Lazaretto

At a session of the Funchal Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) on 1 July 1816, a ministerial order (portaria) from the Governor and Captain-General was read, ordering a lazaretto to be built at the expense of the municipality’s (concelho) property. At the session of the 11th of the same month and year, a letter from the same authority was read, suggesting that the funds needed to build the said establishment could be raised by public subscription.

Despite these instructions, and although on 8 July 1816 the Council had petitioned John VI for a loan of the sum needed to build the lazaretto, the work was never carried out. A short time afterwards the Governor ordered that ships arriving from suspect ports should anchor off Praia Formosa (‘beautiful beach’), and that their passengers should undergo quarantine in the house known as the Engenhoca (‘small mill’), which probably stood in that locality (sítio) or close by.

On 2 December 1800 the Municipal Council ordered two ships that had arrived at the port of Funchal without a bill of health to weigh anchor within 2 hours. The guards who were on board were to be put ashore at Praia Formosa, stripped there and ‘plunged in the water more than 6 times’, and were then to remain in quarantine, under the watch of a sentry, for 40 days.

In 1848, when José Silvestre Ribeiro was civil governor of Madeira, a lazaretto was established at the Quinta do Gorgulho (‘weevil estate’), a quinta (country estate) belonging to the British subject Henrique Veitch. The newspaper O Madeirense (‘The Madeiran’) published the regulations of the establishment on 11 November of the same year.

From the Quinta do Gorgulho, the lazaretto moved in 1851 to some houses that Councillor (conselheiro, honorary title of the royal council) José Silvestre Ribeiro had ordered to be built on land belonging to the National Treasury (Fazenda Nacional), at the mouth of the Ribeira de Gonçalo Aires (‘Gonçalo Aires’s stream’). It was on this same land that the buildings of the present lazaretto were later erected; work on them began on 22 April 1866 and ended in 1874. In 1857 one of the outbuildings of the lazaretto built on the orders of José Silvestre Ribeiro was destroyed by fire.

In building the premises at the mouth of the Ribeira de Gonçalo Aires, certain topographical requirements that ought to have been met were disregarded. For that reason the buildings were not used as a general lazaretto, although it is recognised that they can serve without drawback as an observation lazaretto. In 1874 Drs Craveiro and Pereira came to Madeira on the Government’s orders to examine the lazaretto building. It is curious to note that the very parties who had contributed to the construction of this establishment at the mouth of the Ribeira de Gonçalo Aires were the first to declare to those physicians that it did not serve the purposes for which it had been undertaken and carried out.

The lazaretto building was used in 1904 to treat people stricken with cerebrospinal meningitis, in 1905 for those stricken with bubonic plague, in 1907 for smallpox patients and in 1910 and 1911 for cholera patients. In 1897 there were plans to set up a ward for the insane in the same building. That same year the Municipal Council (Câmara Municipal) of Funchal tried to move the gaol of the judicial district (comarca) there, but it was unable to do so because the Government did not grant the petition it had been sent to that effect.

In 1919, 280 political prisoners implicated in the monarchist revolution that broke out in Portugal that same year were held in the Lazareto (‘quarantine hospital’).

The Lazareto de Gonçalo Aires (‘Gonçalo Aires quarantine hospital’) had a director and a physician appointed in 1889, and an inspector appointed in 1890. These employees, whom the Government had engaged under article 59 of the decree with force of law of 3 December 1868, ceased to serve at the lazaretto after the publication of the Health Regulations (Regulamento de Saúde) of 24 December 1901, which turned the establishment into an observation post.