Reflections & News About Working With the Past
From Truth First, the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project newsletter, April 2020
“Renewed interest in the history of racial terror in the US is reflected in the quickening pace of scholarship on the subject, included here in Maryland. Recently, two independent researchers have made significant contributions to the body of knowledge about racial terror lynchings in the State. . . .”
As the City of Wilmington marshaled its resources for the deadly struggle to alleviate suffering during the pandemic of 1918, branches of local government rendered unwavering service combating the so-called Spanish Influenza. One of the most challenged governmental operations, the ambulances, toiled under great strain. The division’s never-ending, tough work made even tougher by unprecedented “heart-breaking calls” left the crews reeling.
The City of Wilmington started contracting with the Phoenix Fire Company in 1877 to operate the emergency transport system. Forty-one years later as the calendar turned to a tragic year, 1918, the Phoenix Ambulances struggled with a heavy workload, the City’s booming industries pushing everything to the limit to meet war demand. Then once autumn arrived the virus crept into the City as doctors started reporting cases of a mysterious infection. Some of these were so severe that they needed hospitalization.1
Toward the end of September, a handful of emergency calls turned into an unimaginable influx. Around the hospital at Ninth Street and Delaware Avenue, the ambulance gong clanged continuously night and day, the units hardly able to carry all the sick. Consequently, people started pressing their automobiles into service, their mission being indicated by Red Cross flags, as they brought “men wrapped up in blankets to the hospital.”
The calls surpassed what the City could handle so a plea to help the overburdened system went out on October 5, asking for assistance to increase medical transportation capacity. The Fame Fire Company, another city volunteer firefighting organization, promptly put one if its wagons in service as an ambulance, the men removing the hose and placing mattresses in the bed of the truck. And the police patrol unit was pressed into duty.
Additional units came from outside the City. The Delaware College in Newark volunteered its vehicle, and the Board of Health arranged to use the New Castle County Hospital Ambulance stationed at Farnhurst, along with the “federal ambulance from the guards’ barrack.”2
The significantly increased force went to work immediately. They made trips all day and night at top speed, without pause, one of the most frequent sights being “an ambulance dashing frantically up the street,” wrote the News Journal.
Crewing the college unit, the first day, student Wayne Brewer, spent practically all-night Thursday carrying patients to hospitals. Other students included Robert L. Barkley, Marion P. Boulden, L L. Cobb, Thomas W. Mulroony and J. J. Harold Kolhman, according to the Newark Post. 3
The Phoenix vehicles made 632 calls as of October 16, 1918. George McVey and Joseph Bonifacino, Jr. chauffeured these wagons “on the day and night cruises of mercy and the attendant sights and scenes of the plagues harvest touched the extremes of human compassion,” the Morning News reported. “Their visits were often to homes containing the dead, dying and near dead in scenes of squalor where the healthy would be taxed to live. . . .They spoke of unspeakable sadness.” 4
Finally, on October 22, the Phoenix crew had its first quiet day in weeks, responding to only one call. The men had worked hard the past three weeks, and the respite was a treat to them a reporter advised.
The scenes that unfolded 102-years-old are unimaginable. Here’s how the news journal described those dark, dark days: “In these stress times of war and pestilence this fact is not to be overlooked – that those who man the ambulances deserve no less credit than those overseas who man the guns. In the trying day and night duty there had been no faltering or murmuring,” an Evening Journal reporter wrote. They had “steeled their emotion of compassion so that it wouldn’t interfere with the course of their duty.”
The influenza severely hit the ambulance service as the volunteer crew did what they could. At a time when people in the City stayed home to escape the virus, the ambulance attendants did what they had to – rushing into the homes of the sick and infected to offer aid.
The next year, at the request of the Phoenix Fire Company, the Wilmington Police Department assumed responsibility for running the ambulances. Beginning November 17, 1919, the police ambulance, a dark green Cadillac with a Red Cross on the side and the words police ambulance on the body, went into service. The fire company sold the old Phoenix units, as Wilmington Police Chief Black appointed Officers Graham and Robinson to serve as drivers and Grussemeyer and Norman W. Brown worked as police attendants.
The strain the highly contagious virus put on Wilmington’s volunteer fire companies had been enormous. But, the men enlisted on the very front lines of this deadly struggle in Wilmington had stayed strong, holding up under the constant pressure of unparalleled stress and uncertainty while constantly facing death. Now, 102-years-later, it’s not unlike today as first responders all across the nation battle another virus.
Wilmington Nurses Paid a Heavy Toll
For more articles see the Delmarva Spanish Flu Archive.
EndnotesWhen the Spanish Influenza hit Delaware in 1918, the surge devastated Wilmington and overwhelmed city hospitals. With sickness everywhere that October, doctors and ambulances could not keep up. Gongs rang continuously on the streets day and night as the emergency vehicles rushed the most critical cases to Homeopathic, Delaware, and Physicians’ and Surgeons’ hospitals. This never-ending stream of sufferers quickly overloaded the City’s healthcare system.
Once the sickest arrived at the hospital, the medical providers on the frontline of caring for the stricken, the nurses, faced grim danger grappling with the invisible virus. The war had already thinned their ranks, but now on the homefront, they battled an added enemy. Nevertheless, the exhausted professionals struggled around-the-clock in chaotic, unpredictable conditions, under extreme pressure once the surge walloped Wilmington. All they could offer was palliative care and the little relief that the pharmaceuticals and therapies of the age might provide while realizing they too could become infected, no matter how careful they were.
The first plea for help came from Dr. Robert E. Ellegood, president of the Wilmington Board of Health. In this deteriorating situation, the City urgently needed nurses to care for the mounting caseload, he reported as the first two deadly weeks of October got painfully underway. Anyone who could help in any conceivable way – trained or not — would be “a godsend by giving some exhausted nurse a chance to take a little rest.”
Social distancing or personal protective equipment wasn’t an option for these early 20th century caregivers providing hands-on, bedside attention to the sickest people in the City. Many of these unheralded heroes of these days fell ill, some dying while caring for patients.
A Wilmington newspaper sketched out the hopeless situation in those early weeks of October, as the virus raged unchecked in the City. It seemed like people in Wilmington were dropping dead everywhere, and surely in such desperate hours, these women, many young nurses in training, came to their own terms with the death that was all around them. As the toll mounted for these practitioners too, the Evening Journal reported that three graduate nurses of the Delaware Hospital died, “from disease which they contracted while caring for patients.” 1
After sixteen harrowing days, there was a glimmer of hope for the clinicians. On October 17, the Evening Journal said: “One of the best and happiest pieces of news in regards to the epidemic situation is that the heroic nurses who have been struck down while ministering to others suffering the influenza are now getting well and the number of sick nurses is rapidly lessening.” No more had been added to the “pathetic list of nurses who have died as gloriously as any soldier on the battlefield,” the Journal remarked. In place of 36 sick providers, the Delaware Hospital reported only fifteen of their nurses on the influenza list, and none of those were critical.
Other city hospitals reported similar improvements. The Physicians’ and Surgeons’ Hospital had only two nurses who were influenza patients, and at Homeopathic Hospital, none were sick. Also, there had been no deaths from influenza among the Homeopathic Hospital nurses. The State Hospital for the Insane reported that six nurses were on the sick list.
As the dark pall slowly lifted in the second half of the month, the Superintendent of the Delaware Hospital, Barron E. Lyons, wrote that the outbreak “took one nurse after another until out of a quota of forty-two scarcely a dozen remained. These had to care not only for the one hundred twenty usual patients in the hospitals but their own sick sisters as well,” he noted. “When our first pupil nurse died, not one nurse flinched or showed a sign of fear, but each kept on with her work as loyally as ever,” the October 19, 1918, letter to the editor stated.
We should remember these women — many young student nurses or emerging professionals — and the sacrifices they made fighting for public health in Wilmington as a global pandemic raged unchecked all around them 102-years-ago. Thus, as part of our continuing series examining the outbreak on Delmarva, we are compiling a registry of the nurses who made the ultimate sacrifice.
Here is what we have developed thus far, and we will update this as more data is collected once the Delaware Public Archive reopens.2
The so-called Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918 resulted in about 794 deaths in the City, and it seemed like people were dropping dead everywhere. Surely these untiring workers at a time of the greatest need had to come to terms with the death that was all around them in the Delaware hospitals. 5
This is part of an ongoing series on the pandemic of 1918. For more see our Spanish Flu Archive
Telephone Operators Were Essential Workers in 1918
Wilmington’s Ambulance Service Struggled to Keep-Up
EndnotesWhen the Spanish Influenza struck in 1918, Delmarva’s essential workers paid a heavy toll serving on the front line of the struggle during the weeks the illness ripped across the Peninsula. That autumn the nation already grappled with the burden of World War I, when the first contagious cases broke out here.
As the virus spread rapidly from Wilmington and nearby military camps to Cape Charles, VA, and every point in between on Delmarva, phone company workers stood out as a group of essential workers struggling to maintain vital services. The war’s communications requirements had already taxed the system, considerably increasing demand on the wires. Then, the pandemic added further to this heavy load.
At that time, the network depended on operators working in tight quarters at exchanges to make connections for callers. These “hello girls” sat in rows at switchboards, almost elbow to elbow with other workers. Thus when the contagion started rampaging, the illness struck the central stations, depleting the ranks of operators at the same time sickness increased calls.
A young twenty-year-old, night operator at the Newark Telephone Exchange, Lee Roach, died on September 29. The Delaware College sophomore from Georgetown passed away at the college infirmary on that Sunday. The next day, the Student Army Training Corps escorted the body to the town limits, as the Newark undertaker transported the remains to Middletown to wait on the train for Georgetown. 1
By October 3, the Diamond State Phone Company seemed to have fallen victim to the flu as the company issued a plea. With at least twenty-five percent of its regular operating force on the sick list, the shortage crippled service. This resulted in a handful of women remaining at their posts, though much fatigued from the overwork of keeping the busy Wilmington exchange “plugged” night and day. To alleviate the problem, the company recruited “Inexperienced girls” to step in, and these hastily placed ladies did their best they could. But, many subscribers “grouched” at them as they struggled to learn the process and connect callers.2
With the growing pandemic came more and more calls to the switchboards as additional families fell victim to the killer virus. Plus, people became more or less afraid to mingle in public places, so they left their homes as infrequently as possible, but this too increased social and business transactions over the wires. In Maryland, the phone company took out an advertisement pleading for people to refrain from making unnecessary calls while also begging for experienced operators to volunteer during this time of trouble.
The Wilmington office also requested that only essential calls be made by phone. The war activities in the city had already strained the service, but calls to doctors, hospitals, the ambulance, drugstores, and undertakers created a more considerable strain. Many essential calls were being delayed as the operators connected conversations of no importance, the company reported. 3
As October slipped by, more reports arrived, indicating that the flu was crippling local exchanges in smaller towns around the Peninsula as many operators were quite sick. Some of the local managers at these places also suggested that people only make necessary calls after 10 p.m. when a skeleton crew was on duty overnight. The remaining operators worked heroically according to reports, but the task in city and country was burdensome, and at night, “these little girls throats are entirely exhausted. The public should be willing to relieve them as much as possible,” a paper reported.
In Elkton, nearly all the operators at the telephone exchange were seriously ill, so the phone company brought in operators from Salisbury 4. A similar situation existed in North East, the virus sweeping the office there, causing the exchange to shut down for a couple of days. In Chincoteague, the virus hit all the local operators hard so the phone company brought in Miss G. M. Fisher of Temperanceville and Miss S. V. Davis of Salisbury to run the office. 5
The malady also curtailed work on the lines as crews were depleted. A 27-year-old lineman, Frank N. Myer, installing long-distance wires through the Cecil County, died at Union Hospital during the first week of October. His remains were sent home to Chicago. 6
Things are different today, as we are connected in so many ways. But 102 years ago, the essential employees of the phone company performed heroic work, providing crucial communications with minimal disruption while doing risky work.
For more on the pandemic of 1918, see the Spanish Flu Archive
Endnotes