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MHSNJ Zoom Program—Tuesday, February 18, 2025, 7 pm ET
Speaker: Lorna Ebner
Topic: “Representing the Mob: The Destruction of a Smallpox Isolation Hospital in Orange, New Jersey in 1901”
Summary
Italian immigrants in Orange, New Jersey destroyed a newly constructed smallpox isolation hospital on March 11, 1901. Mischaracterization of this action obscured how and why the community viewed the short-lived isolation hospital as a threat to their well-being. In fact, newspapers demeaned the city’s Third Ward by constantly insinuating that the inhabitants were not acting in the public’s interest. Such coverage suggested that the neighborhood residents had questionable motives and loyalties, were incapable of self-governance, and were generally unfit for American citizenship.
The destruction of a smallpox isolation hospital in Orange serves as a case study that analyzes the rising authority of public health in American society, and the tension caused between the City’s Board of Health and the Common Council, Mayor, Police Chief, and community, by the exercise of that authority.
About the speaker
Lorna Ebner is a PhD candidate from Stony Brook University in New York. She is currently working on her dissertation, which is tentatively titled, “Burning Contagion: The ‘Mob’ Destruction of Hospitals and Pest Houses in the United States, 1775-1901.”
Lorna has written for the New York Academy of Medicine and worked with the Medical Heritage Library to create an archive of historical LGBTQIA+ source material. She is currently preparing to present for the National Library of Medicine’s series, “History Talks.”
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