Wells and privies, malaria and typhoid

100 years of history

By Carol W. Pelosi

In 1909, water came from wells and toilets were privies or outhouses in the back yard. Some very few people, usually prosperous farmers with a stream, had installed pumps or gravity pipes to bring water inside for the kitchen and bathroom.

Because wells had to be dug by hand and could miss the underground streams, some people did not have their own wells but relied on those dug and maintained by the town. In the summer of 1910, the town board told Commissioner F.W. Dickson to put the well at the corner of White Street and Jones Avenue into good order. There was a second well on South White Street but its exact location is unknown.

Many people had separated their wells and outhouses, but there was a lot of livestock in town: a horse or mule for the wagon or buggy, a cow for milk, a pig for the winter’s bacon and chickens for the pot. Wells could easily become contaminated. Cows were apparently often left loose to roam, and there was at least one pasture near downtown.

At most town board meetings, the discussions were about malaria and typhoid. A number of women in town had grown concerned about wells and formed the Village Improvement Society. In July of 1910 a delegation from the society told the board about their concerns, and the board voted to place a mule, a wagon and a driver at their disposal every Friday. The women made weekly trips to inspect wells and to find breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that carry malaria.

The town board also urged people to install screens on their windows and to clear away any standing water. The board even had a health officer, Dr. J.B. Powell.

Typhoid fever could be prevented by good hygiene and by vaccination. Dr. R.S. Rankin, the dean of the new medical school at the college, urged everyone to have those vaccinations. He and others inspected wells, closing and placarding those contaminated from nearby outhouses or animal pens.

The town even purchased 50 sanitary closets – apparently closed privies that did not leak into the ground. In addition, the town provided scavengering sites where those sanitary closets could be cleaned; detailed instructions for the cleaning were included in the town minutes.

At the college, Dr. Rankin, who was a nationally recognized authority on the newly discovered hookworm, had told the trustees about the threat typhoid posed for students had persuaded them to begin a water and sewer system for the college and the town.

The water was drawn from a shallow dam or weir on Smith Creek, and the town began to build some water lines.

The college installed flush toilets in some dormitory rooms, and a sewer line was installed along College Street, running down to a small stream leading to Richland Creek, wherhae the contents fell out into the stream, hence the name outfall.

Next week, a look at early commerce.

What was happening in 2003?

The following was the lead story in the Wake Forest Gazette, about an editorial written by Greg Allen, then the publisher and editor of The Wake Weekly. Allen and Mackie had become close friends and even took a trip together to Europe that same spring.

“Our former mayor did not cut a deal with Raleigh,” Wake Forest Town Manager Mark Williams said at Friday’s mini-retreat for the town board and top staff members.

          Williams was referring to a July 3 editorial in The Wake Weekly in which Publisher and Editor Greg Allen said then-Mayor George Mackie reached a deal in 2000 with Raleigh’s then-Mayor Paul Coble. That deal, Allen said, was undercut by Commissioner Thomas Walters, who went to Raleigh shortly afterward and obtained an agreement for a temporary water contract which has since been extended to August of 2007.

          Allen said Mackie and Coble agreed that Raleigh would sell Wake Forest all the water it needed through 2027 and in return the town would abandon its plan to draw water from the former Burlington Mills intake on the Neuse River.

          Since 1999, more than a year before the Mackie-Coble meeting, Raleigh has been following a utility policy under which it will not sell water at wholesale rates. Instead, county towns which want Raleigh water must agree to merge their water and sewer systems with Raleigh’s.

          “Our former mayor did tell Raleigh – this is what they’re going to do for us,” Williams said. The city officials listened politely to Mackie and called Williams immediately afterward, asking what was going on, Williams said. “There was no deal cut despite what some people think.”

          The editorial also said that, with merger, Raleigh would control Wake Forest’s growth by limiting the amount of water the town would receive.

Not true, Williams said. “The growth rates we have talked about, 3 percent or 4 percent in future years, have nothing to do with merger.

          “The staff has reached the conclusion our infrastructure cannot handle 8 percent (growth) for the next 20 years,” Williams said. “Once we get to 6 million gallons a day at the wastewater treatment plant, there’s nothing more there. Once we get there, we have to look at reused water.

          “Our traffic infrastructure cannot handle that kind of growth; our school system can’t, even though we don’t control that,” Williams said.

          “We just cannot continue to grow at the pace we’ve done in the last five or six years.”

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The Wake Forest commissioners were still squirming and back-pedaling, hoping to fend off merger of the water and sewer systems with Raleigh.

          “The longer we wait, the more we find ourselves in a funnel going toward merger,” Commissioner Chris Malone said Friday during the town board’s mini-retreat.

          “Personally, I don’t like giving up autonomy, but I don’t like raising rates either,” Malone said.

          Water – whether to agree to have Raleigh take over the water and sewer systems or whether to pursue an independent course with an intake on the Neuse River – was the sole topic for the board all morning. The commissioners all appeared reluctant to approach the decision.

          By noon, the commissioners had agreed to continue negotiations with Raleigh based on a number of goals they had set, to hold a public hearing in September and to vote in October. In the meantime, they wanted to pursue other options. The target date for Raleigh’s take-over is July 1 of 2004.

          “The ball is in our court,” Town Manager Mark Williams said. “Raleigh is ready to begin implementation of merger.” Williams said one of his goals in negotiations is to make sure Wake Forest residents do not have to pay for “the significant improvements at the (Raleigh) sewer plant and the water plant. That’s basically stuff they’ve neglected to do.”

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