The Abandoned Leper Colony
Located between the Bronx and Riker's Island, situated in the middle of New York City's East River in an area known as Hell Gate is North Brother Island.
In 1885, if you were sick and contagious you would be brought to this 13-acre island along with other patients from the five boroughs. In most cases the patients did not come here voluntarily, but were forced to do so. It was far enough to stop disease from spreading, but those who were exiled were doomed to a lonely existence. But in a city that was overcrowded and pestilence-stricken it was the best option to keep the populace safe.
Only a lonely lighthouse built in 1869, graced the small island. But there was also a potter’s field. Those who died at workhouses run by Overseers of the Poor were sent there for burial. The new lighthouse keeper was Finley Fraser, who was the former quartermaster of the steamship Central America.
On September 12, 1857 the ship foundered after leaving Havana, Cuba. Of the 626 people on board, 506 were lost. She also carried treasure in the amount of $1,600,000 and other valuable cargo. She ran into a heavy gale on the ninth that preceded a hurricane, which hit the southern coast of the United States. All the officers died, except Mr. Fraser. The survivors were picked up by different ships in the area.
By 1872, Daniel Kelly was the lighthouse keeper. He would stay there for the next two decades. He and his wife, who was dubbed the “Governor of the Island” ran what was known as Kelley’s Hotel. They would welcome different excursionists such as the North Side Chowder Club, made up of well known residents of the Fourteenth Ward. They catered to their guests and served meals.
In April of that year the first case of small pox arrived at the island, before the hospital was actually built. The German was sent by mistake on a Harlem train to White Plains, who refused to receive him and sent him to North Brother Island.
However the dead on North Brother Island were not always a result of illness. In 1873, Coroner Brown held on inquest on the body of an unknown man found on the shore of the island. He was 30 years old, dressed in an army coat and vest and mixed gray pantaloons. It was believed he was one of the victims of the steamer Hope that wrecked near Hell Gate.
There were other drowning victims who were taken to the island for the coroner to examine, however even if Hell Gate gave up the dead, treasure remained below its angry and unpredictable currents.
In 1780, when the British occupied New York, the 54-gun frigate Hussar sailed laden with military supplies and carrying 400,000 guineas meant to pay the troops in Connecticut. As she exited Hell Gate she hit Pot Rock. It was not known if this happened through the fault of a negligent pilot or treachery. She ran into a point opposite Morrisania, half a mile west of North Brother Island. She didn't make the beach and went down in six fathoms of water. The officers and crew escaped but 50 prisoners in the hold, who were shackled and handcuffed went down with the Hussar. The British denied any treasure was on board, but their extensive salvage efforts made their denial suspect. When the salvage of the cannons and other fittings was completed they dynamited what was left.
Different parties tried to find the treasure, and among what was found were the ill-fated prisoners. Their remains were scattered all over the wreck, and only one complete skeleton was recovered.
In 1876, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers used 25 tons of explosives in further salvaging efforts. Some theorize the treasure is under a landfill in the Bronx, but a definitive answer has never been found as to whether there was anything of value on board, or where it is.
In 1878, the body of an unknown woman was found floating in the East River off North Brother Island. She wore a black overskirt, white underclothing, striped hose and three rings on a finger of the right hand. Her identity was never established.
During the 1880s, Riverside Hospital was built on the north end of the island, and run by the Sisters of Charity. It had been established during the 1850s at Blackwell's Island, present day Roosevelt Island. The hospital was initially used for those stricken with smallpox, but in the following decades it was used to quarantine those infected with typhus, scarlet fever and yellow fever. During 1916, those diagnosed with polio were brought there as well.
Food shortages, and no heating during the cold winter months made existence unendurable. As a result of all of this, the mortality rate for those who were banished here was very high, to the point that being sent to North Brother Island was seen as practically synonymous with a death sentence.
The patients were not allowed to leave until they recovered, and during their stay their families knew nothing of what happened to them. Many times the visit to North Brother Island was the last time these individuals were seen. When the weather was bad, the ferries that ran between North Brother Island and the Bronx were anchored, and no food was delivered. According to those who survived and made it back to New York proper, life at Riverside was "the black hole of Calcutta."
Besides the danger of infection, the general populace with good reason feared it, and refused to go near it. Even the ferries plying their trade on the river, gave it a wide berth.
Close by is South Brother Island which measures about 6 acres. Both islands were claimed by the Dutch West India Company in 1614, and named De Gesellen, which translates to “the companions”.
When lepers were brought to the island, they were given wooden huts around the perimeter of the grounds to live in.
Mary Mallon better known as Typhoid Mary is the person which brought notoriety to Riverside in 1907. The Irish immigrant was believed to be responsible for spreading typhoid among several families, which had a fatality rate of approximately 30%. The symptoms are low grade fever and cramping that evolves to delirium as blood clots beneath the skin. The brain becomes inflamed and there is intestinal hemorrhaging.
Typhoid Mary was asymptotic, but doctors were able to trace that every place she had worked at, there was an outbreak. Among those that became sick, one had died. She was jailed for 3 years while authorities tried to determine what to do with her.
Mary was released in 1910, after she signed an affidavit that she would not take work as a cook and practice hygienic measures to stop the spread of the disease. She took work as a laundress, but soon hired out as a cook which was better paying.
She worked at Sloane Hospital for Women in New York City and infected 25 people, which resulted in two deaths in 1915. Mary Mallon was sent back to North Brother Island, and stayed there until her death on November 11, 1938 from pneumonia. Despite infecting a total of 53 people she never believed she was responsible for making them sick.
Many of the immigrants that flooded New York during these years lived in cramped and unsanitary housing, aiding disease to spread quickly. Many found themselves unwilling guests of Riverside Hospital. They lived in cottages and tents around the hospital grounds.
On June 15, 1904 North Brother Island was witness to New York’s worst maritime disaster. The General Slocum a steamship carrying a large number of members of the St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church caught fire. The congregation made up mostly of German immigrants were on their way to a picnic, when the disaster struck. Of the 1,342 passengers, 1,021 drowned or died in the fire. Those who survived were taken to Riverside Hospital for medical treatment.
The wrecked vessel was eventually salvaged, but it seemed it could not escape its unfortunate destiny. In 1911, it plied its trade as a barge on the Atlantic Ocean. While transporting a load of coal it sank.
World War II brought injured soldiers as patients to North Brother Island. This was a place where the wounded could come to convalescence, which included housing for the families. But with the need to take a ferry, many relocated as soon as they could.
During the 1950s, the hospital was used as a drug rehabilitation center for teenage heroin addicts. The cost of keeping the center open, exacerbated by claims of corruption ended the program.
In 1963, the humans were gone, and the buildings were left abandoned. Only vestiges, in the form of paperwork, equipment and odd and ends, serve as proof of who once lived and worked within its walls.
Despite not allowing the public to visit, the walls of the derelict buildings are tagged with graffiti, and it is not surprising there are many ghost stories are attached to this island.
Disembodied voices, touches by unseen hands and malfunctioning electrical equipment are only a sample of the complaints made by those who come seeking those who never found peace, and continue to linger at Riverside.
Perhaps it is not only ghosts that haunt the living, but the pain and despair experienced by those who came either to end their days there, or dream of escape.
In 2001, it was designated as a bird sanctuary. Most of the 25 buildings continue to decay, and due to the danger posed to the public, the grounds remain off limit.
South Brother Island was used as a dump, then bought by Jacob Ruppert, a magnate and one time owner of the New York Yankees. He built a summer house there which burned down in 1909. After this the island remained uninhabited. Present day it is a wildlife sanctuary like North Brother Island.
