When the state of New York first located the Quarantine here in 1799, it seemed to make sense, Dr. Hollick had to admit. The island was lightly populated by farmers and clam diggers, most of them living miles away along the island's south shore. But then a landing for the ferry from Manhattan was built beside the hospital. And well-off city dwellers seeking a few days in the countryside began to arrive. And hotels to serve them were constructed near the landing. And the villages of Tompkinsville, Castleton Corners, Clifton, Stapleton, New Brighton, and South Beach just grew and grew. There was industry here now: breweries, brickmakers, the Dejon Paper Company, New York Dying and Printing, and Crabtree & Wilkinson—makers of brightly colored head scarves that the servant girls favored.
Now more than 20,000 people lived on the island, most within a morning's walk of the Quarantine. In Tompkinsville, where the good doctor resided, wood-frame houses, general stores, tobacconists, saloons, and hotels stood directly across the road from the six-foot brick wall surrounding the pestilent hospital grounds.
And every year, people of Staten Island fell ill.
The worst was 1848, when one hundred and fifty islanders contracted yellow fever, and thirty of them perished. The rest of the populace fled in terror. That summer and fall, vegetables rotted in untended gardens. Unpicked fruit dried to husks in apple and pear orchards. Hotels and stores stood empty, and grass grew in the streets.
Every year since then, there'd been smaller outbreaks of smallpox, cholera, and yellow fever; and this year, the situation was becoming grave. Something had to be done. Dr. Hollick put down his spyglass, sat behind his desk, took up pen and paper, and began to write.
* * *
Three days later, the local worthies who had received Dr. Hollick's written invitations filed into his drawing room and settled into his upholstered, Empire-style furniture:
John C. Thompson, the general store owner known as Honest John—not so much for his business practices as for his rants against political corruption.
Ray Tompkins, whose family owned much of the empty land south of the Quarantine, and whose ancestors had given Tompkinsville its name.
Thomas Burns, the leader of Neptune Fire Engine Company Number 9, and owner of Nautilus Hall, a hotel and saloon located directly across from the Quarantine's main gate.
Henry B. Metcalf, the county judge.
And Dr. Westervelt, Hollick's neighbor from the foot of Fort Hill.
Two latecomers, Attorney William Henry Atherton and real estate agent John Simonson, had to settle for hard-backed chairs dragged in from the dining room.
All sat in grim silence, waiting for Dr. Hollick to start the proceedings.
He began by reading the roll of the summer's yellow fever victims.
"Mr. Kramer, who was employed by the Quarantine to burn infected bedding, took sick at his residence in mid-July and died soon thereafter. A few days hence, his wife succumbed. The German tailor and his son, who lived at the end of Minthorn, just one hundred feet from the Kramers, were the next to contract the disease. By the grace of God, they have recovered. Mrs. Neil, wife of one of the hospital's stevedores, was not so blessed. She died at home at the end of July. Then Mrs. Halladay, who owned the house occupied by Mrs. Neil, fell ill and died. Her boy also sickened, but he has recovered. In the first week of August, Mr. Young and his daughter came down with the fever, as did Mrs. Finnerty, who lives on the same block. They appear to be recovering, but their neighbor, Mrs. Holland, has perished. Mrs. Cross and her servant fell ill two weeks ago, and both died last week. Mrs. Quinn, who lives between Townsend's Dock and the gas works, took sick last week, and I do not expect her to survive."
When Dr. Hollick was finished, Dr. Westervelt added more bad news: "Mr. Block, who lives at the corner of Jersey Street and Richmond Terrace, died of the fever this morning, and his widow has taken to her bed with it."
"I hadn't heard that," Dr. Hollick said.
"It is an outrage," Thompson sputtered. "The Quarantine does little to confine the disease within its walls. Some of its nurses and orderlies are permitted to reside in the village of Stapleton. They pass by my door every day, spreading disease among us as they go to and from work. Others who live and work on the grounds venture out to trade, mainly in establishments that deal in spirituous liquors."
"Of late, patients are also roaming free," Simonson, the real estate agent, said. "Under cover of darkness, they scale the walls and wander aimlessly through the town, horrifying the good people of Tompkinsville with their indecency and filth. And stevedores in the Quarantine's employ loot cargo from infected ships and peddle it on our streets."
"And now that the cemeteries on the grounds have filled," Attorney Atherton added, "the dead cart rolls out of the gates at twilight two or three times a week, spreading disease as it makes its way to the new cemetery north of town. Three nights past, the cart broke down; a corpse lay in the road for nearly an hour before a relief cart was brought out."
Dr. Hollick knew this was not how yellow fever was spread. The disease lurked in the miasma that drifted from open hospital windows and rose from the holds of infected ships. Winds swept the foul air through the town, putting everyone at peril. That was why, even in the heat of summer, the doctor kept his windows closed. But this was not the time, he decided, for a science lesson.
"This is all terribly bad for business," Burns broke in. "The guests in my hotel can look out and see right into the windows of the hospital wards. At night, they hear the cries of suffering. It is no wonder that so few of my patrons book a return visit."
"The very existence of the Quarantine is injurious to property values," said Tompkins, who stood to make a fortune from his holdings if the Quarantine could be made to magically disappear. "It has created a prejudice against the entire island."
Burns and Tompkins could always be counted on to bring any discussion around to money. That wasn't Dr. Hollick's main concern, but he held his tongue. He'd take his allies where he could find them.
"So, my friends," he said. "What are we prepared to do about it?"
"Perhaps we might make another appeal to the state legislature," Judge Metcalf suggested.
"Not this time, Henry," Dr. Hollick replied. "We've petitioned Albany for more than a decade, but our pleas for relief have gone unheeded. The time for action has come."
With that, Judge Metcalf rose to leave. "Perhaps it would be best if I remain ignorant of your intentions," he said. "I fear you may all be appearing before me before the month is out."
* * *
A few days later, under cover of darkness, a wagon rolled up Fort Hill toward Dr. Hollick's residence. It drew to a stop beside his fence, and its contents were hastily unloaded. The following evening, the same wagon trundled through Dr. Westervelt's gate and continued to the rear of his holdings, which abutted the northern boundary of the Quarantine. There, its cargo was stacked against the hospital's six-foot-high brick wall.
* * *
Shortly after eight p.m. on the evening of September 1, a red signal lantern was hung from the branch of a tree on Fort Hill. Thirty of the area's leading citizens, four of them carrying muskets and two with pistols in their belts, gathered in its glow to hear Dr. Hollick read three resolutions from the Board of Heath of Castleton, the largest town in the area. As some of those present surmised, the good doctor had composed the words himself. He had secured the board's official blessing that very afternoon.
Resolved: that the whole Quarantine establishment, located as it is in the midst of a dense population, has become a nuisance of the most odious character, bringing death and desolation to the very doors of Castleton and Southfield.
Resolved: that it is a nuisance too intolerable to be borne by the citizens of these towns any longer.
Resolved: that this board recommends the citizens of this county protect themselves by abating this abominable nuisance without delay.
The men let loose with three huzzahs. Then they gathered up the goods that the wagon had dro
pped off three days before: ten boxes of wooden matches, twenty-five bundles of straw, and twenty quart bottles of camphene.
With Thompson and Tompkins in the lead, the group proceeded down the hill. Dr. Hollick, however, withdrew to his home to observe the evening's festivities from his library window. Arson, he told himself, was a job best left to younger men.
At the foot of the hill, the men crossed a dirt road and approached the gate to Dr. Westervelt's property. Normally it was locked, but on this evening it had been left open. The men walked across an unmowed hayfield to the north wall of the Quarantine, set down their loads, and hefted what had been left there for them: four wooden beams, each affixed with handles.
The men grunted as they swung the battering rams against the brick. In minutes, they reduced an eight-foot section of wall to rubble.
In Manhattan, five miles across the harbor, the shops were bedecked with placards and ribbons celebrating the completion of the Ocean Telegraph, over two thousand miles of cable that connected New York with London. A torchlight fireman's parade marched through the city. Fireworks bloomed in the night sky.
The men in Staten Island gathered up the matches, straw, and camphene, and streamed through the gap they had made.
They came first to the wooden typhus shanties, assembled before one of them, and hesitated—as if suddenly realizing the enormity of what they were about to do. Then Thompson raised a bottle of camphene over his head and smashed it against the side of the building. Tompkins struck a match and tossed it.
Whoosh! The men heard the rush of oxygen as the front of the shanty exploded in flames. Inside, someone shouted: "What in God's name was that?"
Red tongues leaped up the dry shiplap siding and licked the tar-paper roof. Oily black smoke billowed into the overhanging oaks. Inside the shanty, the patients began to scream.
A nearby sentry sounded the alarm. Stevedores raced out of their dormitories. Thompson and the rest of the townsmen stood by and watched them run into the burning shanty and stagger out with invalids in their arms. The stevedores laid the patients in the grass and covered them with blankets. Then they grabbed more blankets from a nearby storeroom and tried to beat out the fire.
As smoke and embers spiraled into the night sky, Dr. Daniel H. Bissell, the hospital superintendent, dashed from his residence with a musket in his hands. At the burning shanty, he confronted Thompson and ordered him and his men to leave the premises.
"We shall not do so," Thompson replied. "It is our duty to help put out this fire."
"This shanty is lost," Bissell said. "Help us pull it down, and perhaps we can prevent the flames from spreading to the others."
Instead, Thompson and Tompkins led the men to the adjoining shanties. They streamed inside, dragged out straw mattresses, set them ablaze, and tossed them back in. Bissell confronted Thompson again, brandishing his musket. Thompson wrenched it from his hands and clubbed him in the head with it.
Bissell fell. In the flickering firelight, his blood looked black as it leaked onto the grass. He clutched at his wound and moaned.
The townsmen took up a chant: "Kill him! Kill him!"
They might well have done so if Tompkins had not intervened. "We are not murderers, my friends," he said. "But we shall complete the job we have come to do."
While the shanties burned, the townsmen roamed across the grounds, setting fire to the coal houses, barns, and stables. Panicked carriage horses burst out and galloped off into the night. The men torched the ramshackle smallpox hospital and broke into one of the physicians' residences to loot the liquor cabinets. Then they tossed camphene bottles through the windows and tossed in matches.
A few minutes later, Michael McCabe, a Quarantine watchman, discovered several men stuffing bundles of straw in the doorways and stairwells of St. Nicholas Hospital. He ordered them to stop. They ignored him and set the straw on fire. The building's patients, most of them ambulatory, streamed out of the doorways in their nightclothes.
Outside St. Nicholas, Dr. Theodore Walser, one of the three Quarantine physicians, encountered Tompkins and pleaded with him to stop the mayhem. "Some of our patients are very ill," he said. "Shall they have nothing but damp ground for a bed?"
Tompkins looked around and saw that the Female Hospital had not yet been set on fire. "Take the patients there," he told Walser. "I pledge to you that the building will not be touched." Then he hurried off to post a guard by it.
Outside the brick wall, about two hundred more townspeople gathered to cheer the arsonists on. Several of them fired muskets into the air, adding to the growing panic inside. Walser heard an insistent pounding. Someone was trying to break through the Quarantine's main gate. He and McCabe grabbed firearms from a storeroom and ran toward the sound.
As they approached, the gate burst open. Through it came Thomas Burns and the men of Neptune Fire Engine Company Number 9, some of them lugging hoses and others dragging their steam-powered pumper truck. To Walser, this was not a welcome sight. Burns was one of the most vocal opponents of the Quarantine.
"I know you, Mr. Burns!" Walser shouted. "We don't want you here!"
Burns and his men moved forward. Walser and McCabe pointed their muskets at them. "Stand back!" Walser ordered. "We will put out the fire ourselves."
But now, the mob that had gathered behind the wall pressed through the gate. Some of them had guns too. Walser and McCabe were hopelessly outnumbered. Reluctantly, they stood aside. The entering mob rushed off to set more fires.
The firemen set down their burdens, sat in the grass, and watched the hospital burn. "Should have brought sausages for roasting," one of them said.
A boat docked at one of the Quarantine's wharves and disgorged a squad of Harbor Police. Their arrival had been delayed a quarter-hour by a 150-pound sturgeon that leaped into the boat. Its thrashing had threatened to break a hole in the hull, but the beast was finally wrestled overboard. As the squad debarked, it was met with hoots, howls, and a barrage of rocks. Most of its members retreated, but two of them joined the mob and rushed off to set fires.
Flames reached the roof of St. Nicholas Hospital now. In minutes, it collapsed. The statue of a sailor that had long stood on its peak toppled into the rubble. Inside, the floors gave way. One hundred iron beds crashed through them into the basement.
From his library window, Dr. Hollick watched the fires burn all night.
* * *
At dawn, smoke curled from the rubble. Hospital staff herded ambulatory patients onto the Cinderella for transport to makeshift quarters on Wards Island. Those too sick to be moved crowded the two floors of the Female Hospital. Remarkably, no patients had died in the fires; the stevedores and orderlies, with help from a few members of the mob, had managed to get them all out. But overnight, a yellow fever patient had perished from his disease. His body lay on the grass, covered by a blanket.
A stevedore was dead, a musket ball buried in his back. Perhaps he had been struck by a random shot fired over the wall. Perhaps one of the mob had killed him deliberately. But Dr. Walser suspected another stevedore had done it, perhaps taking advantage of the panic to avenge an old grudge about a woman.
That morning, handbills were distributed in Tompkinsville and the neighboring villages, inviting all to a community meeting at Nautilus Hall to celebrate the destruction of the Quarantine. At seven thirty that evening, two hundred people crowded into Burns's hotel. There, amid much drinking of beer and hard liquor, they unanimously passed a resolution affirming the right of the people of Staten Island to rid themselves of the hazardous facility.
At ten p.m., Tompkins and a local hothead named Tom Garrett led celebrants out of the hotel. They crossed the street, pushed through the Quarantine's shattered front gate, and attacked the handful of buildings that had been spared the night before. They wrenched shutters and porch rails from Dr. Walser's and Dr. Bissell's residences, piled them inside, doused them with camphene, and set them alight. Then they swept across the grounds, burning the coffin house
and several cottages where the boatmen lived. When that was done, they burned the wharves.
They surrounded the Female Hospital and gave the staff fifteen minutes to get the patients out. After the sick had been placed on the grass beside the brick wall, the building was torched. It went up like a bonfire.
At the wall, hot cinders fell on the prostrate patients, and the heat from the fires grew unbearable. Quarantine staff poured buckets of water on the sick to cool them.
Around midnight, as the mob straggled out of the gate, it began to rain.
* * *
The next day, Tompkinsville's saloons were packed with revilers. A thousand members of the Metropolitan Police arrived from Manhattan to restore order. The following week, the 8th Regiment of the state militia set up in the foothills outside the village to discourage any further disturbances. Sixty US Marines were deployed to protect federal property in the area.
There proved to be little for any of them to do.
Local police, under pressure from state authorities, reluctantly rounded up a dozen members of the mob. They were promptly released, their bail paid with cash that Cornelius Vanderbilt sent over on the ferry. New York's favorite tycoon, it seems, had been born on Staten Island.
In the end, charges were brought only against Thompson and Tompkins.
New York City newspapers demanded retribution. The New York Times was especially relentless, branding the two ringleaders "diabolical," "savage," and "inhuman." The pair had been motivated not by fear of disease but by greed, the Times thundered. They had cared about nothing but the Quarantine's deleterious affect on the value of their property.
That fall, Thompson and Tompkins were tried before Judge Metcalf. Dr. Walser and Dr. Bissell testified about what they'd witnessed on the nights of the fires. So did the watchman, McCabe, and a host of others.
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