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theses

Italian immigrants in Orange, New Jersey destroyed a newly constructed smallpox isolation hospital on March 11, 1901. Controversy ensued from the moment the community became aware of the Board of Health’s plan to quarantine smallpox victims in their midst. The implications of a nearby isolation hospital threatened the neighborhood’s residents with both contagious disease and unemployment. After the community’s protests erupted in the hospital’s destruction, newspaper coverage quickly turned ugly, characterizing Orange’s Italian immigrant population as a “mob” unfit for autonomous governance. Not only did The New York Times, Washington Post, Newark Evening News, and Philadelphia Inquirer write overwhelmingly disparaging articles about the immigrant residents of Orange, but newspaper characterizations of the event prodigiously supported the actions of the city’s Board of Health.
The destruction of a smallpox isolation hospital in Orange serves as a case study that analyzes the rising authority of public health in American society, and the tension caused between the City’s Board of Health and the Common Council, Mayor, Police Chief, and community, by the exercise of that authority. The mid-1800s saw the advent in the United States of standing Boards of Health in major towns and cities for the purposes of combatting epidemic disease. As medical authorities gained unprecedented power with the rise of public health at the turn of the twentieth century, supported and sustained by the police powers of the state, many Americans felt threatened by compulsory vaccinations and forced quarantine. Immigrants were disproportionately affected not only by deadly epidemics but also by authorities’ often heavy-handed efforts to manage the real and imagined “contagion.” The mischaracterizations of Orange’s residents obscured how and why the community viewed the short-lived isolation hospital as a threat to their well-being. In fact, newspapers demeaned the city’s Third Ward by constantly insinuating that Italian immigrants were not acting in the public’s interest. Such coverage suggested that these immigrants had questionable motives and loyalties, were incapable of self-governance, and were generally unfit for American citizenship. Ultimately, newspaper representation alienated Orange’s Board of Health from the remainder of the community and created a situation in which benefitting no one.

ETD_9019

M.A.

Includes bibliographical references

by Lorna Ebner

doi:10.7282/t3-dv6y-tb94

ETD graduate

The author owns the copyright to this work.