MEDICAL PROBLEMS OF A GREAT PORT

THE SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE

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Attempts to prevent the entry of epidemic disease through seaports can be traced to medieval times. Venice in the Fourteenth Century imposed a compulsory isolation of forty days - the quarantine - on incoming ships as a preventive measure against Plague.

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Quarantine regulations were introduced in England in 1664 when an Order in Council enacted that vessels coming from ports infected with the plague were not to approach nearer to the Port of London than Gravesend or a like distance and that lazarettos were to be appointed into which the cargoes were to be discharged and aired for forty days.

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Guards were appointed to prevent communication with the shore and the ship was not admitted to the port until surgeons reported it free from contagion. The King also informed his allies that no vessels would be permitted to enter an English port unless the y brought with them a certificate from the Port Authority from which they came.

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These measures proved quite ineffective in preventing the development of the Great Plague of London in 1665 but the Certificate of Health continued to be required even after the Plague disappeared from Europe and was probably the origin of the Bills of Health of modern times.

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The practice of quarantine was not established by Act of Parliament until November 1710 when a recrudescence of plague in Poland led to the first of a series of Parliamentary enactments all of which proved burdensome to commerce.

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As in other ports the Liverpool customs officers acting under the instructions of the Privy Council were responsible for safe guarding the town and through it the country from epidemic disease. All ships coming from infected or suspected localities were required to anchor in certain specified areas where they were detained by Customs Officers for periods varying from fourteen to forty days.

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During this period the cargoes had to be opened and aired on the decks. The presence of any infectious disease or fever or death of men during the voyage meant that the vessel must be detained until released by an Order in Council.

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THE WIRRAL PENINSULA

 

The quarantine station for Liverpool in the early years of the eighteenth century was the Sloyne on the Cheshire side of the Mersey. Vessels were compelled to anchor there and were watched by a guard on the shore.

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Frequent escapes led to the assignment of an Admiralty sloop to watch suspected vessels and in 1721 the quarantine station was removed to Hyle Lake. Here the goods were aired on flats or lighters at a cost the merchants themselves and when they objected at the expense of the Crown.

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The cost involved was enormous and many attempt were made by the Custom Officers to reduce it. They tried to secure the only available island - Hilbre - at the mouth of the Dee for land lazarettos but the opposition of the landowners made it impossible for such a station to be secured either their or elsewhere in the Wirral Peninsula.

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Eventually a floating lazaretto was anchored in Hyle Lake but it proved inadequate for the increasing number of vessels entering the port. To make matters worse the Anchorage at Hyle Lake began to silt up and during storms the suspected vessels and the lazaretto were often driven ashore and seriously damaged.

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These circumstances together with the ever increasing petitions from Liverpool Merchants led the Customs Officers in 1809 to select Bromborough Pool above the Sloyne as the quarantine station, a change which might have been made earlier but for the terror of the inhabitants of Liverpool at the thought of plague infected ships entering the river.

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Three large men-of-war and a guard ship were stationed as permanent lazarettos within the yellow buoys which marked the quarantine station and Bromborough Pool still remains the recognised place for the inspection of all vessels infected 

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