Immigrant Ships
Transcribers Guild

Maritime Newspaper Articles - 1860's

Old Newspaper
Generously contributed by Barbara Andresen unless stated otherwise.

From ROMAN CITIZEN (New York) 29 Feb 1860
The Montreal Company have already lost one vessel, the Indian, which leftLiverpool on the 9th of November last, and was totally wrecked, on the Islandof Mary Joseph, Nova Scotia, on the 21st of that month, under circumstancesnearly similar to the present, as no immediate communication could be had withher, and much doubt existed for some time as to her identity. The wreck ofthe Hungarian makes the fourteenth steamer which has been lost since thecommencement of steam navigation between Europe and America. Subjoined wegive the names of those that have been lost:
 1. President, never heard of.
 2. Columbia, all hands saved.
 3. Humboldt, all hands saved.
 4. City of Glasgow, never heard of.
 5. City of Philadelphia, all hands saved.
 6. Franklin, all hands saved.
 7. Arctic, a few only saved.
 8. Pacific, never heard of.
 9. Lyonnais, a few only saved.
10. Tempest, never heard of.
11. Austria, burned, with great loss of life.
12. Indian, three lives lost.
13. Arago, all hands lost.
14. Hungarian, all hands lost, probably.
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From The Cork Examiner 14 Deember 1864
THE CHARGE OF SCUTTLING A SHIP.--Joseph John Mitchison White, of 5, Ogle-terrace, South Shields, and Robert Sutton, of 5, Robinson- terrace, Sunderland, were yesterday again placed at the bar of the Mansion House, upon the charge, that they being respectively the captain and chief mate, did, on the 4th day of October last, feloniously destroy a British ship called the Snowdrop, on the high seas, with intent thereby to defraud the various underwriters. It will be remembered that the ship ran upon a reef of rocks in the Baltic ; but it was said by the carpenter that she made no water till he, by the direction of the prisoners, bored several holes in her bottom. The prisoners were again remanded, the Lord Mayor refusing to accept bail for either of them.
Contributed by Dennis Ahern


From NEW YORK TIMES 22 April 1866
ASIATIC CHOLERA
The England Arrived - News from the Virginia - Activity of the Board of Health.
President Curtis, of the Quarantine Commission, received a letter yesterday afternoon from Deputy Health Officer Bissell, the officer having charge of the hospital-ship Falcon, now near the steamship Virginia, at the Lower Quarantine. The following is a transcript of the letter:

HOSPITAL SHIP, LOWER BAY, April 21, 1866.
Steamship England, GRACE, 24 days from Liverpool, via Halifax, arrived here this morning. Crew, 122; cabin passengers, 16; steerage, 1,202. Died on the passing to Halifax, 50; at Halifax, 150. Last night an infant died of whooping cough. Passengers and crew all well. Vessel quarantined in Lower Bay.
Hospital-ship Falcon came here yesterday morning. I immediately boarded the steamship Virginia, anchored here, and removed the sick to the hospital - sixty-seven in number. Five new cases were received from the Virginia this morning. Four deaths in hospital last night. Buried ten from the steamer yesterday. Sixty-seven are now in hospital.
D. A. BISSELL, Deputy Health Officer.
Dr. JOHN H. GRISCOM received permission from President CURTIS, yesterday morning, to visit the Virginia, with a view to instituting an investigation and making a report concerning the origin of the disease on board that ship.
The Government steamship Illinois went down, yesterday afternoon, to take off those of the Virginia's passengers who have not been attacked.
The hospital-ship Falcon lies about two miles distant from the Virginia, and cannot be approached except under permission from the Health Officer. Dr. HARCOURT, an experienced quarantine physician, assists Dr. BISSELL to the care of the sick on board the Falcon.
Contributed by Joe Miller



NY Times Cholera Apr 29 1866
CHOLERA
Another Case in the City - The Mulberry-street Case - The England's Passengers.
At 7 o'clock yesterday morning, JOSHUA JENKINS, a child of seven months, son of Mrs. JENKINS, who died of cholera in Ninety-third-street, near Third-avenue, died of the disease which took off his mother.
Mrs. COYLE, of Mulberry-street, was more comfortable, and the physicians had hopes of her recovery.
Capt. HUTCHINGS, of the Twenty-third Precinct Police, was requested yesterday to make inquiry concerning the condition of the JENKINS family dwelling, in Ninety-third-street, near Third-avenue, and he learned that the reports which have been made by the officers of the Board of Health are literally true. The Captain learns that the house was, to the time when the Board took it in hand, a nursery of cholera. The board of Health yesterday ordered the Police to thoroughly cleanse and disinfect the house at once, and connect its drainage with the street sewers as soon as may be practicable.
The steerage passengers of the steamship England having been seventeen days in quarantine, and being free from disease, were permitted to come up to the City last evening.
The Quarantine Commission has made another application to the War Department for the use of the steamer Empire City for quarantine purposes. This was partly in response to the decision of the Quartermaster-General to give the use of the vessel to the Quarantine authorities, under a contract it was proposed should be made. It is understood that the Quarantine Commission make this new application upon the ground that the act of Congress of March last gave the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy power to assign the use of the quarantine authorities gratuitously such hulks and steamers as could be spared. An adherence to the decision first made will practically deprive the Quarantine Commission of the facilities they require, and which have not been provided, for the care of the sick. The Quarantine Commission and the Board of Health - the one having jurisdiction over the water and other on land - are hereafter to be a unit in all matters pertaining to quarantine.
The following new cases have been reported by Dr. Bissell, at the Lower Quarantine, yesterday, from steamship Virginia: WM. ARMSTRONG, aged, 53, of Lancashire, England; JAS. FARRELL, aged 16, Ireland; JOHN IlESSIAN, aged 24, Dublin, Ireland. The latter case only is of cholera; the others are varioloid.
In hospital, last report, 103, new cases, 3; total, 106.
Contributed by Joe Miller

From the NY TIMES
ENGLAND AND VIRGINIA - APRIL 22 1866
THE ENGLAND AND THE VIRGINIA - OVERCROWDING. -
If the epidemic which raged with such terrible effect on board the England and the Virginia was not primarily caused, it was at least most seriously aggravated, by overcrowding. There were over twelve hundred passengers - many of them of the very poorest class - crowded into the steerage compartments of the England.
More than one-tenth these fell victims to the scourge, either on the passage or at Quarantine.
Among the cabin passengers the disease did not make its appearance at all. The case of the Virginia showed a lower rate of mortality than the England; otherwise the circumstances were not dissimilar.
The latter vessel is the largest of the two by over six hundred tons; and with a passenger freight of one thousand persons, the Virginia was quite as much overcrowded as her consort with twelve hundred. The cabin passengers of the Virginia not only escaped the pestilence - as did those of the England - but they prefer now remaining in the clean and airy apartments of the infected vessel, to being removed to other quarters during their quarantine term.
A few more such lessons will probably teach emigrant shipowners and brokers that there is not only inhumanity in their practice - for it has, we fear, grown to that - of overloading their vessels with live freight, but that it is also the worst kind of economy. Either of the two great steamships, now detained at Quarantine could better have afforded to start with half the number of passengers, and to have made an extra trip for the other half, than run the risk and suffered the detention they have done. Here the matter might rest, where the risks run and the detention suffered merely matters of financial concern to the Companies themselves. As this is not the case, it is clear that the protection which the emigrant has under existing laws is altogether insufficient. And if the cholera should reappear at any of the great ports of Western Europe or Great Britain, the ravages of the pestilence at sea - at the present rate of emigration - must exceed those of which we have had any experience on land.
Contributed by Joe Miller
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From ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS, dated April 25, 1885
"Wanted, Respectable Young Women, as DOMESTIC SERVANTS, to proceed to NEWSOUTH WALES. Passages, including Provisions, Bedding, &c., will be grantedby the Agent-General in first-class steamers to approved applicants, uponpayment of £2 each. An experienced Surgeon and Matron accompany each ship.Single females are quickly engaged at good wages on their arrival in Sydney,but, if desired the Government will provide them with free accommodation forten days. Further information may be obtained at the EMIGRATION DEPARTMENT,New South Wales Government Offices, 5, Westminster Chambers, Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W."
Joan in Berkshire UK; Researching:
FLAY, Wiltshire, England
VINALL Sussex, England
BOSWELL Oxfordshire, England

From NEW YORK TIMES dated April 22, 1866
NY Times Cholera and the Board of Health Apr 22 1866
The occurrence of what is probably cholera on a ship arriving in this port, and now in the Lower Bay, ought to occasion no anxiety or alarm in our community. Even if the disease should reach the shore, it is not the time of year as yet for it to begin its ravages, and we probably shall have some weeks to prepare. But, in all probability, it will be confined in Quarantine, as was the sickness of the Atalanta, and not appear in our City at all. We may reasonably hope that we have till the end of May or beginning of June to arrange the best Quarantine - that is, to clean the City and remove nuisances. The cholera, it must be remembered, is shorn of much of its terrors by modern science. Physicians tell us that not one case in a thousand is attacked by the disease without the premonitory symptom - the painless diarrhea - and this is a disturbance of the system readily managed. The profession hold that many other maladies are much more to be dreaded than this. Nothing (except cleanliness) is such a good safeguard as calmness of nerves. The timid are much more liable to attack than others. The cholera is especially the punishment of neglect of sanitary laws; it is the curse of the dirty, the intemperate and degraded. If it come to New York, we shall hear of it very little in the upper and well-cared for portions of the City, the abodes of the middle and wealthy classes. It will revel in the cellars of the poor and among the packed tenement-houses, and in those villages of shanties where pigs and human beings live huddled together. The slaughter-houses and bone-boiling establishments and underground tenements will be the nuclei of its ravages.
Our citizens may derive much courage and hope from the energetic action of the Board of Health. Everything will be done which time and strength will permit, to avert and (if that be not possible) to lessen the pestilence. The poor wards were never before in such a clean condition; thousands of crying nuisances have been removed; the promoters of others have been warned, and the City is being netanized for a thorough visitation, and to give every assistance when the disease comes.
The movement of the Board reported yesterday for securing the temporary barracks on the Battery is a wise one. IT may be that whole blocks will have to be emptied of their tenants, and the people placed in tents (as was done with success in England) till the buildings are cleaned; or perhaps temporary hospitals will be needed for strangers or others attacked with the preliminary symptoms. Tent accommodation should also be secured speedily for Quarantine and for other portions of the City. We would desire also that what is evidently one of the crying stimulants to the pestilence, these overcrowded emigrant ships, might be placed under stricter control. If the English authorities will not attend to this, we ought to. Human beings ought not to be packed together as they are now on these Liverpool and Irish steamers. Every steamer will become a nest of cholera if this practice continues. Why cannot an act of Congress regulate the cubic space for each passenger on scientific principles, now well known?
But, vigorous as has been the action of the Board of Health, there is one gigantic evil and stimulus to cholera which they have not as yet touched; we allude to the overcrowding of the tenement houses and the collar population. They ought to pass the proposed resolutions, requiring that every cellar with specified depth below the surface, and certain want of window space, used as a tenement, should be vacated after such and such a date. Then, as the time specified, the Police should proceed and turn the miserable wretches who inhabit them out into the street. Many of them will be better off in the Almshouse, or in tents, or in lodgings up-town or in the suburbs. At all events, they should not be left to die there like rats in a hole. We doubt whether the Board have not been too cautious in waiting so long to break up such notorious dens as exist in the First, Fourth and Sixth Wards - those hideous underground holes where now men and women and children burrow, and where this Summer they will sicken and die by hundreds.
Let them stretch a point of law, and so save these wretches and the City from diseases which always take root first here. Too great caution of such a time as this may be a fault.
We trust, also, that the Board of Health will speedily issue tracts to the people on "Prevention of Cholera," and later on the "Cure." These distributed broadcast in our tenement houses, might do incalculable good in calming anxiety and panic, and promotion cleanliness and ventilation, and the removal of nuisances; and hereafter would give valuable instruction as to the best treatment rand cure, especially of the premonitory symptoms.
In the meantime every good citizen roust constitute himself a member of a private "Board of Health," and do all in his power to promote proper sanitary arrangements, and preserve the health of himself and his family.


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