Quarantined

Young John Scattercash (who has been on board the “Brisbane”) is run to earth at a grand supper, given in celebration of his sister’s wedding, and taken off to quarantine.
(Sydney Punch, 1877)
(When Sir Arthur Kennedy, newly appointed as governor of Queensland, arrived on the steamer Brisbane from Hong Kong in March 1877, a “Chinaman” on board was found to be infected with smallpox. The ship and its hundreds of Chinese passengers were held in quarantine in Moreton Bay, but the political authorities dithered about whether Kennedy and his entourage should be exempted. A special medical commission was created to adjudicate, but this was widely dismissed as merely buying time to downplay a potentially unpopular decision that would be, at root, political. “The people of Australia are looked upon in England as being a trifle too democratic, as inclined to pay too little respect to high rank or exalted dignity,” proclaimed The Brisbane Courier. “It is reserved for the Imperial authorities to lower the state which has always been accorded to the Governor of Queensland, by sending us one, traveling to assume his Government, as a passenger on a merchant steamer crowded with hundreds of Chinese coolies… We have, however, a decided right to object to any relaxation of the precautions usually deemed necessary to prevent the landing of smallpox on our shores.” According to Krista Maglen, Australia favored quarantine as a tool of disease prevention well after Britain had abandoned this tactic, and not only for reasons of geographical isolation. This image makes clear the strong resonances with questions of class which quarantine also excited.)