The $3,000 Health Office That Vanished
A lawsuit between rival health officers ends with a lucrative post abolished and steamship companies refusing to pay for certificates they never legally owed.
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.
Port Townsend, Jan. 20.—Special.—Another lucrative office, which in recent years netted its incumbents an annual salary of $3,000, has been practically abolished, and shipping men are elated over the fact. Heretofore it has been customary for the collector of customs to exact a bill of health signed by the Puget Sound health officer from all vessels arriving from foreign territory before permitting them to enter. Lately he changed his ruling, and now only the government quarantine officer’s certificate is required, and that only from vessels arriving from other than contiguous territory.
All of this is the outcome of the lawsuit between C. M. Baldwin and P. T. Seavey, two rival health officers. A new board of health was appointed, which sought to depose Baldwin and appoint Seavey. The former resisted and a suit at law ensued, which was subsequently decided in favor of Seavey. In the meantime, however, the two doctors being unable to agree upon a disposition of the fees, the steamers refused to pay either until the suit was ended. By that time the bill had grown so large the steamship companies investigated the law and became convinced that they could not be compelled to pay the charges, and for that reason decided to abide by their verbal agreement. At this point the collector of customs stepped in and decided that inasmuch as the Puget Sound board of health did not pretend to examine vessels at any of the sub-ports, that he would not hereafter, in the absence of a contagion in British Columbia, exact a local health officer’s certificate.
“Another lucrative office, which in recent years netted its incumbents an annual salary of $3,000, has been practically abolished, and shipping men are elated over the fact.”
Public-health fees and quarantine authority became a turf war in 1895 Port Townsend, with a $3,000 sinecure collapsing under legal scrutiny. The fight rhymes with modern arguments over who pays for public health—and who gets to decide which inspections are necessary.
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