The Lepers of 1904

It was near midnight and ice crystals formed on the nose hairs of the boatmen as they prepared the small craft in the dark. There wasn't much to prepare, really; all they had to do was make sure that there was enough fuel to bring them twenty minutes out to the island and back, then, get the prisoner in to the boat. Though a much colder trip, the smaller speed boat could clip across Boston Harbor at twice the speed of its larger sisters. They should have gotten danger pay for having to transport a leper, especially at night, but transporting during the day always caused an uproar. Huddled below the bow in a gray, woolen blanket John Roderick trembled.

Earlier that morning, or had it been the morning before, he couldn't remember, he had turned himself in to the Chelsea Marine Hospital out of sheer misery and hunger. He was immediately quarantined, thrown some food, and his clothes burned. He slept for the first time in days until he was awakened for this, his second trip to the island. His full stomach tightened at the thought. His aching head bobbed off the metal floor of the boat with less regularity as they neared the island where only society's outcasts were kept. It could have been called a hospital, but it was more like a sanitary prison. Even those with tuberculosis or small pox recoiled at the arrival of one with leprosy.

The flashing light from the rooftop of the hospital flickered its warning to the neighboring vessels that another leper was arriving. When the boat drifted a few yards from the shore, the two boatmen steadied it the best they could against the January wind and deposited the patient knee deep into the icy waves. It was too dark to see the tears that stung the open sores of John Roderick's face. The blinking beacon on top of the building went out and he watched in silence as his last connection to society departed. A male voice cut through the darkness, "C'mon, John. Let's get inside." He knew the voice of the attendant from his last stay on Gallup's Island. John had not heard anyone use his name in so long. Lepers really had no name; they were not welcomed or permitted in any public place, or private place for that matter. They were the unclean.

Five months earlier the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had passed a law that anyone found to be leprous should be arrested and detained. It was then, in the heat of the summer of 1904 that he had been arrested and sent like an animal to this human hideaway. There had been other prisoners too, but none had been as good a swimmer as the young sailor John was. After having studied the tides around the island, John was sure he could escape by swimming to the mainland.

Those who had not escaped now watched the two silhouettes in the light cast from the moon. The island's attendant worked his way through the sand and snow up to the steel door with John by his side. Inside, some of the faces were familiar. In a morbid way, it was a comfort to be around others who would share the same fate as he, because time didn't matter; each would soon die which seemed better than the agonizing wait for it.

Some of the patients were immigrants who had not passed the inspection queue from Ellis Island in New York. Others were Americans who blamed their diseases on immigrants that brought trachoma, scabies, scurvy and other maladies off the boats. But, once a patient was sent to Gallup's Island, it didn't matter where the disease had come from - this was the last societal stop. And like most societies, there was an odd sense of community about the place.

One of the Chinamen recognized John and bowed repetitiously while the nurse mopped the trail of wet sand from the floor where John tread. He knew where to go. He nodded at the little man, whatever his name was, knowing that a good hot cup of tea from a fellow leper was better than starving on the bitter January curb in Boston. Goon Lee Dip disappeared to the kitchen area to make an extra cup of tea for the resurrected patient. He had considered John dead once the waves of July had swallowed him up last summer. He stirred the tea. It was not the same as the good green tea from his homeland, but he smiled just the same as he gracefully delivered the three cups to a nearby table.

Yee Toy, the other Chinaman sat cross-legged and sipped the tea. His peaceful exterior never displayed his inner turmoil of being locked in the hospital, or his longing to walk to the water's edge to soak his burning feet. He also greeted John with a slight nod and said something polite in his language to Goon Lee for bringing the tea.

"Thank you, John said. And 'good morning'."

"Good morning!" Goon Lee always smiled.

Yee Toy's silence masked the fact that he had learned English so well during his four years at the laundry in Newburyport prior to his arrest. He pondered in the reflection of the tea whether or not to tell John what he had recently overheard. There was talk of moving only the lepers from Gallup's Island to a different island. Doctors and certain officials were very interested in them. There was talk of medicine and health care, a better living environment - if further isolation could be considered better. He looked up at John, who was expressionless, and he decided to leave him this way since it was his first day back home.