Episode 2 of 5
Arrival of Smallpox in Victoria
- When
- March 1862
- Where
- Victoria, British Columbia
Smallpox arrived in Victoria via steamships from San Francisco in March 1862, with infected passengers reported shortly after arrival.
The steamship Brother Jonathan arrived on 12 March 1862, followed by the Oregon on 24 March. The Daily British Colonist reported infected passengers on 18 March. These arrivals triggered calls for quarantine and vaccination, primarily focused on protecting the growing colonial population of 4,000–5,000 in Victoria.
Sources
- 1862 Pacific Northwest smallpox epidemic Wikipedia, revision of 2026-07-15
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.