The HISTORY OF Quarantine in New York Harbor and Long Island

Immigrant children being examined by city health officer upon arrival at the battery from Ellis Island, New York during Typhus Scare in 1911.

By Joan Lowenthal

We are in unprecedented times.  Many of us never thought a quarantine of practically the entire world could happen in 2020.  It seems like science fiction.  ​

14th century ship

When did the practice of quarantine as we know it begin?  

It actually began during the 14th century as an attempt to protect coastal cities from plague epidemics.  Ships coming into Venice from infected ports were mandated to sit at anchor for 40 days before anyone could come to shore.  The word quarantine was derived from the Italian words quaranta giorni which means 40 days.

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When the United States was first established there was no federal involvement in quarantine regulations.  It was not until 1878 that the United States Congress passed federal quarantine legislation.  Up to this point protection against imported infectious diseases fell under local and state jurisdiction.
 
By 1846 all ships coming into New York Harbor had to anchor off near Staten Island for quarantine inspection.  The ships were boarded and if any signs of disease were found all the passengers were taken to the Quarantine Hospital on Staten Island which was opened in 1799 and called the Quarantine.  First-class passengers were taken to St. Nicholas Hospital at the Quarantine and steerage passengers were taken to smelly, overcrowded bunkhouses stripped naked and disinfected with steaming water. [1] The ship then had to remain in quarantine for at least 30 days and sometimes as long as six months.   There were as many as eight thousand patients in the hospital in a year.   It was very dangerous work for the staff and funeral expenses for employees was a category in the accounting books.  Many people who lived on Staten Island did not like the nearness of the hospital and in 1858 angry well-prepared vigilantes set fire to the buildings.  Two people died that night.
Check out When New Yorkers Burned Down a Quarantine Hospital by Matthew Wills (September 19, 2019)  daily.jstor.org.

Quarantine facilities were then moved off-shore to a boat named after Florence Nightingale, then two islands off of Staten Island.  The two islands were built with land fill in the Lower Bay - Swinburne Island in 1860 and Hoffman Island in 1873.  These small islands were used as quarantine islands until the 1920s.  The conditions were horrifying.  Today these islands are uninhabited and off limits to the general public although you can go past them in a boat. 

In the summer of 1892 there was a terrible cholera epidemic and several ships that came from Hamburg, Germany were kept quarantined.  Many of the people on board were refugees from Russia fleeing the reign of Czar Alexander III.  A cholera epidemic swept through Russia and passengers both in steerage and cabin class died from the disease during their voyage.  They were seeking a better life in the United States.  What is little known is that the Governor of New York at the time, Governor Flower, authorized the purchase of the Surf Hotel, an aging hotel on Fire Island to be used as a quarantine station for some of the passengers from the infected cholera ships in New York Harbor. 

​There was tremendous opposition and two hundred deputized officers of the Islip Town Board of Health tried to stop the passengers from getting off the ship.  The Islip Town Board of Health disputed the right of the State to use the island as a quarantine station. [2]   Local baymen feared their livelihood was at stake when oyster houses in New York City began cancelling orders.  According to Shoshanna McCollum in an article posted February 23, 2020 “600 healthy cabin class passengers of the Normannia were transferred to a day boat to take the passengers to the Surf Hotel.  Unfortunately the baymen turned vigilantes and crossed the bay with clubs and shotguns.”  The trip should have taken the day boat several hours, but instead took several days.  This must have been awful as the boat was overcrowded and did not have sleeping accommodations nor enough food provisions.  Troops were sent by Governor Flower to Fire Island to permit the asymptomatic passengers to disembark.  The Surf Hotel served as quarantine headquarters until early October of 1892.  Amazingly only two documented cases of illness were reported on Fire Island during this time and those two cases turned out not to be cholera at all. ​

Postcard showing "New Surf Hotel, Ocean Beach - Fire Island." (Click to Expand)

Photo of Normannia passengers, originally published in Harpers Weekly. (Click to expand)

One other interesting note about the Surf Hotel.  The owner of the hotel at the time was David Sammis and he sold the hotel to the state for $210,000 which is a value of about $60 million today.  This was definitely over-priced.  Check out the article by Shoshanna McCollum Plague & Prejudice When Quarantine Came to the Shores of Fire Island.  fireisland-news.com                                                          
  
There have been pandemics throughout history, but probably the most famous at least up to this point has been the 1918 Flu Pandemic also known as the Spanish Flu.  It lasted from January 1918 to December 1920 and as reported by the CDC it was the most severe pandemic in recent history.  It infected about 500 million people which was about a third of the world’s population at the time and killed at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,00 occurring in the United States. cdc.gov 1918 Pandemic (H1N1) virus)

Many people on Long Island were affected by the 1918 Flu Pandemic.  Just one page in The Long-Islander, October 25, 1918, Page 6, Image 6 describes the state of affairs. In Huntington Station “Garrett Van Wicklen, who has been with influenza, was improved, but this week suffered a relapse from which he is recovering.”  “The influenza is quite prevalent here this week, and in one family there were four ill with it.”  “Owing to the epidemic it has been deemed wise to indefinitely postpone the dance of the Huntington Manor Firemen, which was to have been held in Liederkranz Hall Saturday evening.”  “In effort to help the health authorities to stamp out the influenza, no churches were open in this section Sunday.  In order that his people should not be deprived of worship, the Rev. Francis X Wunsch had an altar erected on the lawn adjoining St. Hugh’s R.C. Church and celebrated mass out of doors.”  “The Greenlawn School is closed by order of the Board of Health during the influenza epidemic. 

As today, nurses during the Spanish Flu Pandemic galvanized and worked extremely hard putting their own health in peril to save victims of the Spanish Flu. 
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One of these nurses was the daughter of George W.  Barrett of Cold Spring Harbor who trained on Cold Spring Harbor whaling ships, The Alice and The Sheffield.  The Long-Islander, December 13, 1918, Page 7, Image 7 states that “Miss Laura G. Barrett, who has been visiting her sister has returned to her work at the Henry Street Settlement in lower New York City.  When the dreadful Spanish Influenza struck New York City, Miss Wald, who is at the head of the Henry Street Settlement, offered her large staff of 150 nurses to the city.  During the time the epidemic raged the amount of work the Settlement was called upon to do was very heavy and taxed them to the utmost.  Miss Barrett had much responsibility in her office and was given a short leave of absence for complete rest and has been much benefited by her stay in Cold Spring Harbor.”

A Henry Street Nurse Crosses Tenement Rooftop, early 1900s. The Visiting Nurse Service of New York Records, Archives & Special Collections, Columbia University Health Sciences Library

There was good advice in The Long Islander, October, 4, 1918:

​“HEALTH PRECAUTIONS: Don’t get frightened after reading that learned dissertation in our columns this week on Spanish Influenza and take to your bed.  It is after all the old-fashioned grip and every time you cough or sneeze it does not signify you are going to have it.  Keep your courage up and avoid overcrowded cars and other meeting places. Do not get too tired from overwork and eat moderately.  Live in the open air as far as possible.”  This is probably good advice for today, too.

[1]  Krajicek,  David J. “How arsonists burned down Staten Island’s hated Quarantine hospital in the 19th century with little resistance.” New York Daily News, October 13, 2013.

[2] The Port Jefferson echo, September 17, 1892, Page 2 Image 2.

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