Overview
Ill health was a problem aboard the immigrant ships of the nineteenth century, particularly among working-class passengers. They lived below deck in the steerage area, where it was dark, damp, cramped, and often crawling with vermin. During the 1859 passage of the Zealandia one passenger wrote, ‘J. Hunter’s bed has been ascertained of have thousands of legs & the carpenter walked it overboard with all the living lice.’ (1) As well as lice, there were usually ticks, cockroaches, and rats.
Poor hygiene made things worse for these passengers. Thomas Ferens on the John Wickliffe noted in his diary, ‘I was sick today from an unpleasant effluvia from a capsized W.C.’ (2) While Charles Alabaster on the Strathallan in 1858 had different problems with the toilet. ‘Both WC’s in the cuddy refuse to run, the pipes being choked I suppose – & in consequence the cuddy is delicious to the nose!’ (3)
We can imagine how unpleasant the toilets were, given the gastrointestinal problems passengers could suffer. We know all about them from detailed descriptions in immigrants’ diaries; Victorians were noted for being preoccupied with the workings of their bowels! For example, several weeks out of port, Edward Player reported happily, ‘…I had the use of my bowels the first time for 20 days the use of them before was on the 7th on leaving the Thames.’ (4)
Sometimes there was an outbreak of serious disease. Measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid, small pox, and tuberculosis could all strike, and the youngest passengers were the hardest hit. In the early 1870s, the death rates for steerage passengers were as follows:
Adults - 0.35%
Children between 1 and 12 years - 7.5%
Babies under a year old - 19% (5)
Many shipboard diaries contain harrowing accounts of the deaths of babies and children. An immigrant aboard the Indiana in 1858 wrote, ‘[the baby] grows weaker and at 5.2 A.M. Friday 10th she expires at the age of seven days short of twelve months. The Captain gets a nice little coffin for her ...’ (6)
And in 1863, during a scarlet fever epidemic on an 1863 passage of the John Duncan, Elizabeth P. Yeoman reported, ‘Another beautiful little boy died at 4 this morning, & was buried at 2 this afternoon he was 3 years of age; this makes the 6th we have lost since we started. God grant that it may be the last, not 4 hours since the last funeral ...’ (7)
An outbreak of disease usually caused shipboard morale to plummet. When tuberculosis reared its head on the Clontarf, one passenger described the mood: ‘This has been a sad day, we have had 5 deaths, all children, the people seem to think it is a doomed Ship & have lost all heart ...’ (8)
Ships were often ill-equipped for emergencies, and ship’s surgeons were notoriously incompetent. ‘the feeling very general on board that the Doctor is an incapable man, there is evidently a great scarcity of medicines, and none apparently of a kind necessary for the sickness to which passengers are exposed.’ (9) wrote a passenger aboard the John Taylor .
Margaret Herring had no faith in the doctor aboard the Sir George Pollock, either. She called him a ‘noodle’, and went on to say, ‘Would you believe he told me last week quite gravely that it was possible to have mortification of the bowels for 6 weeks & live after it & that a mortified intestine wd come to life again with the aid of brandy!!’ (10)
However, passenger ships were not always disease-ridden. In fact, if a ship struck good weather throughout most of its voyage, passengers might not fare too badly at all. Some immigrants actually noticed that their time on board did them good. The fresh air helped, and some steerage passengers who had been used to living in poverty wrote that the shipboard food was the best they had ever had!
References
(1) Cumberworth, John. (1859). Diary on board Zealandia 29 July 1859–28 September
1860. Manuscript: 148/81 Canterbury Museum.
(2) Ferens, Thomas. (1846–48). Diary on board the John Wickliffe. Manuscripts: C37
and C38. Otago Settlers Museum.
(3) Alabaster, Reverend Charles.(1858). Shipboard Diary on board Strathallen 12
October¬ 1858–21 January 1859 . Canterbury Museum.
(4) Player, Edward.(1858-59). Journal of voyage to New Zealand on board the Alfred
the Great. Photocopy. Manuscript: qMS–1649. Alexander Turnbull Library:
National Library of New Zealand. Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. 27 December 1858.
(5) Wright-St Clair, RE. (December 25, 1985). Medical Conditions on Immigrant Ships
to New Zealand. The New Zealand Medical Journal 98:793. P 1082
(6) Belmer, Roy. (1971). Life on the Emigrant Ships. New Zealand’s Heritage: the
making of a nation 1:20.
(7) Yeoman, Elizabeth, P. (1864). Diary. Typescript. Manuscript: MS 341. Auckland Museum Library.
(8) Perkins, William. (1869–60). Diary on board the Clontarf 30 November 1859–21
March 1860. Manuscript: M47. Otago Settlers Museum. Copy in Canterbury
Museum.
(9) Maskell, Alfred Ongle. (1865–68) The Voyage of the Asterope: Aberdeen
clipper from London to Wellington. Manuscript: MS–1560. Alexander
Turnbull Library: National Library of New Zealand. Te Puna Mātauranga o
Aotearoa.
(10) Herring, Margaret. (1861–70). Mrs Herring’s letter describing voyage out,
September 1861. Photocopy. Manuscript: qMS–0952.Alexander Turnbull Library:
National Library of New Zealand. Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa. original in La Trobe Library, Melbourne.
Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database (1998).