Tacoma Man Arrested for Refusing Smallpox Vaccination
As fear of disease grips the border, travelers are being forcibly vaccinated and quarantined in a climate of escalating hysteria.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Tacoma, July 19—Tonight Charles E. Marvin, returning from Seattle, refused to submit to the quarantine regulations requiring vaccination. He resisted the officers and was placed under arrest, together with Miss Mcintosh, whom he escorted. Marvin has leading business connections here and at Seattle, and he held that Tacoma was not maintaining quarantine against Seattle, therefore he should not be molested. Mayor Huson ordered Marvin released, but the officers refused to comply until the chief of police also ordered it. The Victoria papers, after reviling the Post-Intelligencer for printing the truth about the smallpox epidemic, confirm that officials located a case in a back room at 110 Blanchard street, near Pioneer. It was a man named Henry Gant, who had been suffering from the disease for weeks while his mother shielded him, moving about the street daily.
“The health officer and his assistant still continue their precautions against the disease, however, and last evening the passenger trains from the North were boarded as usual, and a number of persons vaccinated.”
This 1892 report captures the intense friction between public health mandates and individual mobility, a conflict that resonates deeply with modern pandemic experiences. The suspicion directed toward the Canadian border and the forced quarantine of travelers mirror contemporary debates over the reach of civic power during medical crises.
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