Health and Disease in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco: Skeletal Evidence from a Forgotten Cemetery

Abstract

Burials from the Legion of Honor cemetery provide osteological evidence of the living conditions experienced by economically disadvantaged people who died in San Francisco during the last half of the 19th century. Comparisons suggest their lives were similar to those of other lower-class 19th-century Americans. Rapid population growth, overcrowded housing, sanitation problems, and water contamination probably contributed to the shared disease patterns seen in urban areas throughout the United States in the mid-19th century. Some significant population differences, however, do exist. The relatively high frequency of enamel hypoplasia in the Legion of Honor population may be attributed to conditions unique to San Francisco’s urban poor as well as to the stressful conditions the city’s immigrants faced as children in their places of origin. The lower frequency of nasal fractures may be attributed to changing patterns of interpersonal violence associated with the commercialization of boxing during the early-20th century.