Orleans County Louisiana Archives News.....Italian Immigrants in New Orleans 1898 - Article 6 of 9 October 27, 1898
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The Times Picayune October 27, 1898
The Times Picayune - October 27, 1898, page 3
THE IMMIGRANTS UNDER INSPECTION

And Most of Them Pass Through the Ordeal
--
The Seventy-One Rejected at Pensacola Getting In
--

The United States immigration inspectors and agents completed, yesterday, the
examination and registration of the 1639 Sicilians aboard the steamship Bolivia,
which reached this port Tuesday noon and moored at the New Orleans and Northeastern
Railroad Company’s fruit wharf, in the Third district. Tuesday evening 300
immigrants had been passed and had been allowed to land. The remainder underwent
examination yesterday. All but 150 proved to the satisfaction of the Inspectors that
they could provide for themselves and they were permitted to go ashore. 

Inspectors Arbeeley and Eppler, of New York, conducted the examination. They
detained 150 of the Immigrants, because those parties had, so far, no one to vouch
for their future good behavior if allowed to land or to pledge that they would not
become a burden on the community. 

A special board of inquiry will give these 150 men a hearing today, and they will
have to send notice to relatives and friends to come forward and couch for them,
otherwise they will have to return to Italy, without further delay. 

Seventy-one immigrants, all mean, who wee examined on board the steamship Britannia,
at Pensacola, and who were rejected, because it was feared they would not be able to
earn their living either through lack of means, physical disability, sickness, old
age, etc., were kept aboard the Britannia, and that vessel came back to New Orleans.


As soon as the immigrants had stated that they had relatives and friends in New
Orleans, and as the Britannia was to go to New Orleans, and, furthermore, as the
same inspectors who had examined the immigrants at Pensacola had been ordered to
this city to help the local agents in inspecting the Sicilians on the Bolivia, the
department at Washington consented to give the seventy-one men a rehearing. The
special board which sat yesterday on board of the Britannia was composed of
Inspectors L.H. Robinson, of Baltimore, chairman E. B. Holman of New York, E.P.
Prudhomme, of New Orleans, and D.Q. Campbell, of New York. 

The board very carefully conducted the inquiry. One by one, the immigrants were
called and were challenged to the proof of having relatives or friends in this city.
If any New Orleans Sicilians claimed one of the immigrants as brother or cousin,
etc., the board would not accept their mere statement. The man under examination was
led to one side and the alleged brother or cousin to another side, and each was
separately interrogated relative to family history and connections, etc. If their
statements tallied, the immigrant was allowed to go ashore. If, on the contrary, the
answers were divergent, the newly-arrived Sicilian had to step aside, and he would
be billed for quick return to his native country. 

The board found no instance of false statement in the whole batch that were examined
on the Brittania. Out of seventy-one, there were twenty-eight rejections. One of the
men set aside was afflicted with an infectious disease, and was promptly isolated.
The others were either paupers or old men, whom it would not be safe to allow to
land in the country. 

Inspector Holman in speaking of the immigrants on the Bolivia, said that they were
the healthiest, cleanest and most self-supporting set of immigrants he had inspected
at any port of the United States in many years. Most of them are young and sturdy
and will be able to work hard to support themselves and their families. 

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