1892 09 23 Elmira Daily Advertiser Quarantine Smuggling

Quarantine Smuggling

Elmira Daily Advertiser, 23 Sep 1892, p. 2 col. 2

STEERAGE MORMONS SAID TO HAVE BEEN TAKEN TO FIRE ISLAND.

Fair Reports From Sandy Hook�Camps Low and Erben Doing Well�Action of the New York Chamber of Commerce.

NEW YORK, Sept. 22.� A special from Fire Island says: Passengers of the Guion line steamship Wyoming, now detained at Fire Island, have a very serious grievance. They allege that about seventy Mormons, en route for Utah, fifty of whom are young women, who originally shipped from the other side as steerage passengers, have, by some subterfuge on the part of the company, been smuggled over to Fire Island with the cabin passengers, instead of being detained at Hoffman Island with the other immigrants.

The kickers are the Rev. W. H. Wilson, a Catholic priest of Brooklyn, and Henry Byrne, editor of the Belfast Irish News, both of whom were cabin passengers on the Wyoming.

When they were examined by the health officer at Quarantine they were all brought before Dr. Jenkins, as second cabin passengers, and the permit was issued to have them transferred with the first cabin passengers to Fire Island. This seems to confirm the suspicion expressed when it was promised that no more steerage passengers would be brought over that the companies would ship immigrants and try to bring them into port as second class passengers.

Dr. Jenkins denies this report. He said: "No company would have attempted to perpetuate such an outrage in the face of the great danger we have to contend against. If any company did so I would make it the costliest job they ever undertook."