North Carolina Merchant Pays Prominent Doctor to Visit His Slaves at Smallpox Hospital

This receipt from prominent Wilmington physician James H. Dickson acknowledges payment of $8 for his visiting some slaves owned by merchant William C. Bettencourt at the smallpox hospital.

Although English physician Edward Jenner discovered that an inoculation with cowpox could prevent smallpox in humans in 1798, epidemics continued to ravage the United States and much of the world. North Carolina suffered epidemics in Charlotte in 1851, in Salisbury in 1863, and in Wilmington in 1865. After compulsory vaccinations began in schools in the early twentieth century, cases dropped rapidly, and the last death from smallpox in North Carolina occurred in 1943.

Smallpox is an infectious disease that kills approximately 30 percent of those who contract it, so smallpox epidemics posed serious threats not only to the lives of white antebellum southerners but also to their investment in human slavery.

Both Dr. Dickson and merchant and slaveowner Bettencourt died four years later from another contagious disease in Wilmington's yellow fever epidemic that killed between 650 and 800 people between August and November. Most people who could left the city that once boasted 10,000 residents, reducing its remaining inhabitants to approximately 4,000.

[SLAVERY.] James H. Dickson, Autograph Document Signed, Receipt for Treating Slaves of William C. Bettencourt who had small pox, May 10, 1858, New Hanover County, North Carolina. 1 p., 6.25" x 3". Expected folds; very good.

Complete Transcript
Mr W. C. Bettencourt
                    To Jas H Dickson                                    Dr
1858
May 10       To visit negroes at Small Pox Hospital    $8 00
    12th May 1858 Recd Payt
                                                                        Jas H Dickson

James H. Dickson (1806-1862) was born in North Carolina and graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1823. He attended lectures at the Medical Department of Columbia College, New York, and graduated in 1827. He practiced medicine in Fayetteville, North Carolina, from 1827 to 1837. In 1835, he performed the first tenotomy (correction of a club foot deformity) in the United States, on his brother. After practicing medicine for a few years in New York, he returned to Wilmington, North Carolina, at the request of his father. In 1842, he entered a partnership with Dr. Louis J. Poisson. Ten years later, he joined the Medical Society of North Carolina and served two terms as its president beginning in 1854. In 1859, he became the president of the State Board of Medical Examiners. In 1845, he married Margaret Owen. Politically a Whig, he counseled moderation at the beginning of the Civil War but ultimately aligned with the Confederacy. He died in a yellow fever epidemic in Wilmington in September 1862.

William C. Bettencourt (1786-1862) was born in Portugal and first arrived in North Carolina from France in 1817, with his wife Mary and two children. In 1850, he was a merchant in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he owned $15,000 in real estate and sixty slaves. By 1860, he owned real estate worth $38,000 and $60,000 in personal property, including 95 slaves. He served as one of the directors of the Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad Company, as postmaster of Wilmington, and as a U.S. Treasury Department official in Wilmington. Like Dr. Dickson, he died in the yellow fever epidemic in September 1862, though he had fled inland to Clinton, North Carolina, undoubtedly to escape the epidemic.

This item comes with a Certificate from John Reznikoff, a premier authenticator for both major 3rd party authentication services, PSA and JSA (James Spence Authentications), as well as numerous auction houses.

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