(YELLOW FEVER). (BROADSIDE) Lines on the Death of Hilary Baker,

Broadside verse, within an elaborate ornamental border, on wove paper with a Brandywine Mills watermark. 9-1/2x8 inches. [Philadelphia: R. Aitken?, 1798].

Thirty line elegiac poem below the above title, beginning: "The dire disease which through our city sheads / Its mortal poison e'er our quilty heads, / At length has levell'a in the silent dust, /

The man whom foes and friends alike could trust ...

During the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1798, Philadelphia Mayor Hilary Baker stayed within the city, rather than fleeing to the country with most of the city's wealthy and elite. He contracted yellow fever and died on September 25, 1798.

The ornamental border is very elaborate and similar to one on a broadside elegy on the death of George Washington issued in 1800 by Robert Aitken (Evans 37079). This broadside is unrecorded.

From Catalog I

Unrecorded in all standard bibliographies: a genuine discovery. The thirty-line elegy begins: "The dire disease which through our city sheads / Its mortal poison o'er our guilty heads, / At length has levell'd in the silent dust, / The man whom foes and friends alike could trust..." Baker is the civic counterpart to Rush's physician: the man who stayed when others fled, who chose duty over safety, who died for it. The ornamental border matches one used by Robert Aitken on a Washington elegy in 1800.