One hundred and seventy five years ago, on Thursday, May 27, 1847, a quarantine station opened on Deer Island in Boston Harbor, to care for growing numbers of Irish famine refugees who were pouring into Boston and Charlestown on ships. The first ship sent into quarantine on May 28 was the Brig John Clifford, from Galway, with 64 passengers listed, ranging in ages from one years old to 78 years old.
Two days later, on Saturday, May 29, the hospital officially opened, according to Dr. John McColgan of the City of Boston Archives.
The decision to open the temporary facility on Deer Island was made by city officials after the Poor House in South Boston, which had been accepting refugees since April, was filled to capacity.
On Deer Island itself, city officials built temporary wooden structures, designed as 'ship fever' wings, one for each sex. The hospital was managed by Dr. Joseph Moriarity, the port physician, whose daily task was to inspect inbound ships and separate the sick from the healthy.
The main disease, known as Ship Fever, was actually Typhus (from the Greek word tuphos, meaning mist), a term coined in the 18th century to describe the clouded mental state of the patient. Symptoms included high fever, muscle aches, headaches and body rashes, as well as a lethargy that prevented patients from moving around.
In the first full month of the Deer Island quarantine station, 1,506 patients were admitted, of which 45 had died.
On May 29, 1847, the Boston Pilot tallied the recent ships coming into Boston:
- On Saturday, the British ship Omega, from Liverpool, brought 387 passengers. She started with 398, but 11 died on the passage. Twenty were so sick on her arrival that they could not be got on deck. Forty more in a little better condition, were enabled by assistance to leave the confined and fever-generating atmosphere of the steerage. The ship was in a filthy state ; and the immigrants not only bore marks of having suffered from want of comforts and cleanliness, but many of them were aged, helpless and destitute.
- The ship Akbar from Liverpool had 247 more. She lost two on the passage, and thirteen were sick on her arrival.
- The British brig Victory, from Cork, had 114 emigrants, having lost one by death on the passage. Three or four more are sick. The condition of this vessel and of her passengers is as bad as that of the others.
- On Saturday, the ship Minstrel arrived, with 171 immigrant passengers.
- Monday morning the Helen Maria, from Port Rush, Ireland, bringing 28 more immigrants; and the brig Demarara, from Galway, Ireland, with 77 ; and the brig Anna, from Wexford, Ireland, with 30 more.
In the early days of the quarantine station, Irish passengers deemed healthy by the port physician were permitted to come ashore. Many of them became sick within days, and were often seen trying to make their way back to Long Wharf to be transported to Deer Island.
On May 29, 1847, the Boston Traveler reported that a police officer had found a newly-arrived immigrant lying in a South Boston street. "His tongue, dreadfully swollen, was hanging from his mouth, his limbs were stiff, and he had every appearance of a person in the last stages of ship fever." He was unable to reply when asked his name, "except by lifting four fingers, by which he probably meant that he had been living in the country four days."
On June 9, Boston Common Council formally voted that "all vessels arriving here in a foul state, or having any persons on board afflicted with malignant or contagious disease, shall be compelled to remain at quarantine twenty days, on the anchorage ground south of Deer Island."
Within three weeks of the quarantine station opening, some 24 ships were anchored off Deer Island, containing about 2,000 quarantined passengers.
The Boston Pilot wrote, "It is a downright imposition to take advantage of the helplessness of these people. They come here to toil for their bread, not to become a public charge, and a few amongst them happen to be sick or wretched, must they be shut out from the sympathies and charities of their fellow men?"
Today, Deer Island is the region's wastewater treatment plant for greater Boston, and is managed by the Mass Water Resources Authority (MWRA).
- research by Michael Quinlin
Irish Boston: A Lively Look at Boston's Colorful Irish Past, 2nd edition.
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