A history of port health in Southampton, 1872 to 1919

Abstract

The arrival of any vessel at a British port in the nineteenth century presented the risk of spreading infectious disease to local residents and potentially resulted in epidemics. The main components of port health were quarantine, which detained vessels, and the work of Port Sanitary Authorities, which isolated patients. Previous work in this area has focused on London or provided national generalisations excluding the inconsistent approaches and local measures adopted to prevent the spread of infectious diseases including yellow fever, plague, cholera and smallpox. This research has answered two main questions about the development of nineteenth-century port health: why Port Sanitary Authorities were introduced in 1872 and why quarantine was abolished in 1896. It explores port health from a local perspective using the Port of Southampton as a case study. It examines how the authority was organised, the local measures it introduced and how it worked with other authorities in Southampton and the local region, such as Winchester, to prevent the spread of disease. A final section explores in detail Southampton’s role as a trooping port, considering their impact on port health measures and the arrival of infectious diseases, such as influenza in 1918. This work bridges the gap between medical and maritime history of port health whilst demonstrating that the development of these health policies and practices were strongly influenced by politics both nationally and internationally.

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