Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | March 10, 2025
Not for nothing, but I really enjoyed researching 1920s history for last week’s episode of 1923, so as long as the show keeps serving up history lessons, I’m going to keep digging in.
This week, nearly half the episode focused on Alexandra’s entrance into America via Ellis Island. Most of what we know about Ellis Island skips over the degrading parts, but 1923 offers a glimpse of that reality. For example, one of the many medical exams Alexandra undergoes upon arrival is a punch to the stomach. It feels cruel — and it was — but it was also historically accurate. Immigration officials used this method to check for enlarged livers (cirrhosis or syphilis), appendicitis, hernias, and tuberculosis.
Modern America obviously has its own issues with immigration, but in the early 20th century, thousands of people passed through Ellis Island daily. Inspections were fast, crude, and often dehumanizing. If an immigrant was found to be sick, they could be quarantined or deported, compounding their misery. Our long history of lacking compassion is well-documented.
Getting socked in the stomach, however, was the least of many immigrants’ worries. Single women traveling alone, like Alexandra, were particularly vulnerable to the whims of the immigration system. In one scene, Alexandra is forced to disrobe for a humiliating medical examination, including a check for venereal diseases.
This was common. Pregnant women without their husbands faced a high risk of deportation. The reality of America —-then and now — is that the country welcomed “the tired, the poor, and the weak,” but only if they could work hard or had money. If you were too sick to work, you were sent home, unless you had the means to support yourself. Since steamship companies were often forced to cover return-trip costs for rejected passengers, many sick or pregnant people were denied entry before even leaving their home countries.
And, no surprise, the system was rife with sexual exploitation. Single women traveling alone were frequently coerced into sex work under false promises of employment. Others, like Alexandra in 1923, were propositioned in exchange for entry into the U.S. Men have always been creeps.
One of my favorite details in the episode: When asked for her last name, Alexandra hesitates because she doesn’t technically have one; she’s just Alexandra “of Sussex.” Pressed further, she claims “Dutton,” referencing Spencer’s last name, but also evoking the myth that people changed their names at Ellis Island. Coincidentally, I was just reading People Love Dead Jews by Dara Horn, which debunks that very myth. Name changes at Ellis Island didn’t happen. Instead, people, particularly single women and Jews, endured humiliating experiences, then later romanticized them by telling their grandchildren they’d changed their names at Ellis Island. It was a way to paint their new homeland as something better than the ordeal they endured to get here.
Alexandra makes it through (after proving she can read and verbally emasculate a corrupt official), but she still has to get from Grand Central Station to Montana. Alone. The episode ends with a looming threat: a beggar/thief following her into the women’s restroom.
Elsewhere, the search for Teonna Rainwater continues, and Jennifer Carpenter’s female marshal, Mamie Fossett, is pissed that Marshal Kent and Father Renaud are indiscriminately slaughtering Native Americans in their hunt for Teonna.
Meanwhile, Teonna, her boyfriend, and her father make it to Texas, looking for work. A rancher named Anders (shoutout to C. Thomas Howell) is happy to hire them. This also tracks historically, though Native Americans weren’t as commonly employed as Mexican vaqueros, Black cowboys, or white ranch hands, they were sometimes hired because, well, who knows the land better than its original inhabitants? Many Native Americans, forced onto reservations, took ranch jobs just to survive, but like Black cowboys, they were paid the least and worked the hardest.
Back in Montana, Jacob and his crew finally make it home after the brutal snowstorm except poor Zane (Brian Geraghty), who has a subdural hematoma (a brain bleed). And yes, in 1923, the treatment is as gruesome as you’d expect: drilling a burr hole into his skull to relieve the pressure. In a hospital, this wouldn’t be a huge deal. On the Dutton ranch, though, poor Zane is about to experience it without anesthesia.
From my research, someone in Zane’s position would scream, thrash, or pass out from the sheer pain and shock. Alcohol might help, and while there’s no anesthesia, there’s no shortage of booze on the Dutton ranch. The show mercifully saves that ordeal for next week.
Nothing new historically on Spencer’s journey, though he did lose his traveling companion, Luca, who got himself killed trying to smuggle booze through a checkpoint and then pulling a gun on the cops. Spencer is still in Texas, though, which makes me wonder: Could he cross paths with Teonna on his way to Montana?
