Our current immigration mess did not happen overnight. Like many societal ailments this nation has today, its germs came from the 1960s.
On the TV in the mid 1960s was a dumb but harmless sitcom called “Gilligan’s Island.” It was about a group of people who survived a tourist boat wreck and landed on an uninhabited island. It had some nice eye candy in Dawn Wells and Tina Louise, but the focus of the show was on Bob Denver’s character Gilligan, the poor stooge who was the butt of everyone else’s jokes because of his dumb ideas which he expressed dumbly.
Gilligan’s bumbling would be an apt metaphor for the nation’s immigration policy from that time forward to today. What is considered the “modern era” of immigration began during the administration of Lyndon Johnson in the mid 1960s, while “Gilligan’s Island” was a popular show. Johnson and his Congress produced the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which introduced daisy-chaining of families of aliens into this country as federal immigration policy. In a way it is fitting, because Johnson owed his seat in the Senate (and his subsequent career which put him in the White House when he and the Deep State arranged the murder of John Kennedy) to illegal votes attributed to Mexican nationals in South Texas.
(In today’s post, and over the next few posts, I am going to review immigration for you in an era when America did it right. I researched and published the book “When America Did Immigration Right” in 2010. I did the work using US laws and public record and interviews with subject experts. When you are done reading these, you will know more about immigration than almost all of our members of Congress and all of the liars in the media.)
It is easy and irresponsible to criticize the majority of immigration agents at Ellis Island and elsewhere from the safety of today. The truth is no other country welcomed immigrants like the United States did, and as a nation the United States was barely 100 years old itself when Ellis Island opened for business. In that time, the United States grew from an Atlantic Seaboard country into a country roughly as large as Europe, and had withstood a terrible Civil War.
There was no federal immigrant inspection law until 1891.Until that time, state officials had admitted immigrants to the United States. Federal authorities had federalized immigrant processing in New York City’s harbor in 1890, and they federalized immigrant processing in the rest of the country in 1891.
This chapter looks at how American officials screened immigrants coming through Ellis Island. We focus on Ellis Island for a very simple reason – volume. From when the U.S. government first started screening immigrants in New York in 1890 until the end of the great waves of immigration in 1924, federal agents on Ellis Island and elsewhere in the harbor facilities of New York City processed about 70% of all immigrants seeking to gain entry into the United States.
EVENTS THAT LED TO THE ELLIS ISLAND PROCESS
Since the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which tied the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean via the Hudson River, New York City was the dominant seaport of the United States. Therefore most immigrants came in steerage through New York City’s port. They simply got off the ships when they landed, and settled in New York or went elsewhere.
The first formal immigration station in New York City was at Castle Garden on Manhattan Island. New York state officials processed immigrants at Castle Garden starting in 1855 to protect immigrants from being ripped off by New York sharpies and other vermin in Gotham. However, the ongoing corruption of New York officials and other state officials in the immigrant processing business led the Feds to take over processing immigrants in the early 1890s. Federal officials started processing immigrants at the Barge Office on Manhattan Island in 1890 until Ellis Island opened for business in 1892. (After the fire destroyed the wooden structures on Ellis Island in 1897, federal agents processed immigrants at the Barge Office again until the new brick facilities on Ellis Island were ready in 1900.)
Castle Garden is the kidney-shaped building with the turret on the roof in the foreground. You can see the Statue of Liberty out in the harbor, and Ellis Island, the low island with the big building surrounded by ships, to Liberty Island’s right. Photo taken 1902.
Ellis Island and the other federal immigration stations had a more thorough mission … screening immigrants as well as protecting them. Processing of immigrants was supposed to screen out those deemed a detriment to the United States. The immigration officials proceeded on the reasonable standard that immigration should benefit the United States instead of benefiting only the immigrants.
As immigration officials learned their jobs and learned what to look for when inspecting would-be immigrants, they adjusted the inspection process to improve it.
The advance of science brought better medical techniques and public health practices. This allowed inspectors to screen out would-be immigrants with medical problems that forbade them from coming into the United States. This also allowed immigration officials to disinfect immigrants to prevent the spread of disease and allowed the immigration service’s doctors and nurses to treat and cure many sick immigrants.
The advance of science brought better communication. The “wireless” radio telegraph joined the telegraph and the telephone as a means of rapid communication. This meant immigration officials could quickly get tips on unsavory individuals trying to enter the country, so they could detain them, arrest them, and deport them.
The advance of science also advanced industry. Industrial innovations included quantifiable standards, the discipline of quality control, and time and motion studies to improve products and production. Government officials – many who came from the private sector and after a few years went back, instead of too many of the careerists of today – applied these ideas to systematically organize the processing of immigrants.
There was at least one other factor which contributed to the treatment of immigrants at Ellis Island and other immigration stations – the growing participation of reformers in public life.
Labor unions were very controversial in the 1890s. That decade saw the bloody Homestead steel strike in Pennsylvania, several miners’ strikes in the West that involved bloodshed, and the Pullman Car strike in Illinois, which escalated into a nationwide railroad workers’ strike that soldiers broke with gunfire. It wouldn’t be until Theodore Roosevelt that there was a president who was openly sympathetic with strikers when their strike was just. However, more and more people who were not manual laborers began to see the appalling conditions of many job sites and the abysmally low wages for the jobs many workers performed were unjust.
Likewise, the blatantly crooked people who ran city, state, and federal governments inspired the outrage of many people. Since the people of the late 1800s were much more prone to react to corruption than we are now, there were politicians, publishers, and others who realized they could harness this anger to make reforms. Some politicians and writers decided to become reformers on principle; others did so to further their political careers or sell more newspapers.
Some of the best reformers in that era were women. Women as a rule could not work as white-collar employees in the corporations of the time, and they were by and large discouraged from being doctors or lawyers as well. As a class, about the only women executives in the United States were Catholic nuns who ran hospitals and school systems. As a class, about the only women who could shape public opinion were writers. Novelists Harriet Beecher Stowe (the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), and Helen Hunt Jackson (the author of A Century of Dishonor and Ramona) changed many people’s hearts and minds on the evils of slavery and the treatment of American Indians. Print media women Nellie Bly (who uncovered abuses at a mental institution by deliberately getting committed) and Ida Tarbell (the muckraker who wrote The History of the Standard Oil Company) had more impact than most male journalists of the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Women had the right to vote in some states, but did not win the right to vote nationwide until after World War One. However, women still had the right to act. Women like Jane Addams (the foundress of Hull House in Chicago) and Mother Cabrini (a Catholic nun — an immigrant from Italy herself — foundress of many orphanages and schools) helped the poor and inspired others to do so.
More and more women became teachers, nurses, and social workers. Many of them worked with the working poor – the many families who needed Papa’s wage, Mama’s wage, and some of the children’s pennies to eke out a living. Some of the women in these professions agitated for government officials to ensure the working poor got more decent treatment. The work of these women aided the work of some men of the day in trying to put government power to use to ensure fairer treatment for people.
The desire of many Americans for more humanitarian use of authority aided the people who processed immigrants at Ellis Island and elsewhere in doing their jobs more efficiently and humanely.
WHO WERE THE FEDS SUPPOSED TO KEEP OUT?
Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island William Williams, who ran Ellis Island from 1902-1905, and again from 1909-1913, in a 1912 report titled “Ellis Island: Its Organization and Some of Its Work” said the law required his agents to bar the following types of people from the United States:
“Idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons, and epileptics.
Insane persons and those who have been insane within five years.
Persons who at any time have had two or more attacks of insanity.
Persons afflicted with tuberculosis or with a loathsome or dangerous contagious disease (including trachoma, an eye disease).
Persons suffering from any mental or physical defect which may affect their ability to earn a living.
Paupers, persons likely to become a public charge, and professional beggars.
Persons who have been convicted of or admit having committed crimes or misdemeanors involving moral turpitude.
Polygamists and anarchists.
Prostitutes, procurers, and “persons who are supported by or receive in whole or in part the proceeds of prostitution.”
Persons coming to perform manual labor under contract.
Persons whose ticket or passage has been paid for by any association, municipality, or foreign government.
Children under 16 unaccompanied by either parent, except in the discretion of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor.” (By 1913, lawmakers split this cabinet-level department into the Department of Commerce and the Department of Labor.) (1)
Scene at Castle Garden. Castle Garden is on bottom of Manhattan Island. Ellis Island was more secure and an easier place for federal agents to screen immigrants and prevent escapes by the unworthy.
Yet, despite all these potential legal barriers to the immigrants, federal inspectors allowed 98 out of every 100 would-be immigrants into America during the Ellis Island era (1892-1924). Were the standards too lax? Or were the immigration agents at Ellis Island basically humane people? And were most immigrants in the Ellis Island era basically decent people able and willing to contribute to America?
We will take a quick look at how immigration agents processed immigrants in New York City’s port facilities to show you how the process worked and how many people were able to get through it. Admittedly, immigration officials screened immigrants at many ports and border towns besides New York City since the start of federal control of immigration in the early 1890s, but still well over half the immigrants to the United States in the Ellis Island era (1892-1924) landed at Ellis Island.
All immigration stations had similar procedures. But since most immigrants were processed at Ellis Island, we will discuss the screening process at Ellis Island as the typical processing experience.
THE WORKERS OF ELLIS ISLAND
During the time commissioner William Williams ran Ellis Island, the day shift started at 7 a.m. and ended at 6 p.m. There was some staggering of inspectors’ hours to ensure coverage during these hours. If there were many immigrants and many problems with these immigrants, the agents had to stay until about 8 p.m. inspecting immigrants. The night watch ran Ellis Island from 6 p.m. until 7 a.m. The workers of the night watch ensured immigrants staying overnight were fed, guarded, and otherwise attended to. Workers on the night watch also did a lot of cleaning and maintenance because of the hordes of immigrants passing through.
The flow of immigrants was constant. The immigration station on Ellis Island only closed Easter Sunday and four holidays in FY 1903, said Williams. Even on holidays, the place did not shut down like a typical government office building today. People being detained still had to be watched and fed, guarded, and treated. Ellis Island had dormitories for immigrants, holding areas for people being deported, a hospital to treat the sick, and a kitchen to feed everyone who had to be on the island. The power plant had to run constantly, and firemen had to be ready to put out fires and save lives. Plus, the place required constant cleaning to prevent outbreaks of diseases. So there were employees working at Ellis Island around the clock. Sometimes the Commissioner at Ellis Island lived on Ellis Island; there was a house there for his family.
Ellis Island ferry brings steerage passengers to Ellis Island for screening. Courtesy New York Public Library (NYPL)
The work went in shifts to provide around the clock coverage and overlap. Usually the agents didn’t process immigrants at night, but hundreds of immigrants routinely had to stay overnight if there was a problem with letting them into the country. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of immigrants had to wait aboard their ships in the harbor overnight because their ships had arrived too late in the day for them to undergo processing.
Ellis Island had about 60 watchmen and gatemen to provide security during the day shifts and the night watch. Several thousand immigrants passed through Ellis Island each day during its busiest years, and it was not uncommon for the authorities to detain 2000 or so aliens overnight on Ellis Island. Most of the immigrants needed protection; some needed watching; a few needed incarceration.
Women who assisted in physical inspections, and in security and investigation work were called matrons. Some of these women boarded ships with the male inspectors; they assisted with inspecting first and second class female passengers. Others worked at Ellis Island, helping with the medical inspection of foreign women, helping with children, and investigating women detained on suspicion of “immoral character” (prostitutes, madams, and the like).
Doctors of Ellis Island’s Medical Division performed the medical inspections (and as needed, the detailed mental evaluations) of the immigrants. Doctors, nurses, and other staffers of this group also operated the hospital on Ellis Island.
Agents in Ellis Island’s Boarding Division boarded ships carrying immigrants when the ships entered New York harbor. The group had inspectors, matrons, and interpreters. Their job was to inspect all first and second class passengers aboard ship. Doctors also boarded ships to inspect non-steerage immigrants and to check for people with severe contagious diseases requiring quarantining. (The medical inspection and the primary inspection for first and second class passengers were the same as these inspections for steerage passengers, but they took place aboard ship instead of at Ellis Island.) The agents also had the job of escorting to Ellis Island the steerage passengers and any first and second class passengers they decided to detain for medical or legal problems.
The inspectors of Ellis Island’s Registry Division performed the primary inspections (the legal inspections) of the immigrants. Most interpreters also belonged to this group. The interpreters also received assignments to help the other groups.
The men of Ellis Island’s Special Inquiry Division formed the boards of special inquiry. Three or four three-member boards, composed of qualified inspectors, heard cases every day. They had stenographers and interpreters to help them. These boards made decisions on 50 to 100 immigrant cases a day, depending on the type of case, and the difficulty of communicating with the immigrants before them. This sounds like a huge caseload, but medical exclusions were open and shut cases, and pauperism cases were also fairly routine.
The people of Ellis Island’s Discharging Division held immigrants temporarily detained due to problems such as lack of funds or inability to contact family or friends. They would try to reach immigrants’ families or friends by telegram, mail, or other means. (In those days, most people did not have telephones.) They would release immigrants to people calling for them if the immigrants recognized them and agreed to go with them. Or they would release immigrants to railroad company agents once they received tickets or funds and were going to their final destination by train.
Sometimes these people would release immigrants to charitable organizations with the understanding they would help the immigrants find work and housing, and not harbor them as charity cases. Since there were many fraudulent boarding house operators posing as missionaries, immigration officials had to check on anyone representing his or her outfit as a charitable organization.
The men of Ellis Island’s Deportation Division held aliens being deported, and escorted them to ships for deportation. There were two day watches and a longer night watch of deportation agents to guard and account for the detained immigrants to prevent them from escaping. At the change of each watch, the agents accounted for the detained aliens in their custody.
The men of this group also escorted detained aliens to the dining room for their three daily meals, and took them to the roof of the main building or elsewhere on the island for recreation at certain times. There was a group of men within this group who escorted the aliens being deported to the ship they were being deported on. If they had to put aliens on the ship the night before the ship was to leave New York, they would check on the ship just before it sailed to ensure no alien being deported escaped from the ship. Of course there were opportunities for aliens to bribe the immigration agents and the ship’s officers to spring aliens, and some escaped or were “exchanged” and falsely accounted for.
There were men who ran and maintained the power plant on Ellis Island. They ensured the island had heat, light, water, and power. The workforce included engineers and skilled tradesmen, and about two dozen firemen.
There was a large force of janitors and charwomen who kept Ellis Island’s buildings, dock, and grounds as clean as could be kept, considering the waves of people who passed through the immigration station. Besides cleaning showers, toilets, waiting rooms, work areas, and offices almost constantly, they disinfected bedding in the dormitories and other quarters where detained immigrants slept, they took blankets to be washed, and they spread disinfectants and pesticides everywhere. Many immigrants coming from Europe were dirty to begin with, and those who were clean usually became dirty in steerage because there were inadequate facilities for them to wash themselves in steerage.
The workers at Ellis Island rotated on and off night duty. They kept the place cleaned and guarded at night. Watchmen made the rounds through the dormitories and holding areas to check on the detained, and they patrolled on the outsides of the buildings as well. Matrons were available to help out. Men kept the power plant running and kept a fire watch. There were doctors, nurses, and other workers at the hospital around the clock.
The commissioner at Ellis Island had a staff and clerks, lawyers, investigators, phone operators, messengers, and runners. These people worked in the Executive Division.
The people of Ellis Island’s Information Division gave family and friends of the immigrants information on the immigrants’ whereabouts. These workers also kept records on the Boards of Special Inquiry and on the hospital, and kept records on people released to charitable organizations (such as religious groups or immigrant aid societies). They also dealt with inquiries by immigrants’ families and friends, and gave telegrams and money orders to immigrants from relatives.
The commissioner had staffers who, besides paying the workers and handling expenses, made sure money and mail sent to immigrants on Ellis Island got to the immigrants. They also billed the steamship companies for hospital expenses run up by sick immigrants and billed the steamship companies for bringing inadmissable aliens to Ellis Island.
The people of Ellis Island’s Statistical Division kept the records of all aliens arriving, verified ship landings, wrote most reports, and billed the steamship companies the “head tax” they had to pay for each of their passengers admitted into the United States. They also kept the ships’ manifests as records and they kept the records of those detained at Ellis Island.
There was a tugboat for use in boarding ships, and another boat for the use of the immigration agents on Ellis Island.
Contractors operated the kitchen and dining hall for the immigrants detained on Ellis Island. There was also a laundry on Ellis Island that served the needs of the hospital, the dormitories, and the detention areas. Inside the Main Building were a telegraph office, an office for railroad and coastal ship companies, and a money changing office. The commissioners of Ellis Island also provided space for some private religious societies (who they called missionaries), and private immigrant aid societies. All this activity took place on Ellis Island, a built-up sandbar only a few football fields in size. Now let’s go into the work of the immigration workers in detail. (2)
WHEN A SHIP CAME IN
Typically, a steamship loaded with immigrants coming into New York would anchor in Lower New York Bay, between Brooklyn and Staten Island and south of where the Verrazano Narrows Bridge is today. State health inspectors and federal inspectors would come out to the ship in a cutter, board the ship, and the federal inspectors would check the ship’s manifest.
The manifest was a series of lists that American officials required the ship’s officers to have prepared listing information about each alien intending to get off the boat … the manifest would be organized by first class, second class, and steerage. If the one-page form used for those in first or second class had the entries for 30 people, for example, then it would take 10 of these forms to list the data on 300 aliens in first class and second class. The form for people in steerage was a two-page form because immigration officials screened them more tightly. If the two-page form had the entries for 30 people, for example, then it would take 40 of these forms to list the data on 1200 aliens in steerage. There would also be a manifest naming all American citizens on the ship, and it would also be organized by first class, second class, and steerage.
Three beautiful immigrants from the West Indies strut their stuff at Ellis Island. Doctors would note the tallest woman’s pregnancy and give her a special diet if she had to be detained. Augustus Sherman, photographer, courtesy NYPL
New York state doctors would quickly conduct a quarantine examination on all passengers aboard ship. During the quarantine examination, the state doctors would look for passengers with symptoms of serious contagious diseases such as cholera, smallpox, typhus, yellow fever, and bubonic plague. Likewise, a federal medical officer from Ellis Island would briefly check the passengers traveling in first class and more thoroughly check the passengers traveling in second class (because many immigrants who knew they might not pass muster at Ellis Island bought second class tickets to evade the medical inspection there) for these contagious diseases, and for diseases like trachoma, favus, tuberculosis, measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, and diphtheria. The federal medical officer would also check the passengers in first class and especially in second class for other infirmities or other medical or mental disorders that would bar them from gaining entry to the United States.
If the inspectors found out people aboard the ship had cholera, smallpox, typhus, yellow fever, or bubonic plague, they would make the ship and passengers undergo quarantine. The ship had to anchor off of one of the islands used for quarantine and fly the yellow flag of quarantine. Those sick with the disease had to go to the New York Quarantine Hospital on Swinburne Island in Lower New York Bay. Those not sick but exposed to the disease had to undergo quarantine at the quarantine facility on nearby Hoffman Island. These people would have to bathe and undergo disinfection. Their clothing and baggage had to be disinfected or maybe burned. The ship would undergo fumigation and disinfection while empty. Only after the passengers passed quarantine – by waiting out the presumed incubation period of the disease and emerging without symptoms of the disease – would they be allowed to undergo processing. Those who died were buried or cremated and their belongings were burned or thrown into the ocean. Shipping companies had to pay for these costs because their agents were negligent in allowing diseased people aboard their ships.
If the inspectors found immigrants aboard a ship with milder contagious diseases like measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, or diphtheria, these immigrants would have to go to a hospital in New York City until they were cured (or died). Later, Dr. Alvah Doty, who was the Health Officer of the Port of New York, had such unfortunates treated at the New York state hospital on Hoffman Island. When the federal government’s Ellis Island communicable diseases hospital opened in 1911, immigrants suffering these less dangerous communicable diseases would receive treatment on Ellis Island. (The staffers of the Hoffman Island hospital treated some of the immigrants suffering these diseases even after the opening of the Ellis Island communicable diseases hospital. They would do so for a few more years.)
Dr. Doty personally tracked epidemics around the world. He kept in touch with American agents at port cities around the world, American Army and Navy military doctors stationed abroad, U.S. Marine Hospital Service officials, and foreign medical officials to find out what infectious diseases were cropping up in large numbers in these countries. He would then single out ships coming from ports in these countries, or ships carrying would-be immigrants from countries suffering epidemics, and order the passengers to be given the medical “third degree.” His trademark, in the eyes of a reporter who wrote about him in 1908, was a globe studded with tacks representing outbreaks of cholera, bubonic plague, yellow fever, and other serious contagious diseases. (3)
Federal inspectors from Ellis Island would conduct a legal examination on each of the first class and second class passengers aboard ship. During the legal examination, they would question the passengers to corroborate the information about them on the manifest. Any of these passengers with medical problems or legal problems would have to undergo processing (and perhaps hospitalization) at Ellis Island … and maybe deportation if they were not fit to enter the country.
The captain of the ship had to make sure there were on the ship’s manifest answers from all the first class and second class alien passengers to questions such as the following:
1. Passenger number on list
2. Family name and given name
3. Age (years and months)
4. Sex
5. Married or single
6. Calling or occupation
7. Able to read/Able to write
8. “Nationality (country of which citizen or subject)”
9. “Race or people (determined by the stock from which the alien sprang and the language they speak)”
10. Last permanent residence (country, then city or town)
11. “The name and complete address of nearest relative or friend in country whence alien came.”
12. Final destination (state, then city or town)
Immigrants who could afford to travel in first or second class didn’t have to go through the processing at Ellis Island. They could be cleared aboard ship. Criminals and other undesirables often tried to sneak into the country by paying for a first or second class ticket in hopes of avoiding the screening at Ellis Island. Immigration officials who boarded the steamships would check for these lowlifes among the higher-income passengers. They looked for pimps, prostitute brokers, prostitutes, and madams – undesirables who were capable of paying to stay out of steerage. Armed with tips from American law enforcement officials, American officials overseas, foreign governments, and foreign individuals in America and overseas, the inspectors also looked for swindlers, common criminals, and other shady characters who were reported coming to America to escape prosecution or to create new trouble in America. The inspectors detained those they found for investigation.
The inspectors also checked second class passengers fairly thoroughly for another reason. Quite a few would-be immigrants with some money who had earlier come steerage to save money had a disease or a legal problem that caused the inspectors on Ellis Island to have them deported. Some of these people would then buy second class tickets and try again in a couple of weeks. Inspectors often caught these people and had them deported again. Other rejected immigrants with better sense would sail to Canada and sneak into the United States by rail or by horse or on foot.
After the on-board inspections were through, the ship would then usually dock at Manhattan Island. Immigrants got their first look at the Statue of Liberty on the way into port.
First and second class passengers who the inspectors cleared were free to leave the ship after it docked and go their way. (American citizens traveling in steerage who could prove their citizenship also got to leave the ship after it docked.) Only those first and second class passengers being isolated for a contagious disease that was not so serious, being medically inspected further, or being detained for other reasons would have to get on the ferry for Ellis Island instead of leaving freely when the ship docked.
Why was this?
In the 1800s and early 1900s, the only way to travel between Europe and America was by ship, so first and second class passengers who were not American citizens were usually tourists or businesspeople. They usually weren’t trying to sneak into America.
The inspectors checked them aboard ship because usually there were not many of them. Also, since American officials presumed a person traveling in first class had enough money to live in good health, and the intelligence or the connections to have made a good living, they assumed such a person wouldn’t pose a health problem to the public, be a burden to society, or risk becoming a criminal. American officials presumed a person traveling in second class – though poorer than a first class passenger – was also enough of a cut above the steerage passengers to warrant easier inspection than those in steerage. The inspectors assumed a second class passenger likewise was healthy, wealthy, and wise enough to contribute to the country instead of becoming a disease carrier, a lawbreaker, or a public charge.
So the inspectors didn’t check these passengers quite as closely as they would check the immigrants in steerage. Certainly this was discrimination and profiling, but it was based on usually correct assumptions. Putting first and second class passengers through the poverty, medical, and mental capacity screening process the inspectors put steerage passengers through would usually be a waste of the Ellis Island inspectors’ time … and could put these usually healthy passengers at risk of catching a communicable disease from one of the many carriers who came in steerage.
The vast majority of our ancestors who came to America in that era came in steerage. This meant they would undergo processing at Ellis Island.
THE ELLIS ISLAND PROCESS
This section gives a “typical” picture of how Ellis Island immigration agents processed immigrants in the early 1900s. So the “typical” inspection process described here was a more stringent than it was in the late 1890s, and less stringent than it would be in the early 1920s. Of course, the processing changed a little from year to year, but we will present the overall picture instead of hanging you up on the minutiae.
Steerage passengers would get tags with their name and manifest number, they would collect their luggage, and they would get off the ship at the dock and board a ferry in groups corresponding to their places on the ship’s manifest. The ferry would take them – groups at a time – across the Hudson River to Ellis Island.
“Ticket Between Her Teeth.” Immigrant woman awaits inspection. Courtesy NYPL
Immigration agents inspected the steerage passengers on a ferryboat load by ferryboat load basis. They would try to keep these groups together (each group would consist of the people on each list of 30 people that was part of the manifest) as much as possible, except for those who the medical inspectors and legal inspectors detained for closer examination.
Sometimes the immigrants coming off of certain ships were so filthy that the immigration officials made everyone shower and have their baggage disinfected.
The inspection process, in a nutshell, went like this:
1. Brief physical and eye exam with your clothes on. If you pass, go to Step 5. If a doctor thinks you have a physical problem, go to Step 2. If a doctor thinks you have a mental problem, go to Step 3.
2. More thorough (strip to waist) medical examination, like a doctor’s office physical exam. If you pass, go to Step 4. If you have a disease or handicap which excludes you, go to Step 6. If you have a less serious disease that you could recover from, you will be treated at the Ellis Island hospital (or at a nearby hospital), and if you recover and pass the medical exam, go to Step 4.
3. Up to three mental examinations. As soon as you pass a mental exam, go to Step 4. If you fail all three, go to Step 6.
4. If you pass the medical examination, go to Step 5. If you pass the mental examination, and you don’t appear to have any physical or medical problems, go to Step 5. If you pass the medical exam, but a doctor thinks you have a mental problem, go to Step 3. If you pass the mental examination, but a doctor thinks you have a physical or a medical problem, go to Step 2.
5. You undergo the primary exam (the legal exam). If the inspectors decide you will be a burden on society (someone liable to be a public charge), are a contract worker who will depress American wages, or are an undesirable such as a pimp or a whore or an anarchist or someone else of anti-American beliefs or a common criminal, go to Step 6. If not, go to Step 7.
6. You go before officials of a Board of Special Inquiry for a hearing. If they decide you are inadmissable for medical, physical, mental, or legal reasons, and you don’t appeal successfully, you will be deported. (If you need a hospital stay to get well enough to go home, you will get it.) If the board members decide to admit you, or you appeal their decision and win, go to Step 7.
7. You are free to enter the United States. You have the status of resident alien, and have the opportunity to become an American citizen in a few years if you support yourself, obey the laws, learn the language, and pass a citizenship test.
Recapping, the people sent to Ellis Island would undergo a brief physical exam. If they passed the physical exam, they would undergo a brief legal exam. If they passed the legal exam, they were free to enter the United States.
People who didn’t pass the quickie physical exam had to undergo a more thorough medical exam. If they passed, they could continue screening. If they didn’t pass, they were either sent home, or were given some medical treatment and sent home if they weren’t fit, or were allowed to continue processing when they were healthy again. People who didn’t pass the medical screening were deported, usually at the expense of the steamship company.
Likewise, during the screening process, inspectors looked over immigrants for signs of mental disorders. People judged to be very stupid, insane, feeble-minded, unbalanced, or senile could not gain entry. People pulled out of line for suspected mental defects had to undergo a simple mental evaluation. If they failed, they had to undergo a second evaluation. If they failed the second evaluation, they had to undergo a third evaluation. As soon as a person passed a mental evaluation, he or she was free to continue processing; he or she didn’t have to undergo more mental evaluations. Aliens had to fail all three mental evaluations to be deported, and they were deported, usually at the expense of the steamship company.
The following sections will discuss the various screening processes in detail.
MEDICAL INSPECTIONS AND MENTAL EVALUATIONS
The immigrants didn’t know it, but in a way, their medical inspections started as they carried their luggage from the ferry up the steps to the first floor of the Main Building where the Baggage Room was.
U.S. Public Health Service doctors watched immigrants as they climbed up the stairs. Was someone limping, or otherwise struggling to get up the stairway with his or her luggage? Was someone having trouble breathing, or was he or she coughing on the way up? Was someone rubbing his or her scalp or eyes? Did someone seem dimwitted or burdened with a mental problem? Doctors who watched the immigrants sometimes had them rushed up the stairs so they could see symptoms of heart and lung ailments and other handicaps more readily. They would mark people they saw having problems.
People would leave their luggage in the Baggage Room and get a claim ticket. They would claim their baggage upon completing inspection successfully or upon being sent for deportation back to where they came from.
The Great Hall, Ellis Island. Here is where inspectors did most of their work.
Inspectors would inspect immigrants’ luggage, then move them on, while luggage handlers took charge of the luggage. This verified no contraband was coming into America, but it also made it easier for thieves among the luggage handlers to steal. Occasionally crooked luggage handlers, by watching the inspections, would know what luggage had the best items; these crooks would break into the people’s luggage and steal their things while they were undergoing processing.
The immigrants would next undergo medical inspection. Two doctors checked each immigrant as he or she got in line.
Dr. E. H. Mullan, a surgeon with the U.S. Public Health Service, summarized the diagnosis as follows:
“It is the function of this officer (the first doctor to check the immigrants in his line) to look for all defects, both mental and physical, in the passing immigrant. As the immigrant approaches the officer gives him a quick glance. Experience enables him, in that one glance, to take in six details, namely the scalp, face, neck, hands, gait, and general condition, both mental and physical. Should any of these details not come into view, the alien is halted and the officer satisfies himself that no suspicious sign of symptom exists regarding that particular detail. For instance, if the immigrant is wearing a high collar, the officer opens the collar or unbuttons the upper shirt button and sees whether a goiter, tumor, or other abnormality exists. A face showing harelip, partial or complete, is always stopped in order to see if a cleft palate, a certifiable condition, is present.”
“It often happens that the alien’s hand can not be distinctly seen: it may be covered by his hat, it may be hidden beneath his coat, or it may be deeply embedded in blankets, shawls, or other luggage. Of all the physical details in the medical inspection of immigrants it is perhaps most important to watch the hands. In many cases where the hands can not be plainly seen at a glance further searching has revealed a deformed forearm, mutilated or paralyzed hand, loss of fingers. or favus nails.”
Inspectors give alien the preliminary inspection. Unlike the FBI today, these men actually cared about protecting Americans from violent foreigners. Photo by Augustus Sherman, courtesy NYPL
“Likewise, if the alien approaches the officer with hat on he must be halted, hat removed, and scalp observed in order to exclude the presence of favus, ringworm, or other skin diseases of this region of the body. Pompadours are always a suspicious sign. Beneath such long growth of hair are frequently seen areas of favus. The slightest bit of lameness will show itself in an unevenness of gait or a bobbing up-and-down motion. After constantly observing the passing of thousands of immigrants the experienced eye of an examiner will quickly detect the slightest irregularity in gait. Where the alien carries luggage on his shoulder or back, it may be necessary to make him drop his parcels and to walk 5 or 10 feet in order to exclude suspicious gait or spinal curvature. Immigrants at times carry large parcels in both arms and over their shoulders in order that the gait resulting from a shortened extremity or ankylosed joint may escape notice. In like manner they maneuver in attempting to conceal the gaits of Little’s disease, spastic paralysis, and other nervous disorders. All children over 2 years of age are taken from their mothers’ arms and are made to walk. As a matter of routine, hats and caps of all children are removed, their scalps are inspected, and in many cases palpated. If care is not exercised in this detail, ringworm and other scalp conditions are apt to escape the attention of the examiner.”
“Immigrants that are thin and of uncertain physical make-up are stopped while the officer comes to a conclusion as to the advisability of detaining them for further physical examination. A correct judgment is often arrived at in these cases by the officer placing his hands against the back and chest of the alien, so as to obtain an idea of thoracic thickness, and also by feeling the alien’s arm. Very often a thin and haggard face will show on palpation a thick thorax and a large, muscular arm.”
“Many inattentive and stupid-looking aliens are questioned by the medical officer in the various languages as to their age, destination, and nationality. Often simple questions in addition and multiplication are propounded. Should the immigrant appear stupid and inattentive to such an extent that mental defect is suspected, an X is made with chalk on his coat at the anterior aspect of his right shoulder. Should definite signs of mental disease be observed, circle X would be used instead of the plain X. In like manner a chalk mark is placed on the anterior aspect of the right shoulder in all cases where physical deformity or disease is suspected.”
The doctors would mark in chalk on the outer clothing of anyone they spotted who had problems. If an immigrant’s coat had an L on it, they saw him limping and figured he was lame. A B on his coat meant the doctors noticed a back problem. An H marked on an immigrant’s coat, shirt, or dress meant they suspected he or she had heart trouble.
An SC on a person’s garments meant the doctors saw a scalp problem. A P meant the doctors suspected a lung problem or some other “physical” problem. A G meant the doctors saw the person had a goiter. Likewise, F for face, FT for feet, and N for neck was doctor shorthand for problems with these body parts. Often, the doctors wrote out the words “hand,” “measles,” “nails,” “skin,” “temperature,” “vision,” or “voice” on an immigrant’s outerwear if he detected any of these problems.
A K meant the doctors thought the marked man had a hernia. A Pg on a woman’s clothing meant she was pregnant, although in many cases, this was self-evident without the chalk mark.
A C, CT, or E on someone’s coat, shirt, or dress wasn’t a good sight. This meant the doctors thought the marked man or woman had conjunctivitis (pinkeye), trachoma, or some other eye problem. Having trachoma was grounds for being barred from entering the United States.
A person marked with an X or a circled X on his or her garment was truly branded. The X meant the doctors suspected the person had a mental problem. If the X was circled, this meant the doctors decided they observed actual signs of mental illness. Also, doctors marking S on immigrants’ garments were telling the inspectors they suspected these people were senile. People marked with an X, a circled X, or S would have to be checked further; mental problems were grounds for being denied entry to the United States.
Mullan continued:
“The alien after passing the scrutiny of the first medical officer passes on to the end of the line, where he is quickly inspected again by the second examiner. The examiner is known in service parlance as the “eye man.” He stands at the end of the line with his back to the window and faces the approaching alien. This position affords good light, which is so essential for eye examinations. The approaching alien is scrutinized by the eye man immediately in front of whom the alien comes to a standstill. The officer will frequently ask a question or two so as to ascertain the condition of the immigrant’s mentality. He may pick up a symptom, mental or physical, that has been overlooked by the first examiner.”
“He looks carefully at the eyeball in order to detect signs of defect and disease of that organ and then quickly everts the upper lids in search of conjunctivitis and trachoma. Corneal opacities, nystagmus (involuntary rapid eye movement), squint, bulging eyes, the wearing of eyeglasses, clumsiness, and other signs on the part of the alien, will be sufficient cause for him to be chalk-marked with “Vision.” He will then be taken out of the line and his vision will be carefully examined. If the alien passes out of this line without receiving a chalk mark, he has successfully completed the medical inspection and off he goes to the upper hall, there to undergo another examination by officers of the Immigration Services, who take every means to see that he is not an anarchist, bigamist, pauper, criminal, or otherwise unfit.” (4)
Matrons would then eye the female immigrants, especially the teenage girls and young women without husbands or other adult male relatives accompanying them. They were there to check for prostitutes. Prostitutes were not allowed to immigrate to America.
All immigrants processed at Ellis Island underwent the legal inspection (called the primary inspection) after being cleared medically. Most immigrants (80 percent and more) passed the medical inspection without being marked and diverted to the medical examination or mental examination line, so after the eye doctor cleared them and they passed the matron looking for prostitutes, they went immediately to the legal inspection. (Doctors marked about 15 to 20 percent of immigrants, according to Mullan.)
There were up to 15 doctors checking as many as 5000 immigrants a day for 250 to 300 days a year at Ellis Island. They gave exams to almost a million people a year in the busiest years. This works out to each doctor checking as many as 60,000 immigrants a year or 200 to 240 immigrants each a day … or one every two minutes in an eight-hour shift. (5)
Those who were marked were sent into another line for further medical and/or mental examination. For a few pages, we’ll talk about these people being diverted for suspected medical or mental problems. Then we’ll come back to describing the legal inspection, which all immigrants processed at Ellis Island underwent after being cleared medically and mentally.
What happened to those marked for a medical defect?
A person who the doctors determined had a minor curable disease had to go to the hospital on Island 2 which was part of the Ellis Island complex. (Because of the Ellis Island fire of 1897 that burned down the hospital along with other buildings, immigration authorities had to have immigrants with medical problems sent to the Hospital of the Health Department of New York City until the new hospital was ready on Ellis Island in 1902.)
A person who the doctors diagnosed with a contagious disease had to go to a hospital. Those sick with a serious contagious disease like cholera, smallpox, typhoid fever, yellow fever, leprosy, or bubonic plague had to go to the New York Quarantine Station on Swinburne Island at the entrance to New York’s harbor.
Before 1911, authorities sent aliens of all classes having milder communicable diseases such as measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, or diphtheria to the Port of New York quarantine hospital on Hoffman Island, or to one of several New York City area hospitals for quarantining until they were cured. However, immigrants – especially those coming in steerage –- frequently escaped from these hospitals still carrying the disease and still unscreened as to whether they were fit to enter America. Commissioner Williams pushed for having another hospital built on Ellis Island to isolate immigrants being quarantined for these lesser communicable diseases. Authorities had Ellis Island physically expanded with fill; this became Island 3. They then had a quarantine hospital built on the fill; it opened in 1911. This hospital was for immigrants with less serious diseases requiring isolation. The hospital’s doctors and nurses treated immigrants who had pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, mumps, chicken pox, tuberculosis, trachoma, favus, or venereal diseases.
When doctors certified a person had recovered, officials would let him or her finish screening and hopefully enter the United States.
In the Ellis Island Era, union officials actually tried to protect their members from unfair foreign workers willing to work for next to nothing. Presidents Cleveland, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt, and Taft agreed with them. That’s why there were rules against contract manual laborers to undercut American workers. Cleveland was an honest and good Democrat; the others were Republicans. McKinley represented laborers for free. Roosevelt upgraded Ellis Island and protected workers. Taft enforced the Sherman Anti-Trust Act as vigorously as Teddy did. Lewis Hine took this photo.
People deemed incurable or suffering from certain severer diseases or defects could not gain entry into the country. U.S. officials had the steamship companies take these unfortunates back to the ports they sailed from in Europe, usually at the expense of the steamship company for doing negligent or dishonest screening of the would-be immigrants they chose to transport.
Likewise, people who had trachoma or favus or contagious tuberculosis or leprosy or venereal disease or another ailment or handicap that would make them unable to earn a living would have to be deported.
Trachoma is a disease of the cornea and the conjunctiva (the eyelid membrane) caused by the Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria. In fact, a related disease, inclusive conjunctivitis, is a venereal disease that attacks the eyes as well as the genitalia. The Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria causes growths on the conjunctiva and damage to the cornea that can lead to blindness. Trachoma is a contagious disease that spreads through close contact of people (coughing, exhaling, touching, sexual contact, etc.) who are not used to washing their hands or bathing; flies also carry the disease. Trachoma was widespread in southern Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and North Africa in the late 1800s and early 1900s. (It is still common in North Africa and is widespread in much of Asia. It is also present in rural areas of the American Southwest, where dry climate and a lack of water encourage its spread.)
During the Ellis Island era, Italians, Greeks and other people from the Balkans, Turks, Jews and others from Russia, and people from the Middle East were most likely to have trachoma. Sadly, many people who boarded a ship with undiseased eyes contracted trachoma from someone else in steerage.
Doctors inspected immigrants’ eyes for trachoma by turning their eyelids up with their fingers or with leather loops used to button women’s high-button shoes. Assistant Surgeon General H.D. Geddings, who checked the medical inspectors and the hospital facilities at Ellis Island in 1906, said the doctors inspecting immigrants’ eyes disinfected their hands before inspecting each immigrant’s eyes. He did not say if the doctors washed any of the loops; he said they used them only when their fingers got tired from checking so many immigrants’ eyes. It is likely, and sadly ironic that some immigrants got trachoma from medical inspectors who didn’t sanitize properly before touching their eyes.
Favus is a severe skin infection, usually in the scalp; it is a type of ringworm. Fungus, not worms, causes the disease. Favus is related to athlete’s foot and jock itch but is more serious; favus is also highly contagious.
Doctors ordered marked immigrants to strip to the waist. (Female doctors and nurses would check women and girls who had to strip. There were different exam rooms for female patients.) The doctors would examine the immigrants for the problem the line doctors marked on their clothes. The doctors would check the immigrants for tuberculosis and for a number of contagious diseases. The doctors would perform ear, nose, and throat exams on them. As circumstances warranted, they would check the women’s breasts and would check pregnant women.
Occasionally some of the immigrants would have to strip a little more.
William Williams in 1903 ordered inspection of some unmarried male adults being processed at Ellis Island for venereal diseases. He did this to see if VD was a large health problem among arriving immigrants and if there were enough cases of VD to warrant making such inspections part of the general inspection process. The chosen few had to strip and have their genitals inspected. The doctors as normal males did not like to check other men’s privates … and among the 3400 or so foreigners they spot-checked they found only five immigrants who were visibly infected, so Ellis Island’s chief medical officer put a halt to the short-arm inspections.
If a doctor found an immigrant who had a medical problem that would keep him or her from entering the United States, two other doctors would have to check the immigrant and certify the first doctor’s diagnosis. The immigrant would have to appear before the Board of Special Inquiry on Ellis Island if two other doctors agreed with the first doctor. The board members would rule on whether to deport the immigrant. (6)
An observer, commenting on immigrant inspection in 1913, noted, “The surgeons mark about half of the immigrants with chalk marks as they file by (a high proportion compared to the norm of about 15 to 20 percent; maybe the ship was from a questionable port in Europe), and those so marked go to another pen for further examination. Families are torn asunder, and no one has the time or opportunity to explain why. Mothers are wild, thinking their children are lost to them forever; children are frantic, thinking they will see their parents no more. Husbands and wives are separated and for hours they know not why or how.” (7)
Children who were inadmissable posed other problems. If a pre-teenage child had to be deported, the child’s mother or father had to accompany the child back to where they came from. A teenager who was inadmissable could be deported by himself or herself, or a parent could accompany him or her back home. (In the early 1900s, teenagers had more responsibilities than they do now. Most were already out of school, and were working. Many were married.) Sometimes all family members went home; often they split up so the husband could find work and lodging for the other children while the mother took the rejected child home and waited until the child was well enough to pass the medical exam or tried to get relatives to take care of the child if there was no chance of getting the child into America. Since wages were much higher in America than in Europe, immigrants could send home money for a child’s care.
Having a child deported was undoubtedly a cruel blow to a family, but from a coldly practical point of view, their plight wasn’t America’s problem. American officials understood immigration was supposed to benefit America, not burden Americans with cripples from other countries whose own people should have been helping them. Crooked officials in the homeland countries and crooked steamship company officials should have told these people they could not all gain entry to the United States, but selfishness and greed motivated them instead of decency, so they encouraged these people to go to America anyway.
Now that we’ve discussed how an alien could get rejected for medical reasons, let’s note the vast majority of aliens marked for further medical inspection passed. According to federal statistics from 1892 through 1924, doctors determined 129 people had tuberculosis, 42,319 had “loathsome” or dangerous contagious diseases, 25,439 had other medical problems serious enough to prevent their becoming residents of America, and 87 were chronic alcoholics. Compared to the 20,390,289 aliens who American immigration agents inspected from 1892 through 1924, and the 20,003,041 aliens who American immigration agents allowed into America from 1892 through 1924, these 67,974 immigrants rejected for medical reasons equaled a rejection rate of about 33 out of every 10,000, or 0.33% of the immigrants screened. These numbers show doctors as a rule weren’t trying to exclude aliens just because they could. (8)
What happened to those suspected of mental illness or senility?
According to Dr. E. H. Mullan, this was the gist of the screening of immigrants suspected to have a mental disorder:
“From 50 to 100 percent of the immigrants who enter the inspection plant (the Main Building) are questioned by the medical examiner in order to elicit signs of mental disease or mental defect. The exact number that are stopped and questioned will depend upon the race, sex, and general appearance of the passengers undergoing inspection as well as upon the total number of immigrants to be inspected.”
Mullan said the medical examiner would observe immigrants for abnormal behavior and ask immigrants simple questions, like, “How many are 15 and 16?” He said the medical examiners would ask children how old they were and what their names were.
Mullan said experienced line inspectors knew idiosyncrasies of various ethnic groups and did not judge immigrants by American standards of normal behavior, speech, and mannerisms.
What kinds of symptoms got a doctor’s attention? Some behavior is considered eccentric in all cultures and times. Persons exhibiting compulsive drooling, abnormal staring or fidgeting, spastic and repetitive motions, disorientation, strange actions, excessive filthiness, talking to oneself, or biting or otherwise mutilating oneself, Mullan said, would get marked. Likewise, a person who exhibited a number of other behaviors, from extreme talkativeness to refusal to co-operate with the exams to extreme withdrawal, he noted, would be a person the doctors might consider to be exhibiting signs of insanity.
Mullan said persons who engaged in inappropriate laughter, crying, yelling, or other noisemaking, meddling with other people, compulsive lying, peculiar affected manner, or excessive antisocial behavior would also find themselves marked and in line for further mental evaluation. (Using these standards, many many politicians, media people, lawyers, and entertainers would be rightly certifiable on some or all of the above behaviors.)
Doctors were supposed to screen out, besides the insane, those they judged to be “feeble minded” (mentally retarded), “imbeciles” (moderately or severely mentally retarded), “idiots” (profoundly mentally retarded), or senile. Questioning of immigrants led doctors to mark others who they thought might be retarded or senile. Although epilepsy is a brain malady that is not a mental illness, doctors were supposed to screen out epileptics also.
If a medical examiner thought the immigrant was insane or had a mental illness, or was senile, he would mark the person’s outer garment with an X, a circled X, or an S. The X meant the doctor suspected the person had a mental problem. If the X was circled, this meant the doctor decided he observed actual signs of mental illness. The S meant the doctor suspected the person was senile.
Those marked for mental screening went through what the inspectors called the “Weeding-Out Process.” They would go to the Mental Room and one of the doctors would question them.
The doctor would ask the alien to walk up to his desk, sit down, count, do some simple addition, maybe make a simple drawing, and figure out a simple puzzle. He would also ask the alien some simple questions. If the doctor observed what he considered obvious signs of a mental disorder, he would fill out a list of symptoms he observed and have the alien sent to the mental ward of the Ellis Island hospital for observation. If the doctor observed the alien could not perform the test, but didn’t display any other signs of a mental disorder, the doctor would have the alien detained overnight in a detention room for a more thorough mental examination the next day.
Most of the immigrants would pass the “Weeding-Out Process.” The doctor would release them to undergo the legal inspection.
Doctors evaluated aliens sent to the mental ward of the hospital for observation. If three doctors who observed the alien in the mental ward determined he or she was insane or suffering from another mental illness that would not allow him or her to gain entry, they would certify the alien was insane or suffering from a mental illness. People who the doctors considered insane or idiots or imbeciles or senile or feeble-minded or mentally ill would be deportable. People having none of these problems, in the doctors’ judgment, could be cleared for further processing or might still have to undergo mental examination.
An alien who failed the “Weeding-Out Process” but was not in bad enough shape to be easily certifiable as having a mental disorder had to undergo a second mental examination. He or she would undergo this exam with a different doctor than the one who ordered him or her detained. The doctor would spend 20 to 60 minutes with the alien and ask him or her questions about home life customs, his or her occupation, and his or her intentions if he or she could gain entry to America. The doctor would give the alien a brief psychological test. The doctor would sometimes give the alien a vision test and a neurological exam. The alien would often also have to count, do some simple addition, make a simple drawing, and figure out a simple puzzle. Many detained aliens were able to collect themselves and satisfy the second doctor they were at least dull normal. The doctor would then release such aliens to undergo the legal inspection.
If the second doctor observed what he considered obvious signs of a mental disorder, he would fill out a list of symptoms he observed and have the alien sent to the mental ward of the hospital for observation. (And if three doctors at the mental ward who observed the alien decided he or she had a mental disorder, they would certify it and the alien would be deportable.) If the second doctor deemed the alien was merely substandard or questionable, he or she would undergo yet another mental exam from a third doctor on another day.
If the third doctor decided the alien was off-center but not abnormal, or was slow but not stupid enough to warrant deportation, he would then release the alien to undergo the legal inspection. If the third doctor decided the person was “feeble-minded” or worse, then the alien would be deportable. Why? As in medical screening, it took the opinion of three different doctors to deem the would-be immigrant mentally defective in some way.
If three doctors at the Ellis Island hospital’s mental ward certified an alien was mentally defective, or if three doctors doing “weeding out” exams in the main building certified an alien was feeble-minded or worse, the alien would appear before a Board of Special Inquiry on Ellis Island. The board members would rule on whether to deport the alien.
Mullan said the line doctors marked about 9 out of 100 immigrants undergoing processing for suspected mental problems. Most of these, he said, passed the mental evaluation the doctors gave them in the Mental Room, and they could return to the line for legal examination. He said 1 or 2 of the 9 sent for mental evaluation typically showed symptoms serious enough to warrant a thorough mental exam. (9)
The medical inspectors tried hard to keep mental defectives out of the country. One of the doctors at Ellis Island said the doctors who inspected people and certified 59 people as being mental defectives (which meant these unfortunates had to be sent back) in 1905 saved taxpayers more in not having to care for immigrants with mental problems than the entire cost of the medical inspectors in that year. This was probably the case for most of the years from the early 1900s to 1924. (10)
Most of those detained for mental evaluation did pass inspection. According to federal statistics from 1892 through 1924, doctors determined 384 people were “idiots”, 518 were “imbeciles”, 3215 were “feeble minded”, 2473 were “insane”, and 550 had other mental problems serious enough to prevent them from becoming residents of America. They also kept 416 epileptics out of the country. Compared to the 20,390,289 aliens who American immigration agents inspected from 1892 through 1924, and the 20,003,041 aliens who American immigration agents allowed into America from 1892 through 1924, these 7556 immigrants rejected for mental reasons equaled a rejection rate of 4 out of every 10,000, or 0.04% of the immigrants screened. These numbers show the doctors didn’t find very many mental defectives among the immigrants.
How busy was the hospital on Ellis Island?
The hospital on Ellis Island was busier than many hospitals in the United States at that time. Here’s a sample of what the doctors and nurses did there:
From July 1905 through June 1906, roughly 7500 immigrants (about 1% of the more than 800,000 immigrants passing through the port of New York in those 12 months) required hospital treatment at the hospital on Ellis Island, or at the New York Quarantine Station on Swinburne Island or at one of the New York City hospitals which did contract work for Ellis Island. The average patient stayed in the hospital for 12 days. This is an average of about 250 admitted patients per day for the 12-month period. Most of these immigrants were treated at Ellis Island.
They were busier in the next 12 months. From July 1906 through June 1907, the medical people detained about 9300 immigrants for hospital treatment. This was again about 1% of the roughly 950,000 immigrants passing through the port of New York in those 12 months.
Commissioner Robert Watchorn (who was Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island from 1905 through 1909, between the two terms of William Williams) blamed the steamship companies for much of the hospital staffers’ workloads. He noted in 1907 his people found 1506 immigrant children were suffering from measles, diphtheria, and scarlet fever, “all of which diseases are due, more or less, to overcrowding and insanitary conditions.” Of these sick children, he said, 205 died. The next year, Watchorn noted, 267 immigrants who his people treated or who they had sent to hospitals in New York City died. Of these, he said, 229 were children suffering from communicable diseases like measles and scarlet fever.
Watchorn billed the steamship companies $104,000 for medical treatment rendered to immigrant children in fiscal year 1907 (July 1906 through June 1907), much of which took place at New York City hospitals. He said it cost another $30,000 to detain a parent or a teenage brother or sister of these children so these children would have relatives to protect them when they could be released. (These dollar figures seem small by today’s standards, but in the early 1900s, a family could live in America on $800 a year without being below the poverty line.)
The hospital on Ellis Island also had a mental ward for observation and treatment of would-be immigrants who had or were suspected of having mental disorders. In 1907, medical officers opened the psychopathic ward a.k.a. the “insane pavilion” for isolation and treatment of aliens with mental disorders until they could be deported. Commissioner Watchorn pushed for such a facility in 1906 following the suicide of a man who strangled himself with a light fixture cord while being in a detention cell for behaving hatefully, and the suicide of a woman being detained for mental evaluation who killed herself by crawling out a window and jumping to her death. (11)
In fiscal year 1911 (July 1910 through June 1911), doctors and nurses treated more than 6000 aliens at the Ellis Island hospital – about 1% of the roughly 700,000 immigrants passing through the port of New York) They also referred 720 people suffering contagious diseases to the New York Quarantine Hospital on Swinburne Island.
In 1911, the contagious disease hospital complex opened on Ellis Island’s Island 3. The hospital’s 11 buildings had a capacity of 450 beds, and its medical people treated anywhere from 30 to 130 patients per month in 1911. Doctors and nurses at the contagious disease hospital on Ellis Island treated patients with pneumonia, whooping cough, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, mumps, chicken pox, tuberculosis, trachoma, favus, and venereal disease.
Doctors continued to treat those suffering the more serious contagious diseases like cholera, smallpox, typhus, yellow fever, leprosy, or bubonic plague at the New York Quarantine Hospital on Swinburne Island. They continued to isolate those exposed to these terrible diseases but not visibly sick from them at the facility on Hoffman Island. They also treated some of the immigrants suffering less serious contagious diseases at the hospital on Hoffman Island for a time.
In fiscal year 1928 (July 1927 through June 1928), after the quotas took effect in 1924 and only about 150,000 people processed through Ellis Island that year, the Ellis Island hospital’s doctors and nurses usually were treating on average 325 patients a day. Many of these unfortunates were merchant seamen. (12)
To be continued ….
SHERLOCK JUSTICE
WE CAN SHOW YOU HOW TO BE YOUR OWN DETECTIVE.
END NOTES
1. Statistics on immigration come from the immigration tables of the Historic Research Study, Statue of Liberty – Ellis Island National Monument, by Harlan D. Unrau. Page 490 of Unrau’s study contains Williams’ quoted statements.
2. Information on the workers of Ellis Island comes from William Williams’ 1903 report “Organization of the U.S. Immigration Station at Ellis Island, New York,” and his 1912 report “Ellis Island: Its Organization and Some of Its Work.” The Unrau study reprinted the former (pages 312-383) from the General Immigration Files RG 85, and the latter (pages 489-543) from his papers (New York Public Library). Specific pages referenced included pages 21-28 and 31-33 of the 1903 report and pages 5-12, 14-21, 28-31, 37-43, and 45-53 of the 1912 report. Other sources include “Summary of Labor Force Report by Special Immigrant Inspector Roger O’Donnell” dated 4/15/1909 (pages 397-399 in the Unrau study), and Barry Moreno’s book Encyclopedia of Ellis Island (pages 40-41, and 56-57).
3. Staten Island residents, tired of losing loved ones who contracted yellow fever from immigrants being isolated at a quarantine hospital in their neighborhood, burned it down in 1858. As a result, New York authorities had Swinburne Island and Hoffman Island built from landfill nearby in Lower New York Bay to handle quarantine cases. After the heyday of the Ellis Island Era, the U.S. Public Health Service took over the islands in 1924. The U.S. Maritime Service took over the islands in 1938 and used them for bases to train merchant marine sailors and to put up artillery, submarine nets and other items to bolster the Port of New York’s harbor defenses during World War Two.
After the U.S. Maritime Service stopped using the islands, New York scavenger thieves broke out all the building windows and stripped out all the usable fixtures by the early 1950s. The U.S. National Park Service now controls the islands as part of Gateway National Recreation Area. Ironically, these two man-made islands are now bird refuges off-limits to the public.
Some information on Hoffman and Swinburne islands come from 5/7/198 and 8/25/1951 New Yorker articles, a May/June 1997 Ancestry Magazine article by Rafael Guber, and an article in the March 1944 Mast Magazine, courtesy of the U.S. Merchant Marine.
Other information about the facilities of Swinburne Island and Hoffman Island include a 11/27/1910 New York Times article titled “A Little Island Near New York Peopled With Babies,”
a 9/6/1879 Harper’s Weekly article called “Quarantine at New York,” a 3/19/1905 Washington Post article, the General Laws of New York State 1900, Article VI, Sections 80-91, and a 5/27/1934 New York Times obituary of Dr. Doty. Reprints of these articles came from Cathy Horn’s website “The Forgotten of Ellis Island.” It is a nostalgic and tearjerker site well worth your time to check. (Especially read her article “My Search for Apollonia Speigel,” about how she located the grave of a child from Hungary who died in quarantine on Hoffman Island in 1910. Little Apollonia would have been Cathy Horn’s aunt had she survived.) Cathy Horn also reprinted an article about Dr. Doty’s work from the New York Times issue of 10/4/1908 titled “How Plagues are Watched the World Around.”
Further details of medical inspection of immigrants aboard ships comes from the Unrau study (pages 590-593).
4. Dr. Mullan’s comments are in the Unrau study (pages 853- 855).
5. Statistics on medical exams come from the Unrau study (page 916).
6. Information on how immigration officials treated those with medical problems comes from the Unrau study (pages 324, 584-587, 591-593, 598, 608, 612-613, 634-635, 656, 668, and 671-672).
7. The observer’s quote comes from the Unrau study (page 549).
8. Statistics on those rejected for medical reasons come from the Unrau study.
9. Dr. Mullan’s comments on mental health screenings come from the Unrau study (pages 854-865).
10. Statistics on those barred for mental health reasons and the cost benefits to the United States of these examinations comes from the Unrau study (page 594).
11. Information on the suicides and Watchorn’s response comes from the Unrau study (page 597).
12. Statistics on the workload of medical people comes from the Unrau study (pages 186, 239, 601, 602, 608-609, 612-613, 669, and 921). Information on the wards in the contagious disease facility comes from Encyclopedia of Ellis Island (pages 40-41)
