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The Celtic Cross at Indian Point points towards Little Hardwood Island, or, as it was known in the 19th century, Hospital Island. During the years of the Irish potato famine, Hospital Island was overflow for immigrants landing at the quarantine station on Partridge Island in Saint John. The island was set up to receive immigrants in 1832 and to serve generally as a quarantine station against cholera, typhus and other infectious diseases then endemic in Europe. Eventually the island had a two-story hospital 60 x 25 feet, and later additions included a pest house 50 x 25 feet, a doctor's house and a shed. The island had no water; it was supplied by near-by Hardwood Island. According to Dr. Samuel Frye, in a letter to the Magistrates of Charlotte, 1847, "The principal building can only contain about one hundred souls without overcrowding and is destitute of bedsteads, berths, bunks or other accommodations for beds which have to be made on the floors in promiscuous disorder and rendering it impossible to preserve order and cleanliness." Dr. Frye later died of fever contracted while attending the sick. In an interview conducted by the St. Andrews Beacon in 1892, Dr. Samuel Gove, resident of the town since 1839 or so, remembered that "When the "Star" arrived here in 1847, with nine-tenths of her two hundred or more passengers sick of fever, they were placed on Quarantine Island, where between 75 and 100 of them died. Dr. Gove, Dr. Edwin Bayard and Commissioner Boyd were stricken down with the typhus at the same time, but they recovered."

Actually, it is uncertain just how many died on Hospital Island. Another 19th century story put the number at 400, but it seems that probably near 100 perished there. Whatever the figures, by the middle of the 19th century there were scandalous reports that bones were washing out of the shores of the place. There is an unsubstantiated story that these unfortunates were relocated to the mainland and reburied by some charitable persons, but given the large number of corpses there, this seems unlikely. By the 1870's the island seems no longer to have been used for quarantine purposes.

The Irish immigrants substantially changed the character of the Town's population. Probably the end of the 19th century St. Andrews was more Irish than it was British. Though comparatively little was said about the sufferings of the immigrants in the local newspapers, there were a few heart-rending reports in the St. Andrews Standard, which are reproduced here. In fact, the Irish placed a heavy burden on the Town's finances. The St. Andrews Poorhouse (1819), formerly located near the corner of Reed Avenue and Mowat Drive, was created specifically to house the Irish after a heavy wave first hit the Town in 1817. Poorhouses sprang up all around New Brunswick at the same time.