The first line of defence: British quarantine and the Port Sanitary Authorities in the nineteenth century.

This article examines the history of quarantine in Britain in the nineteenth century and the establishment of the Port Sanitary Authorities. Opposition to quarantine, which began at the beginning of the century, gained momentum over the following decades. In 1872, the Port Sanitary Authorities were introduced as an alternative system of port prophylaxis and as a means of rectifying some of the deficiencies quarantine presented in the prevention of imported infections. Unlike most previous scholarship, which claims that quarantine became redundant when the sanitary system was extended to the ports, this article demonstrates that quarantine was maintained in Britain for the reception of the 'exotic' diseases, plague, and yellow fever, and continued to play a central role in the day-to-day operation of British ports. The dual authority maintained by the Quarantine Service and the Port Sanitary Authorities continued until 1896 when quarantine was finally abolished and it was not without its problems. These problems centred on the ambiguous definition of 'quarantineable' and 'non-quarantineable' disease.