Pox_ An American History - Michael Willrich [123]
With the return of smallpox to New York in late 1900, the eyes of the department were trained once again on the city’s “Little Italies.” In mid-January 1901, officials discovered a case of smallpox in a Mott Street tenement. In the last few days of the month, a department raiding party removed thirty people with smallpox from Italian Harlem. Inspectors found children tucked away in cupboards. “No one knows the damage that has been done by these Italians,” said Dr. Frederick Dillingham, assistant sanitary superintendent for Manhattan. “They have gone from infected homes to work everywhere in this city; they have ridden in street cars, mingled with people, and may have spread broadcast the contagion. The most stringent measures should be taken to stamp out the spread of the disease.” Now, on the night of February 1, as Blauvelt’s men looked around at all those tenements, they had a good idea what they would find behind their brick and wooden walls.7
At Blauvelt’s command, the men moved. They followed the same method on each block. With policemen stationed on the roofs, at the front doors, and in the backyards, doctors and police entered the tenements and rapped on doors, rousing men, women, and children. Frightened and furious, the residents moved into the lighted areas, where doctors inspected their faces for pocks and their arms for the mark of vaccination. Some understood the officials’ English. They translated for the many who did not. Everyone lacking a good mark had to submit to vaccination. According to the Times, which had a reporter on the scene, many residents were “forcibly vaccinated.”8
While some fought, others fled. Quick-footed men slipped past police at stairwells, doorways, and coal scuttles, bolting into the night. Doctors and police chased a man wearing nightclothes as he leaped over back fences. Catching him, they discovered he had recently been vaccinated—he had the ripe sore on his arm to prove it. He fled because, speaking no English, he did not understand the raid’s purpose. He ran as if his life depended on it.9
The Times reporter recorded the “many dreadful scenes” that marked the progress of the vaccination corps through “the infected district.” Italian Harlem was a predominantly male world—a complex and conflicted community forged in the common experiences of separation and alienation. Separation from loved ones back in southern Italy. Alienation from New York’s Irish-dominated Catholic Church and Tammany Democratic machine. Only on these blocks did the authority of the Italian workingmen normally prevail. On a typical day, the streets were a male domain of bocce games, card playing, and conversation. Even so, mothers had a special moral authority in the tenements. In rooms where precious space was set aside for shrines to the Madonna, the bond of mother and child received the utmost respect. Now, as doctors and policemen “tore suffering little children from the arms of shrieking mothers,” the reporter watched in amazement as “embryo riots” erupted in the rooms, yards, and streets.10
Chief Inspector Blauvelt and a group of his men arrived at the three-story wood-framed building on First Avenue that housed Caballo’s saloon. They climbed the steps to the second floor. In the rear of the building, they came upon the door with the brass padlock. Tenants insisted those rooms