In his work as the Chief Quarantine Officer of the North-eastern Division, Dr John S C Elkington wrote into quarantine procedures the 19th century Australian prejudice against the Chinese as the principal source of smallpox and hence as being guilty of causing epidemics of this dreaded infectious disease. It was a powerful prejudice that reached its most virulent public expressions in the 1888 social unrest against the arrival of Chinese crew and passengers in Sydney, as in the cases of SS Brisbane, Tsinan, etc., when the Asians were prevented from disembarking for fear of outright violence against them.

In Part IV of Maritime Quarantine Administration, “Management of Quarantine Stations”, published by the Quarantine Service in 1919, its author Dr Elkington makes it quite explicit that the Personal Detail Cards are administered not simply according to the principles of health, but for “enabling classes and families to be kept together” (Elkington, 1919, p. 179). The Cards were utilised to enforce social differentiations in status and power and hence in access to comfort and goods in the liminal situation of being in quarantine, when the boundary between life and death could become blurred in the ever present danger of potentially fatal infectious diseases.

Under the White Australia Policy, when it was paramount that Chinese crew members would under no circumstances be allowed to reside in Australia despite the ongoing necessity to trade with Asia, Dr Elkington singled out the Chinese as worthy of special attention when they were present in the landing party. In a section called “Disembarkation without Preliminary Disinfection”, his instruction is as follows:

“If Chinese passengers are to be landed, opportunity should be given for a Customs Officer to check the numbers going ashore. This can be done from a launch alongside, or, in the case of quarantine for small-pox, a properly-vaccinated Customs Officer may be allowed aboard for the purpose. He should wear overalls in the manner prescribed for boarding vessels in quarantine, and should undergo any prescribed precautionary disinfecting measures when his work is completed” (Elkington, 1919, pp. 179-180).

Under a system of race-based control, the number of the essentially undesirable Other, such as the Chinese, was a matter subject to extra vigilance and surveillance by the authorities, given that the quarantine policy of Australia at the time played the role of ensuring “racial hygiene”, i.e., the prevention of what racists call “miscegenation”.