The Town's Pest House Dilemma
A Garfield official and a local doctor clash over who should pay for a young man's post-quarantine clothing.
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.
Mayor E. G. Faires of Garfield was at Colfax Tuesday consulting with authorities over the smallpox situation at that town. Two cases are in the pest house ready to be discharged. One of them, a young man named Eves, about 20 years old, is a son of Dr. Eves, a well-known and well-to-do resident of the locality. This case has been ready for discharge for several days, but the boy is unable to purchase new clothing and his father refuses to do so for him, insisting that the county should buy them. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Roberts has advised the mayor that where the patient or his father is amply able to bear the expense incident to a contagious disease it devolves upon them to do so, the same as in any other disease, and that the public should not be saddled with the expense of a new outfit for young Eves, who is still a minor and under the control and support of his father.
“The public should not be saddled with the expense of a new outfit for young Eves.”
This dispute over who bears the financial burden of a public health quarantine echoes the debates about responsibility and government aid seen during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. It frames the historical ‘pest house’ not just as a medical site, but as a point of contention in civil and local governance.
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