Ellis Island by Małgorzata Szejnert

Author:Małgorzata Szejnert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS037070, SOC007000, HIS029000, HIS054000, HIS038000, HIS036080
Publisher: Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Published: 2020-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

La Guardia in Mourning

Immigration opponents increasingly raise the alarm about immigrants taking Americans’ jobs. But they’re also reminding people of the ancient plagues the poor bring with them. One such specter is tuberculosis, which for years (alongside trachoma) has headed the list of infectious diseases strictly banned in each subsequent Immigration Act. The staff of Ellis Island take extreme care not to let the disease into the United States, using appropriate procedures and expensive diagnostic and sterilization equipment. But from time to time this entire control mechanism encounters unexpected circumstances.

A country girl from Poland named Basha (as recorded in a Red Cross report from 1920), with a cough that worries her doctor, refuses to undress for an X-ray. She is detained on the island but digs her heels in, acting sad and sullen. She behaves so oddly the doctors start to wonder if she’s insane. She doesn’t want to listen to anyone, doesn’t want to speak to an interpreter. She finally confesses what’s worrying her. She thinks the X-ray machine is a camera, that — since she’s meant to remove her shirt — they intend to photograph her for indecent purposes. She finally agrees to an X-ray, provided a matron will be present. The X-ray reveals no illness; Basha is admitted to the United States.147

The fear of tuberculosis is well grounded: it has no treatment yet. In 1921 it kills La Guardia’s wife and daughter. Fiorello’s efforts — buying a large, well-lit apartment in a more elevated, airy neighborhood where it’s easy for the sick to breathe, and seeking out the best medical care — are no help. In spring, his daughter, not yet one year old, passes away. La Guardia attends her funeral alone because her mother, Thea, is too weak. When Thea dies in the autumn, she’s 26 years old.

Yet Fiorello’s despair is not focused around immigrants who’ve infected America with their diseases. When a journalist from the Evening Mail asks him whether he could do more with the city’s budget, he responds:

Could I? Could I? Say — first I would tear out about five square miles of filthy tenements, so that fewer would be infected with tuberculosis like that beautiful girl of mine, my wife, who died — and my baby … Then I would establish “lungs” in crowded neighborhoods — a breathing park here, another there …148

Yet he cannot change those hypotheticals into reality. He is no longer a congressman. And in September, between the deaths of his baby and his wife, he loses the race to be mayor of New York. Tammany Hall-connected John F. Hylan wins again. Fiorello is exasperated, tired; he feels old.

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