The worst of the epidemics occurred in the summer of 1878, when 5,150 Memphians died and the fast-growing city lost its charter due to depopulation.

[3] When the 1878 epidemic struck, a number of priests and nuns (both Protestant and Catholic), physicians, and even a bordello owner, Annie Cook, stayed behind to tend to the sick and dying, despite the high risk of contracting the disease, which often resulted in a painful death.

A traditional Anglican prayer memorializes the martyrs in this way: We give thee thanks and praise, O God of compassion, for the Heroic witness of Constance and her companions, who, in a time of plague and pestilence, were steadfast in their care for the sick and the dying, and loved not their own lives, even unto death.

[4] Construction of its present Gothic Revival structure began in 1898 and was completed in 1926, when the parenthetical phrase "(Gailor Memorial)" was appended to the cathedral's formal name in honor of the Rt.

In an impromptu move, Dean William Dimmick (later Bishop of Northern Michigan and co-author of certain rites in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer) took up the cathedral's processional cross and led the assembled ministers down Poplar Avenue to City Hall to petition Mayor Henry C. Loeb to end the labor standoff that King was in town to help negotiate.

(The sanitation workers were protesting unsafe conditions, abusive white supervisors, low wages and the city government's refusal to recognize their union).

Like Constance and her companions, King was added to the Episcopal Church's Calendar of Saints, where he is commemorated on April 4 (or, as an alternate date, January 15).

Gates maintained offices at the cathedral from 1966 until his 1982 retirement, which occurred shortly before the beginning of the then-new West Tennessee diocese.

(Sanders served as the dean of St. Mary's from 1947 until 1961, when he became bishop coadjutor and moved to Knoxville to help manage the statewide diocese's work in East Tennessee.)