Judge, 1885-05-09 · page 16 of 16
Judge — May 9, 1885 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This political cartoon depicts a **Health Officer** blocking entry to someone arriving by ship, demanding inspection for cholera or yellow fever ("Yellow Jack"). The satire targets **immigration policy and disease anxiety**. In late 19th/early 20th-century America, immigrants—particularly those arriving by boat—were associated with disease outbreaks. The cartoon plays on contemporary public health fears used to justify restrictive immigration policies. The caricatured figure appears to represent an immigrant or foreign arrival being interrogated at a port of entry. The joke critiques how health concerns were weaponized as a pretext for discriminatory immigration control, portraying the Health Officer as overly zealous or using disease as a convenient excuse for exclusion. This reflects actual historical practices where immigration and public health policy intertwined.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE JUDGE. E 5 o n x ° fo) 2 2 E ie) cs) HEALTH OFFICER—" Stop! We can't let you come in until we see if you've brought any cholera or Yellow Jack with you.”