Typhoid Fever Hits the Jersey Shore
After 70,000 immigrants, mostly from Germany, England, and Ireland arrived in the US, there were calls in Congress to stop the flow. In its first large-scale test, Thomas Edison's light bulb was used to light NY's Pearl Street Station. Jumbo the Elephant made his debut in PT Barnum’s: Barnum & Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth. The Circus has an extended engagement at Madison Square Garden. Col. Maltby’s wife Mattie died, and he would need more help with his three hotels.
James Hardy, President of Manasquan’s Veterans post organized a reunion on the beach between Sea Girt and Manasquan.
“The Grand Army of the Republic will hold an Encampment at Sea Girt, near Manasquan, N J., commencing September 5th, 1882, to continue five days. It will be conducted in 'the same manner as our camps in the days of the rebellion. There will be reveille, grand mounting, dress parade, and tat-too. Eloquent speakers will be in attendance; delegates from every Post in the State are expected to be present. Refreshments and amusements will be provided in abundance. There will be music,-dancing, campfires,, and a grand parade”
The circus satisfied the 1880s desire for more elaborate entertainments
Anna Baird, millionaire widow of the Baldwin Locomotive fortune, opened Hastings Square, a collection of cottages on the block between Essex and Sussex at the beach in Spring Lake. It was designed by Benjamin Linfoot, the same architect who turned the Stockton mansion into the Beach House. The cottages had better features than most city homes and were an instant success with the wealthy, who helped build out Spring Lake over the next 10 years. They competed to have a grand cottage of their own. Sea Girt sales were non-existent.
All along the coast, summer visitors flocked to 180,000 hotel rooms seemingly making for a good 1882 season. But many of the wealthiest, and best customers avoided the Jersey Coast hotels that summer.
Scientists had recently isolated typhoid fever as spreading when the sewage from an infected person contaminated a local water supply. Illnesses in Atlantic City, Long Branch, Ocean Grove, and Cape May in 1881 resulted in the leading doctors in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore advising patients to avoid places without sanitary improvements. A cholera outbreak in Newport RI was also mentioned, showing even the best of resorts had drainage problems.
“A few hotels have done well, but most of the proprietors have been disappointed, principally because of the absence of a class of patrons that in other years has proved highly profitable. This class was composed principally of people of wealth and taste, fond of pleasure, who engaged the best rooms, came early and stayed late, and, by their presence and the character of the entertainments and displays in which they took a leading part, gave the resorts that social tone and sprightliness that was a large part of their attraction.
It now turns out that the reason so many of this class kept away from the New Jersey seaside resorts this year was because they were warned by physicians of their unhealthiness. The lack of proper sanitary precautious' and the number of cases of typhoid and other fevers so generated that had come under their notice last summer was given by some of the city physicians standing highest in their profession as a reason why people should not go there to stay any length of time.”
After the Bellevue of Sea Bright went out of business, it reopened at the Normandie by the Sea
The most sensational case came at the Bellevue in Seabright. Along the spit of barrier island between the Shrewsbury River and the ocean, just south of Sandy Hook, the Bellevue Hotel had attracted a well-heeled and quiet-seeking contingent of New York families. The hotel had been successful for four seasons, but trouble ensued when the original owner of the barrier island Rev. Mifflin Paul installed a tollhouse and a ten-cent toll to drive carriages the two miles south from the Highlands to the hotel. Captain James Corey, contracted proprietor of the Bellevue confronted Rev. Paul over the tolls and in the ensuing argument, Paul pulled a pistol and shot at Corey. The clergyman pleaded no contest to assault, was fined, and released with no jail time.
In July, two New York millionaire families were stricken ill in the packed hotel. Mrs. Levy was the sister of the Seligman investment banking brothers, and C.W. Fields Jr. was the son of the founder of the Atlantic Telegraph Company, whose transatlantic cable had recently joined the continents.
Earlier that summer both the hotel’s bathing master and a young relative of Capt. Corey were sick for a time. The boy had been walking through the sewage on the banks of the Shrewsbury River. The river was the illegal sewerage dumping ground for most of the coastal hotels on the barrier Island.
After a son who had gone to New York for a week returned ill, other members of both NY families were confined to bed. When the patients worsened, Fields brought in his own physician who diagnosed typhoid. When Corey ordered the stricken to leave, the doctor insisted the guests were too ill to be moved.
The newspapers suggested the bad blood between the two men helped spread the news to guests heading through the tolls. Through the first week of August, panicked patrons paid their bills, packed their bags, and fled, eventually leaving Corey with just two critically ill patients and their families.
Captain Corey, facing the loss of his season, made the mistake of telling the two influential families they would have to pay the full remaining rent he had lost for the hotel, some $2,500. The New Yorkers refused and promised to bring charges against Corey. What might have been a local story became national headlines. Rev. Paul used the press coverage to his advantage and had Captain Corey arrested. He testified that Corey ran a “disorderly house”, meaning he served alcohol on Sundays, for which Corey was ultimately vindicated, but every story about the liquor case repeated that the hotel had been sensationally emptied due to a typhoid outbreak.
A Philadelphia Times article in September recapped the poor season and noted that the just formed New Jersey State Board of Health had been sent to the Shore to assess the situation at the coastal resorts. In the article, Spring Lake was unexpectedly mentioned.
“Of all the resorts on the Jersey shore, until a month ago, Spring Lake was the most highly spoken of, because with unusual attractions there was but one hotel, the cottages were far apart, the population was small, excursions never came there and no case of typhoid fever or other serious disease had ever been known; but last summer a death occurred in the hotel that a physician familiar with all the facts of the case says was typhoid fever, developed by unsanitary conditions that will have to be overcome. The cause of the cases of typhoid fever that broke out in the families of two New York millionaires at the Seabright Hotel, leading to its depopulation, which made such a sensation over the country, been denied as the bad drainage.”
The inspections were made in the fall, and the headlines printed about the report were generous to the hotels who were big advertisers in the papers.
“The Board's report does not find sufficient ground for many of the sensational and extravagant reports which have been made about the seaside resorts”.
The body of the 1883 Board of Health report had many recommendations for the densely packed communities. Asbury Park, Ocean Grove, and Cape May were all noted for inadequate sanitation. They gave a clean report to the water supply and sanitation at Spring Lake and Sea Girt. Linfoot’s discharge into bodies of water had already been remedied at the Beach House after “Squan complained” and in Spring Lake at Hastings Square by what he called “entombing the rat”. He ran glazed clay pipes to large timber septic boxes buried deep in the sand.
However, the illness at the Monmouth House, worried the cottagers and hoteliers who insisted on a proper sewer connection for both communities. John Lucas borrowed money from John Audenreid and his own bank and proceeded to build out the sewers.
Women gathering centarium near the railway bridge in Sea Girt. Sea Girt had no sanitary problems, but the added costs of installing a sewerage system would dampen demand for homes.
State legislation passed in the winter of 1883 in wake of the Board of Health report gave towns additional rights-of-way to build sewers and expanded the right to levy sewerage connection fees to cover costs.
Lucas used sewerage fees in Spring Lake to generate income. He couldn’t tax the homeowners, but sewer fees were legal, even if they appeared way too high and arbitrary. This suppressed sales in Sea Girt, where there were less than 20 homes.
The view north from what is around the foot of Philadelphia Blvd. The closest house is that of J. Bunford Samuel (called Saulwahl), on what would be Brooklyn. The Tremont is next with the Parker House to the west.
The view south from the same spot shows the Beach House Hotel left, then Ceder Mer, Chas Wright’s, Avocado, then Mrs. Margaret Oglesby’s house. Other than a few boarding houses, the old Shearman farmhouse, Stockton’s cottage (Rod’s), and some barns, Sea Girt was empty.
After 1882, the Jersey Shore still attracted wealthy travelers. But the bloom was off the rose for many of the super-rich. Its reputation as a health resort suffered, and far-flung places like Lake Placid NY, Bar Harbor ME, Saratoga Springs NY, Newport RI, and European Spa towns stole the attention of many of the Robber Barsons of the Gilded Age.