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Blog: Ben Schultz

The Milwaukee City Hospital (Source: Milwaukee County Historical Society)

Judy Leavitt, author and historian of medicine, describes the smallpox outbreak of 1894 as an anomaly. By the time it hit, Milwaukee had well-established public health programs to administered smallpox vaccines, but these vaccines were not regularly monitored. The public could pick up “vaccine points” at any drug store, small pieces of ivory with sharp tips covered in the smallpox vaccine, which could be introduced into the bloodstream when the ivory was scratched against the skin. However, because of the inconsistency of regulation and administration of the vaccines, many people became wary of them. An anti-vaccination group started in Milwaukee in 1891, just three years before the city faced the worst smallpox outbreak in its history. 

When the outbreak hit, many locals placed the blame on the German and Polish immigrants of the city’s South Side neighborhood. These immigrant groups lived in crowded tenements that were poorly maintained by landlords and city officials, and to make matters worse, the city’s official public health recommendations were only written in English, a language many immigrants could not speak, let alone read. 

A German market (Source: Milwaukee County Historical Society)

Walter Kempster, then the city’s public health commissioner, refused to understand the cultural barriers between the German and Polish people. He did not rally community organizations such as the Red Cross or local churches to distribute and interpret public health recommendations. Instead, Kempster’s primary response to outbreaks in these neighborhoods was to send city officials to affected homes to take children away to isolation hospitals, sometimes by force. 

Many of the city’s immigrants, by contrast, believed that families should take care of their sick in their own homes. They did not trust the government to return their loved ones after being in isolation, and Kempster’s forcefulness often reminded them of the repression they had fled in Europe. As a result, families and their neighbors rioted against public health officials who tried to take children to the hospital, fighting them with “domestic weapons” such as salt and pepper, rolling pins, and anything they might have at home. Meanwhile, the smallpox outbreak only grew worse. 

A news illustration drawn by Georgina Davis shows “residents of foreign birth” rioting against health officials taking a child infected with smallpox to the isolation hospital. (Source: Library of Congress)

Walter Kempster’s recommendations were based on robust scientific research, but he failed to communicate them effectively to the public, and they became counterproductive. As the riots died down, the Milwaukee city government realized that major changes needed to be made to their public health department. Health recommendations were published in German and Polish for the first time. Kempster was removed from office by the end of the year, although he would later hold the position again in 1898. 

The smallpox outbreak of 1894 made Milwaukee’s government realize the need for its community to know and understand the policies that directly affect them. 24 years later, what the city’s public health department had learned from the experience would be put to the test as an influenza pandemic emerged.