover, things turned very bad again. In September of that year, 1811, after six months free of contagion, four new cases of yellow fever appeared. It seems that the new outbreak was introduced by previously infected people who, breaking quarantine, had taken refuge in the interior of the island and returned to the city. In a very short time, before the end of that September, 38 sick people were already counted. The previously taken measures were imposed again and maintained until the end of 1811, when it seemed the situation was under control. 

This serious epidemic infected, in its two phases, 2,642 people, of whom 1,622 died. The mortality affected all social classes without distinction, from vagrants to field marshals and viscounts. 

The mortality was so great that the Town Hall proceeded to build the first civil cemetery erected in the Canary Islands, that of San Rafael and San Roque, built on the outskirts of what was then Santa Cruz.

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