Isabelle was diagnosed with Leprosy on April 24, 1905. She was sent to Penikese Island when it opened on 18 November 1905. She gave birth to her 3rd child, Leontine Lincoln Barros, on March 6, 1906. She cared for her child for 20 days before he was removed and placed in foster care.
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Isabella Barros was a pregnant 26-year-old Cape Verdean woman taken from her husband and three children in Wareham. She had dark olive skin, and ‘her eyes are large and darkly eloquent and her teeth beautifully even and white,’ reported the San Francisco Call in a story headlined “New England’s Leper Island.” Recent pictures ‘show her with a melancholy, despondent expression,’ the newspaper reported.
Isabella Barros gave birth to a healthy baby on Penikese Island. Twenty days later, officials sent the infant to the Boston Poor Department, along with her other children.
That sent her husband, Napoleon Barros, to an insane asylum. After his release, he no longer had any interest in her or their family.
In 1906, a rumor spread that Isabella Barros had been cured. Suddenly people feared the hospital would send her back to what was left of her home. But the disease had only gone into remission, and she died after 10 years of exile on the island.
Isabelle was diagnosed with Leprosy on April 24, 1905. She was sent to Penikese Island when it opened on 18 November 1905. She gave birth to her 3rd child, Leontine Lincoln Barros, on March 6, 1906. She cared for her child for 20 days before he was removed and placed in foster care.
~~~~~
Isabella Barros was a pregnant 26-year-old Cape Verdean woman taken from her husband and three children in Wareham. She had dark olive skin, and ‘her eyes are large and darkly eloquent and her teeth beautifully even and white,’ reported the San Francisco Call in a story headlined “New England’s Leper Island.” Recent pictures ‘show her with a melancholy, despondent expression,’ the newspaper reported.
Isabella Barros gave birth to a healthy baby on Penikese Island. Twenty days later, officials sent the infant to the Boston Poor Department, along with her other children.
That sent her husband, Napoleon Barros, to an insane asylum. After his release, he no longer had any interest in her or their family.
In 1906, a rumor spread that Isabella Barros had been cured. Suddenly people feared the hospital would send her back to what was left of her home. But the disease had only gone into remission, and she died after 10 years of exile on the island.
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