Over the past several months as a project archivist at the Municipal Archives, I have been processing the Old Town records. Funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the project is to preserve and digitize a huge collection of volumes that are remarkable records of the earliest days of New York City. The Old Town collection, which dates back to the seventeenth century, contains records from the villages and towns that eventually became the five boroughs in 1898. They consist of deeds, minutes from town boards and meetings, court records, tax records, license books, school district records, city charters, information on street and sewer construction, and much, much more. It is a collection rich with fascinating content and the chance to make it more accessible through this grant-funded project is a great opportunity.

It is always interesting to find parallels to modern life when looking through books and papers that are centuries old. The old adage that history repeats itself does, at times, seem to ring true. One such instance is a Board of Health ledger from Kings County, dating from September 15, 1892 to December 31, 1894.   

Flipping through the book, topics and problems facing the Board of Health become readily apparent: records of deaths due to illnesses that were reported to the board, salaries and raises for board officials, unpaid bills, resignations and appointments to various positions (doctors, sanitation workers, etc.), and regulations regarding the storage of meat are just some of the subjects in this minute book.

But as you turn the pages, a word that has become very familiar of late jumps out many times: “vaccination.” After looking at these entries in more detail, the story becomes clearer: there was a smallpox outbreak in Brooklyn in the winter of 1893-1894, and this book documents the Board of Health’s efforts to contain it, largely by vaccinating as much of the population as possible.

A plan for the vaccination is laid out:

“February 9, 1894,

Orders issued to vaccinators and sanitary inspectors as follows:

You will vaccinate in ward and make daily reports to the Inspector of the district. You will urge vaccination upon all who have not been vaccinated within five (5) years.

Yours truly,

Z. Taylor Emery, M.D.

Commissioner”

We also find printed pages distributed by the Department of Health pasted into the book:

The above Rules for Vaccinators, and Further Instructions includes phrases like:

“This applies with especial force in times of epidemic prevalence.”

“In case persons are found who have never been vaccinated, every effort should be made to induce them to accept it, and, if necessary, they should be visited a second or third time.”

“When the inmates of infected houses refuse to be vaccinated, the vaccinator may—at his discretion—direct the Sanitary Police to maintain a quarantine until they are vaccinated.”

These instructions indicate how this was a matter of utmost importance to the Board of Health. The sense of urgency is, again, a familiar one in the current pandemic.

We continue to learn of the city’s efforts to immunize its people:

Another familiar scenario: vaccination stations were set up around Brooklyn.

They then took their efforts to the public schools:

“Conference was held between the Commissioner [and] President of the Board of Education…with regard to the measures to be taken for the protection of the Public School children from the danger of smallpox. The Commissioner insisted on the necessity of an examination of all the children in the Public Schools in order to determine whether or not they had been vaccinated….”

An official plan was made:

As seen above, the goal was to vaccinate any child who hadn’t yet been, for whatever reason. Those who were not vaccinated were not allowed to attend school until they brought a certificate of vaccination.

It was a swift process, lasting only a few weeks, as we see an entry dated April 23, 1894: “Vaccination of the children in the public schools completed this day.”

A few months later we see a letter from Henry H. Morton, a contagious disease expert, requesting statistics to show “the protective power of vaccination”: 

And, the last entry referencing the vaccination effort is a congratulatory letter from the Medical Society of the County of Kings.

The efforts that the city made to vaccinate its citizens were no doubt controversial at the time, and in fact resulted in a number of legal cases. But as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, it is interesting to learn about previous efforts to contain a serious threat to the population’s health. A few things are clear: virus and disease is a consistent problem throughout human history; controversy over vaccines and the methods in which government decides to distribute and encourage them is not a new issue; and vaccines have been an effective, safe method to fight serious health threats for centuries.

Archival processing and digitization of the Colonial Old Town Records is made possible by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.