Philly's first to die in line of duty - in 1798

It was the summer of 1798, and fear ruled in Philadelphia.

For the second time in five years, a devastating epidemic of yellow fever was sweeping through the nation's capital. Wealthy and influential residents, including President John Adams, fled to the countryside in droves, as they had learned to do during prior outbreaks. Those who could not leave were at the mercy of the virus, which attacked the liver, caused bleeding and vomiting, and sent people running into the streets screaming in delirium.

Amid the panic, one of the fewer than 10,000 residents who stayed behind was Mayor Hilary Baker. Tasked by City Council to appoint a police force to protect the city from vandalism and looting, Baker took it upon himself to patrol with those officers as they kept watch over Philadelphia's streets.

The decision earned Baker enduring admiration from his city's residents and officials, and cost him his life. Baker, 51, succumbed to yellow fever and died Sept. 25.

Baker had no official police title, but Roderick "Scratch" Scratchard, the Philadelphia Police Department's graphic artist and unofficial historian, believes he is the first known person to die in the line of performing police duties in Philadelphia.

"The Council, the Senate, everyone left," said Scratchard, who learned about Baker's role from Council records. "The president went to Trenton. Baker could have left, and it was unusual that he didn't."

Baker set up the city's first paid, uniformed watch, according to Scratchard. He appointed 20 men for day patrols and 15 for night, and the force patrolled an area roughly the size of Center City.

According to an account in the 1911 volume Colonial Families of Philadelphia by John W. Jordan, Baker went above and beyond the duties expected of him during that hot, deadly summer. He traveled alongside the police and helped those who were infected, despite the fact that doctors believed the disease was contagious.

"Indeed it is said of him that he visited the tenements of the poor and carried the sick in his own arms to the hospitals," the book states.

Baker, whose full first name was Hilarius, was born in Germany and came to Pennsylvania at 8 or 9, according to records at the Pennsylvania Historical Society. His father was headmaster of Germantown Academy, which Baker attended. As an adult he worked as a hardware merchant, and at 24 he was one of the founders of a fire company.

In 1779 he was appointed clerk of quarter sessions, and became an official German translator for the courts. He was also part of an artillery company during the Revolutionary War.

Baker entered politics after the war, according to Jordan's book. He was first an alderman, then a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He was elected mayor in 1796 and reelected the next year.

Yellow fever came to Philadelphia numerous times during the 1790s, starting in 1793. Philadelphia, then America's largest city, lost roughly 10 percent of its population to illness that year. Outbreaks in subsequent years were less severe, but in 1798 the disease returned with a vengeance.

Unbeknownst to doctors at the time, yellow fever was transmitted by infected mosquitoes that most likely arrived on boats carrying refugees from the Caribbean. Philadelphia in the summer was an ideal breeding ground for the insects, and the disease spread until the weather cooled off. Unable to cure the fever, doctors learned that the only safeguard against infection was to leave the city.

In American Histories Told by Contemporaries, Vol. 3, historian Albert Bushnell Hart reported the following account by merchant Samuel Breck, who observed the epidemic of 1793: "Those who were in health one day were buried the next. The burning fever occasioned paroxysms of rage which drove the patient naked from his bed to the street, and in some instances to the river, where he was drowned. Insanity was often the last stage of its horrors."

Baker was buried in the cemetery at Zion Church at Eighth and Race Streets - the current location of Police Headquarters. Some remains were moved during later construction, Scratchard said, but it's unclear whether Baker's were among them. A grave marker bearing his name at Laurel Hill Cemetery suggests his remains may be there.

After his death, Council passed a resolution honoring Baker, saying his fortitude was "instrumental in preserving the order and the police of the said city, and in protecting the deserted property of the inhabitants from pillage and destruction." Council later voted to give Baker's widow $3,000 to support herself and her children.

Baker was eulogized by local officials and writers, who praised his courage in the face of disaster, his faith, and his loyalty to the citizens of Philadelphia. A poem written by the lawyer Alexander Dallas, published in all the city's papers, included the lines:

His fellow citizens shall long proclaim

To listening children Baker's modest fame,

The mournful story of his death shall tell,

And bid them live like him - like him excel.