-Smallpox Riots of 1894.

Article summarizing the smallpox riots in Milwaukee, 1894. (First published in the Historical Messenger, December 1970)

Richard L. Stefanik

12/1/1894

By Richard L. Stefanik

Mobs of people surged through south side streets 76 years ago last August. The rioting Milwaukeeans were protesting isolation of smallpox patients, which was a late nineteenth century public health practice.

Apart from the new public health practices, the disease, smallpox, was nothing new to city dwellers. Since colonial days, United States cities had been ravaged with smallpox epidemics, some of them wiping out large percentages of a city’s population.

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Having followed the usual urban pattern, Milwaukee had had several epidemics, but by the 1890’s smallpox had almost disappeared from the city. As though to get the disease out of its system, however Milwaukee had in late 1894 and early 1895 one last epidemic, in some ways the most notable, for it brought to the surface latent animosities and resentments against the relatively new science of public health. It was a revolt, some thought, against newly emerging scientific knowledge. In 1894 south side residents openly resisted Milwaukee Health Department policies.

The epidemic came gradually on the city. In January, 1894 the six-year-old daughter of a Polish family who had contracted smallpox was immediately removed to the City Isolation Hospital. Health Department officials warned that the disease was strictly contagious and would become epidemic, as it had in Chicago, if residents did not avoid exposure to it. By May there were six smallpox cases at the hospital.

A routine report that a twenty-two-year-old woman had contracted the disease was the harbinger of that fateful summer of 1894. A few days later, on June 9, newspapers reported a smallpox death, the first such death “that has occurred in Milwaukee for years.” The victim was an old man from Soldiers’ Home. Rumors said that the disease had crept in from Chicago, and Milwaukee Health Commissioner Walter Kempster talked of restricting travel to and from that city.

Alarm mounted in Milwaukee as residents recalled the horrors of earlier epidemics. On June 27 Dr. Kempster informed the public that the situation should not cause any alarm. At that point, he said, there were only eighteen cases of smallpox and there had been only two deaths. Yet, city officials suspected, and rightly so, that some citizens, especially those on the south side were not reporting all cases.

In July more cases of smallpox were reported, and the Milwaukee Sentinel noted that most of the new cases were mainly Polish people who lived in closely settled districts on the south side, many in the vicinity of the Isolation Hospital.

Rumors circulated that smallpox was not adequately treated in the hospital. Some said that patients were not properly cared for and often suffered from a lack of drinking water. Examples were cited of people taken to the hospital who originally were not sick, but contracted the disease there. Allegedly, when a patient was first admitted to the hospital, he was plunged into a bathtub of ice water.

Brutal treatment was used on uncooperative patients, reported some nurses in a later investigation of the hospital. Some windows had no screens and flies were everywhere, said an ex-patient. Worst of all, nurses were permitted to leave the grounds, thus spreading disease by going to parties, dances, and picnics.

According to popular thinking, the closer you were to the hospital the more likely you would be to catch the disease, because the hospital gave off vapors of disease. Thus, germs from the hospital were carried by the wind and infected nearby homes, hinted self-styled health authorities. In the latter part of the summer unruly crowds roamed south aide streets in the area of the hospital determined to put a stop to the senseless deaths at the “slaughter house,” as some called the Isolation hospital.

Near the end of July a movement was launched to relocate the City Isolation Hospital. The original structure built in 1878 on Mitchell Street between 18th and 19th (now 24th and 25th) had been used as a smallpox isolation hospital in earlier epidemic but was now too close to centers of population, or so thought panic stricken residents. A majority of health officials and city doctors were not in sympathy with the movement of the hospital to an outlying area. They felt that if the present hospital was properly managed, there would be no danger.

The height of the rebellion came at the beginning of August. On August 5, 1894, an angry mob of 3,000 south siders armed with clubs and knives prevented health officers from removing a child sick with smallpox from an Arthur Street address (now Comstock Avenue) to the hospital. Residents in the area had seen the ambulance coming and had given a general alarm.

Men in the crowd openly declared that they would overturn and wreck the ambulance if officials attempted to remove the child. Men and women, without apparent fear of smallpox, surrounded the house, tore off placards warning of contagion, and refused to move when ordered to do so by police. The mob rescued the main agitators who were arrested by the police.

According to a local newspaper, the mob was so infuriated that an attempt to move the child would have resulted in a pitched battle, bloodshed, and loss of life. The police had drawn their revolvers but were stoned by the mob, and one officer was almost knifed. The mother claimed the child did not have smallpox; another of her children who had died earlier at the hospital, allegedly of smallpox, never had the disease either. Furthermore, she could treat illness better than physicians; the child would remain at home. To see that the child was not removed, volunteers guarded the house all night.

Two days later, 2,000 determined citizens prevented an undertaker from removing the body of a child dead of smallpox at an Orchard Street address. This violated a Health Department smallpox rule that a body should be buried on the night of the date of death. The crowd also decided no smallpox patients would go to the isolation hospital even if ordered by health officials.

Alderman Robert L. Rudolph, a south side enemy of current Health Department practices, made a speech in German denouncing the Health Department as violating rights; no one should be forced to go to the Isolation Hospital. Although he recommended avoiding violence in dealing with the department, he also counseled resistance to undertakers or officials attempting to remove the dead child. Some in the crowd gathered to storm the Isolation Hospital and burn it, but they dispersed before reaching their objective.

Throughout August Health Department and city policemen faced rebellious south siders. For many consecutive nights, crowds gathered to protest Health Department rules. At times, riots broke out and police officers were hurt.

One night as police attempted to break up a gathering “about 30 persons … [were] more or less badly injured.” News of disturbances continued. Said a newspaper: mobs of Pomeranian (German) and Polish women armed with baseball bats, potato mashers, clubs, and bed slats prevented Health Department officials from removing smallpox patients from homes and stoned guards at quarantined homes.

Apparently unaware that they were spreading contagion, mobs drove quarantine guards away from infected houses and entered them. In the middle of August, 1,200 to 1,500 people gathered near a house containing three smallpox patients and kept policemen from taking the diseased to the hospital.

The Health Department became an object of hatred. It was impossible to know the exact number of cases in certain areas of the south side because many were “secreted.” Disinfection wagons were held up; 500 women stoned the members of a Health Department disinfecting corps who were burning beds.

Often, those patients who were willing to go to the hospital were prevented by mobs, and officials with pistols drawn would have to take the patient to the ambulance. Ambulances going to the Isolation Hospital were frequently stoned, and in at least one instance rioters threw scalding water on horses pulling an ambulance.

A woman smallpox patient was hurt because a Health Department employee dropped the litter she was on when he was hit by a stone thrown by rioters. A Sentinel reporter had to flee for his life while covering a riot. Physicians attending patients were driven from houses. A south side priest advocated giving cold water treatment as soon as a high fever appeared, in place of calling a physician.

Much of the wrath of city residents fell on Walter Kempster, City Health Commissioner. In late August, Alderman Rudolph clamored for his removal and in February, 1895, after a public investigation, the Milwaukee Common Council voted to dismiss him. South siders in jubilant celebration carried Rudolph on their shoulders.

The Sentinel declared that the impeachment was one of the most remarkable proceedings ever known in the United States: “Never before in the history of the country has a health officer been impeached and dismissed from office during an epidemic.”

The Wisconsin State Health Board decided that Dr. Kempster had handled the epidemic prudently and did not deserve dismissal. The State Health Board’s reports written at the time of the disturbances expressed shocked disbelief at what was happening in Milwaukee, yet the State Board indicated that Milwaukee could handle its own health problems. Kempster himself, in recapitulating events of the epidemic after his removal, said: The fact is there was no epidemic of smallpox until that day in August when the crowd swept away my guards and ran through the south side house where the dead body of the child was lying. I told the mayor the next day that within two weeks after that there would be an epidemic, and it turned out just as I said. Since I have been out of office I have looked into the history of the smallpox epidemics of Milwaukee before the last one. There have been seven of them, and every one heretofore has lasted two, three, four, or five years. The late epidemic is the first one that has been stamped out inside of a year. A year later, a surprising court decision reversed Kempster’s dismissal, and he again became Health Commissioner.

The epidemic ended in early 1895, after there had been 894 reported cases and 244 deaths. Evidence of smallpox diminished as Milwaukee approached the twentieth century. The 1894 riots were the last violent efforts to prevent necessary measures to be taken against epidemic disease.

The controversial City Isolation Hospital was razed in the early 1900’s, and a new hospital Southview Isolation Hospital was erected on an adjacent site. Today, with the advances in medicine, an isolation hospital is no longer needed. In the early 1960’s about one-half of the structure of the Southview Isolation Hospital at 24th and Mitchell was demolished, and the remaining building is now the South Side Health Center.

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