1858 Staten Island Quarantine War

infectious disease has been the scourge of mankind since prehistory a 2017 article in the Journal of evolutionary application said that an analysis of the phylogenetic relationships of extant pathogens suggests that many diseases have been coevolving with humanity for millennia or in other words diseases in humans are in a constant battle with humans evolving resistance to disease but the disease in response evolving so that it can still infect humans and it's based on increasing evidence that pathogens that still kill people today were attacking humanity all the way back in prehistory and of course infectious disease and the fear of infectious disease is still a very real thing even in the modern world in the middle 19th century the dangerous combination of fear of infection and new york city politics led to a night of flames the 1858 Staten Island quarantine war is history that deserves to be remembered prehistoric groups were small itinerary and this could not sustain broad outbreaks but the dawn of civilization created new opportunities for pathogens for example around 1500 years ago a plague struck the city of Athens killing as much as a third of the population of the city including the city's great leader Pericles some scholars think that the plague played a significant role in Sparta's victory in the Peloponnesian War interestingly most of what we know about the war and the plague of Athens were written by a Greek historian and general named vicinities who also contracted the illness but unlike Pericles survived had the plague taken Thucydides both the great plague of Athens and the Peloponnesian wars might be forgotten history it's still not clear what pathogen caused the great plague of Athens but there's some evidence that it was typhus a bacterial infection that according to the World Health Organization still kills about one in every five million people on earth today interestingly that plague that drove the great plague of Athens didn't appear to originate in Athens but apparently originated in sub-saharan Africa and progressed through Egypt and Persia before it reached Athens through the Mediterranean probably carried by sailors that were engaging in trade epidemic typhus if that was indeed the illnesses carried by lice that bite an infected person and then carried the infection over to the next person that they bite the fact that diseases move with people resulted in the attempt to prevent the spread of disease by controlling the movement of infected people a process called quarantine it's not clear when the process might first have been used but a note in the Biblical Book of Leviticus mentions a process on a Mosaic law where priests were instructed to identify and isolate people with illness that presents the possibility that the practice dates back more than 3,000 years the word quarantine itself is derived from a Venetian dialect of Italian and means roughly forty days that's a reference to the mid 15th century practice in the Republic of Ragusa now modern-day croatia that required newcomers to the city to be isolated for 40 days before entering the city as a method of controlling the back plague quarantine has been used extensively as an attempt to control the spread of many diseases but took on a new importance in the United States with an outbreak of yellow fever that struck Philadelphia and New York in the 1790s yellow fever is a viral infection that originated in Africa and probably came to the West Indies with the West African slave trade it's a terrible illness whose name is derived from the yellowish color that a person develops as the disease attacks their liver and untreated it has a mortality rate of around 50% tens of thousands of people still die of yellow fever each year most of those in Africa before the 1790s the disease was largely unknown in the United States and public health systems and officials faced significant challenges dealing with these outbreaks in fact yellow fever sparked the formation of New York's first Board of Health in the summer of 1793 a group of leading doctors in New York organized a committee to prevent boats from Philadelphia where an epidemic of yellow fever killed some 5,000 people from entering New York's ports the quarantine was ultimately unsuccessful in New York faced major outbreaks in 1795 1799 and 1803 with mortality rate at time of 50% yellow fever killed thousands of New Yorkers at a time when the city's population was just sixty thousand one of the pioneering physicians trying to understand the nature of the break was dr. Richard Bayly born in Connecticut in 1745 Bailey became a doctor in the time before medical schools were common and gain this experience first by an apprenticeship in Staten Island and then in London he returned to the United States in 1776 with the Royal Navy as a surgeon with Admiral Richard Moore Howells fleet he resigned from the Royal Navy in 1777 and practiced both as a physician and medical educator practice and taught it New York Hospital and was a central figure in the 1788 New York doctors riot violent protests against the practice of snatching bodies from cemeteries for medical dissection and study although he published a statement in New York newspapers insisting that he never engaged in the practice in 1795 the governor of New York made an appeal to the Medical Society of the state of New York to help develop practices to deal with the outbreak of yellow fever dr. Bailey was part of a committee formed by the society to address the issue Bailey made many discoveries that events the understanding of infectious diseases and became a champion of the use of quarantine helping to pass the 1799 quarantine Act which gave the federal government power to assist the states with implementation of quarantine laws and a New York City quarantine law he then lobbied to establish a quarantine station to safely house people showing signs of illness who arrived on ships entering New York Harbor the first quarantine established in New York State had been located by an act of the colonial legislature at Bedloe's Island now Liberty Island in 1758 in 1796 it was removed to nutin Island which is now called Governors Island but the yellow fever outbreak required a larger facility On February 25th 1799 New York State used its power of eminent domain to obtain 30 acres from Saint Andrew's Church on the east shore of Staten Island near an inlet called the watering place not far from where the Staten Island Ferry lands today first taking patients in 1800 the facility was officially called the New York Marine Hospital but was commonly called simply the quarantine Bailey was appointed the first state health officer of the Port of New York he contracted an infectious disease in 1801 while working at the quarantine and died there in August of that year but despite the interests of Public Health there was opposition to the facility on Staten Island from the start at the time Staten Island was not yet incorporated into the city of New York while Staten Island is more than twice the size of Manhattan in 1800 Manhattan had some 60,000 residents while Staten Island only had about 4,500 by 1855 the population of Manhattan was thirty one and a half times that of Staten Island the local population opposed the 60-acre quarantine facility surrounded on all sides by a 6-foot tall brick wall not just because the property was imperiously appropriated by the state but because the facility was thought to be unsightly and imposition on the aesthetics of the bucolic Island and an impediment to growth that a decreased property values but most importantly the population of the community surrounding the quarantine became convinced that the facility was the source of illness the island had epidemics of yellow fever cholera as possible the outbreaks were related to the quarantine disease transmission was not well understood and the staff may have been the cause of some infections but it is also quite possible but the disease originated on its own yes it is unrealistic to think that the island would have been otherwise immune to the numerous outbreaks that struck the city over that period but officials and citizens of New York City openly argued that placing the quarantine on Staten Island protected the city from disease it's not unreasonable for the residents of Staten Island therefore to conclude that the risk had been passed on to them as ships entered New York they were inspected and if anyone aboard the ship showed signs of illness everyone on board was taken to the quarantine which was built to house as many as 1500 people at a time people who showed signs of illness would have their clothes removed and depending upon the illness either washed or burn while the sick were taken in one of the hospital buildings those that did not show signs of illness were held for a period and if they did not show symptoms were released the facility was funded by a head tax let me dump passengers and crew entering the port as the causes of many infections were not well understood many of the facility staff became infected physician Catherine Stevenson noted in a 2004 edition of public health reports that 33 staff members were infected in an outbreak of yellow fever in 1856 among those who caught the disease that year were the gatekeeper along with the assistant gatekeeper and the replacement assistant gatekeeper it is entirely that despite careful precautions members of the quarantine staff could have spread illness into the surrounding community residents also feared that disease might be spread by the bodies of disease victims who were rolled through the town and carts on the way to be buried or even simply by miasma blown in from the quarantine by the wind and the issue only grew between 1800 and 1810 on some 60,000 immigrants enter the United States but between 1840 and 1850 that number had increased tenfold and New York was by far the most common entry point for new immigrants to the United States conditions on ships could be dismal dark damp and dirty many illnesses became common aboard ships including smallpox cholera typhus yellow fever was particularly feared and ships with suspected cases of yellow fever were required to fly a yellow flag the yellow jack was particularly feared as though ships would be forced to anchor far from the city and could be isolated for up to six months opposition on Staten Island grew and the residence started pressing the New York State Legislature to move the facility the Legislature passed a bill to move the facility to New Jersey in 18-49 but did not act on it an outbreak of yellow fever on the island in 1856 prompted another effort to have the facility move but the only plan was to move it to the other side of the island which raised concerns from the local residents near the new site when the Faisel started construction their local set fire to the unfinished buildings tensions increased in 1858 when residents built a fence around the facility to keep the employees from entering town someone tore down the fence in the night and accusations flew back and forth between the town Health Board and quarantine officials local health board officials clashed with New York City officials New York went so far as to shut down the Staten Island Ferry over the dispute residents began openly threatening to burn the buildings instead of piling materials such as straw matches highly flammable camping and wooden beams outside the facility wall a public meeting of the Health Board of the town of Casselton met on September 1st 1858 and resolved that the facility posed a nuisance to intolerable to be borne by the citizens of these towns any longer and that this board recommends the citizens of this County to protect themselves by abating this abominable nuisance without delay that they did a 9 p.m. that evening the quarantine Watchmen first noticed a group of men throwing straw stuffed mattresses into a hospital building and setting them on fire the facility was alerted and staff removed patients from the building even as they tried to fight the fires some came under rifle fire from the direction of the town local fire companies arrived but refused to fight the fires could mean their hoses had been cut Harbor police tried to intervene but were chased out by crowds pelting them with rocks one of the leaders of the mob ray Thompkins who was the grandson of former New York Governor and US Vice President Daniel Tompkins brokered a deal where the incendiaries promised not to hurt any patients and to leave one building standing to house them in exchange for quarantine officials releasing all the members of the crowd that they'd arrested Tompkins was also said to have intervened to protect other members of the quarantine staff from being attacked as Tompkins promised one hospital building was left standing but many other hospital buildings were burned despite the violence there were only two deaths at the hospital that night one was a man who died of yellow fever and the other was a member of the hospital staff who was apparently shot in the back by another member of the hospital staff who took advantage of the chaos to settle an old score the city made the attempt to intervene promising to send 50 police to protect what was left but neither the city nor its police officers were keen to enter a site infected with yellow fever and challenged a hostile crowd no officers came Federal Marines protected some federal buildings north of the site but were under orders not to interfere unless the federal property was threatened resigned to their fate quarantine officials evacuated all the healthy passengers from the island that removed the sick from the hospital the night of September 2nd the incendiaries returned and burned everything left to the ground including the doctors and staffs houses even the wharves were destroyed local newspapers covered what was called the Staten Island War in great detail some papers opposing the arsonists and others noting that state officials had precipitated the action by failing to move the facility as promised the city sent officers and units of the state militia arrested dozens but the city had little jurisdiction and most were charged with minor offenses Cornelius Vanderbilt who had been born on Staten Island paid to bail them out to suppose it bring leaders including ray Tompkins were tried for arson in state court they argued the quarantine was a hat and the act was self-defense the judge himself a resident of Staten Island who had opposed the quarantine in the state legislature agreed and no one was ever held legal responsible for the fires the quarantine was moved first to a floating hospital called the Florence Nightingale and then to two artificial islands Swinburne Island and Hoffman Island there were many causes of the Staten Island quarantine war silly there were social and economic factors the local population was mistrustful of the patients who were largely new immigrants and also the hospital staff who were perceived as outsiders and the hospital was seen as a barrier to growth and development on the island riots were also common in New York at the time representing the corruption in state and city politics and the nature of policing in the era you can see the Staten Island quarantine war in the context of things like the Astor Place riots and the draft riots but underneath it all there was a clear fear of the spread of illness Katharine Stevenson notes that that history of quarantine makes it clear that with a deadly illnesses loose in the community fear and desperation can often triumph and lead to violence I hope you enjoyed this episode of the history guy short snippets have forgotten history between ten and fifteen minutes long and if you did enjoy please go ahead and click that thumbs up button if you have any questions or comments or suggestions for future episodes please write those in the comment section I will be happy to personally respond be sure to follow the history guy on Facebook Instagram Twitter and check out our merchandise on teespring com and if you'd like more episodes on forgotten history all you need to do is subscribe [Music]

Channel: The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered

Views: 314,304

Rating: 4.9585233 out of 5

Keywords: history, the history guy, history guy, new york, staten island, quarantine, us history

Id: ctwsQVgbbdI

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 06 2020