Category: Spanish Flu

Wilmington Police Helped Stamp out Pandemic in 1918

The Wilmington Police Department grappled with the unprecedented challenge of maintaining service after the Spanish influenza slipped into Delaware in the autumn of 1918.  In normal times, the 127-person force patrolled streets, preserved peace, operated the lockup, investigated crimes, collected dog taxes, and maintained the fire and police telegraph.  However, early that autumn, as the contagion spread and the death toll mounted, common crime plummeted, the virus driving people off the streets as the Board of Health closed public places.  This included taverns and saloons, typical hotspots for troublemakers.   

Bookings at the city lockup tumbled by late September as wayward types, along with everyone else, stayed away from crowds.  Nevertheless, although work instigated by pickpockets, muggers, run-of-the-mill thieves, and similar lawbreakers declined, the force maintained a vigilant watch as conservators of the peace.  Adding to this, patrolmen had to help stamp out the spread of the contagion and provide relief to the stricken. 

Wilmington Police Officer arond 1918
A Wilmington Police Officer is at his post, sometime around 1910 to 1919.
(Source: Wilmington Bureau of Police Facebook Page — https://bit.ly/3mffNdw

With sickness falling “like a black pall,” striking thousands in the City, as the death rate increased by leaps and bounds, the Board of Health ordered the closing of public places.   That October 2 edict also shuttered 167 saloons.   But it allowed the wholesale liquor stores to say open as they were not congregating places.  That changed on October 11, when Chief George Black requested the shuttering of these outlets.  Drunkenness was excessive, which with the police force handicapped by sickness, was a difficult matter for the force to handle, the chief explained. 1   

As officers patrolled the streets, making arrests for disobeying anti-spitting measures and other public health orders, the virus spread in the ranks.  Dozens became ill, their numbers having already been thinned by about 30 men because of the war.     At the same time, headquarters continued getting calls from people who could not secure undertakers to remove dead bodies from their houses. 2

At the peak of the pandemic, the police patrol wagon carried influenza victims to the emergency hospitals around Wilmington. Always on the go, the wagon transported 822 patients in September.  During the first three weeks in October, when the raging disease was at its worst, the two crews of the “machine” worked, day and night.  At times the demands on the patrol crews taxed them to the utmost, and Patrolman Robinson, one of the officers, worked day after day with a high temperature.  When he arrived home one night after a long shift, he collapsed in his yard and was carried to his room, ill with the disease.  Although he recovered, he passed the virus along to his family. 

Wilmington Police on the Front Line

One member of the force, Patrolman John Jack Riley, died from the ailment.  On his last watch (September 25), Officer Riley escorted World War I draftees to the railroad station, but when he returned home he found that his wife was stricken.  While caring for her, the policeman fell ill, passing away on October 3, at his home at 9 South Jackson Street.  The police band planned to honor the lawman by playing funeral music during the procession to the cemetery, but the Board of Public Health orders prevented that arrangement.  Nevertheless, thirty members of the force went to the Riverview Cemetery.3   

In assisting the Board of Health, Police Surgeon George W. K. Forrest and City Physician Allan W. Perkins attended to victims whose relatives or friends called the police for help.  One night the police kept the city physician on the move until daylight attending victims.  Police Surgeon Forrest reported that he had treated 32 patrolmen and six prisoners stricken with influenza. 

Wilmington Police arrests
Wilmington Police Department arrests, 1917 – 1919; (Source: Annual Report of the Wilmington Department of Police; Delaware Public Archives)4

To add to the troubles of the lawmen, at least fifteen men detained behind bars in the lockup became ill.  These victims were carried out by the patrol wagon crew and hurried to one of the emergency hospitals. 

While the rank and file were doing this work, Chief of Police Black’s office was besieged with telegrams and phone calls from relatives of those stricken from other cities asking for information about them.  In many cases, those who died here had wives or mothers in other cities, and it rested on the police department to get word to those who had been bereaved to break the news to them.

Saloons Thrown Open

Toward the end of October, the situation eased so the Delaware Board of Health lifted the ban on public assembly at 1 a.m. Sunday, October 27.  The reopening of taverns had to wait until Monday – this marked twenty-six days that the board kept saloons shuttered.  However, a great deal of thirst had accumulated, as from early morning until late at night that Monday, John Barleycorn held sway in the City for the first time in nearly a month. 

Once saloonkeepers threw open the doors, people crowded around the bars.  This rush was apparent anywhere one looked downtown, the spectacle of intoxicated men on streets being a common one.  Officers booked over 100 lawbreakers in the lockup before midnight.  The authorities likened the situation to the days when the powder plants at Carney Point were in the making, and the patrol wagons were loaded up with intoxicated men at the boat wharves. 

While these scenes unfolded, the police patrol wagon, which had remained idle for a couple of weeks took  on a new lease on life.  For a while it was thought that the “little patrol [wagon],” which had been undergoing repairs during the slump in business, would have to be placed in operation.  But Patrolman Harry Foreman, the mechanic, not anticipating any rush in business, did not have it ready to roll. 5

After Wilmington’s barrooms opened, another problem developed.  In Chester, Philadelphia, and other nearby places, the quarantine was still in place, so thirty people flocked to Wilmington.  This influx of visitors seeking liquor was a menace to public health and morals, to say nothing of a nuisance as there were more intoxicated men on the streets than others.  Consequently, Chief Black issued an order closing Wilmington’s saloon at 7 o’clock every night until these nearby places lifted the quarantines 6

Wilmington Got the Halloween Flu

Wilmington Police Chief George M. Black 7

That end of October holiday — the time for ghosts and goblins — came around about this time, as police struggled with the liquor trade.  Then ”Halloween Flu” hit Wilmington, the News Journal remarked., as Chief Black banned parties and public revelry.  Nobody was to blame for it, the paper explained.  It was simply too risky.

Despite the order, bands of young people in costume appeared on Market Street but quickly found that the police were not joking when they ordered all false faces to come off and advised the clowns and other “fantastics” to go home.  Confetti and ticklers were suppressed as soon as they put in an appearance too and the police also put the quiet on any undue noise and carnival frolicking.  It left many young people wishing the happy days were back when Wilmington used to have big Halloween parades with bands and decorated fire apparatus and all the fixing. 

Finally, with the emergency waning in late October and sick officers returning to duty, the City’s law enforcement agency started return to its regular routine. 

In the autumn of 1918, the officers who were able to remain on duty did excellent work as guardians of peace and public health.  When these men entered the ranks, they knew they would face risks in the rough and tumble parts of Wilmington, but they never expected to have to struggle with helping to stamp out a deadly virus during a global pandemic. 

For More on the Spanish Influenza in Delaware

Delmarva Spanish Influenza Archive

Endnotes
  1. “Bone Dry Town for the Present,” Evening Journal October 12, 1918[↩]
  2. “Epidemic Near End After 361 Deaths in City,” Evening Journal, Oct. 12, 1918[↩]
  3. “Officer Dies After Nursing Sick Wife,” Evening Journal, Oct. 4, 1918[↩]
  4. Wilmington Deparment of Police, Report of the Chief of Police of Wilmington, DE 1918[↩]
  5. Disciples of Bacchus Hold Day of Revelry,” Morning News, October 29, 1918[↩]
  6. “Saloons Closed by Police Order at Seven o’clock,” Morning News, November 1, 1918[↩]
  7. George George Black, Report of the Chief of Police of Wilmington, Del, for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1919, 1919[↩]

New Delaware Humanities Lecture Examines Pandemic of 1918

I am pleased that Delaware Humanities has selected a timely new program I have been researching about the pandemic of 1918 in the region.  The goal of this program is to understand how the experience of 1918, a situation that called for drastic action, unfolded and use this examination in a discussion that connects the past with today.       

TITLE

We Have Been Here Before: Delmarva During the 1918 Pandemic

Art work from the Illinois State Department of Health in 1918. Source: National Institutes of Health Library)

DESCRIPTION   

With the nation currently struggling with an unprecedented public health emergency as the coronavirus impacts the nation, this program examines the impact of the so-called Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918 on Delmarva and nearby points.  The virus took a grim toll in this region, and it overwhelmed the health care system, forcing the region to shut down for an extended period.  Although they didn’t call it social distancing at the top of the twentieth century, the methods they used to quarantine the contagion are similar to what we practice today.  Thus, as the world struggles with this novel contagion, we will take a relevant look at the past to see how people in the region 102-years ago managed a similar situation, at a time when medical science did not have a treatment for the pathogen.

A Delaware Humanities speakers bureau program.

A 1918 poster created in response to the virulent created by the United States Shipping Board Emergency Fleet Corporation (Source: Philadelphia Free Library https://bit.ly/34BT3Oq)

Influenza Hit New Castle County Workhouse Hard in 1918

After influenza struck Wilmington in the autumn of 1918, concerned officials at the New Castle County Workhouse struggled to keep the county prison from becoming a hot spot.  In the tight cells and confined, overcrowded spaces at Greenbank isolation or what we today call social distancing was impossible.  Thus, Warden Richard F. Cross and the workhouse physician, Dr. William H. Kraemer, took every possible precaution to keep the sickness outside prison walls, as the pandemic’s deadly toll spread in northern Delaware.

Nonetheless, as the contagion upended everyday life in Wilmington, Dr. Kraemer became apprehensive that the walls had been breached.  During daily sick calls in late September, more inmates began showing up with sniffles, sore throats, deep coughs, and chest congestion.  Diagnosing the symptoms in the cramped, poorly ventilated space behind bars, he steadied himself for a fight with the virus with the limited tools the medical profession made available to practitioners as there were no cures or vaccines.

new castle county workhouse
The New Castle County Workhouse, a postcard from around 1911. (source: personal collection)

Then a prison guard, Archibald C Dorsey, came down with the flu.  Suffering for three or four days, the 42-year old died at his home at 1330 French Street in Wilmington on September 29, 1918.  Officer Dorsey was laid to rest at Cathedral Cemetery on October 2.1   A few days later newspapers mentioned that an outbreak had occurred at the prison, but the cases were generally mild.2

Flu Claims Victims at Workhouse

As the virus spread in Delaware, the courts continued sentencing convicts to the workhouse.  One man, Jas. W. Roundtree, a foreman of a Baltimore shipyard, came to Wilmington early in October to see the superintendent of the local shipyard.  Soon after arriving, he caught the attention of the police when he stole some women’s clothing.  Officer Bullock hauled the man before the city court, which held him on $500 bail.

Shortly after the trial, Roundtree became “wildly delirious.”  Instead of being a common thief, the Baltimorean had been out of his head, suffering from influenza.  The police hurriedly decided not to jail him, but they could not find a doctor to come to the station to treat the delirious man.  So, they sent the patient to the workhouse to receive care from the county physician. It was the only compassionate thing they could do.3

As October slipped painfully by an alarming surge in illnesses indicated that the virus was raging unchecked within the prison walls as inmates and guards fell sick.  When Dr. Kraemer made his medical rounds on the afternoon of Friday, October 11, ten percent of the inmates were ill.  He had forty-five ailing prisoners in cells, while the six most serious cases struggled to survive the infection in the prison hospital.

registry of deaths at the New Castle County Workhouse
A registry of deaths at the New Castle County Workhouse (Source: Delaware Public Archives.)

By contrast, a month earlier on September 11, 1 percent of the inmates were sick, and there were no patients in the hospital.  The rate of infections was far higher within the institution than in the general population of the city.4

These elevated conditions continued for a little over two weeks, and on October 16, the flu claimed the first inmate. Samuel Green, 33, died Oct. 11, an influenza-pneumonia victim. 5 Five days later, Nineteen-year-old Ernest Holly, serving a life sentence for a murder near Newark, perished at the workhouse on Wednesday night. October 16.  Then on October 19, the disease took another victim, Rosero Malsese, 31.  He was serving two months for highway robbery.  This made the third inmate death at Greenbank during the pandemic.6, 7, 8

By October 21, Dr. Kraemer had good news for Warden Cross.   The infections were clearing up rapidly at Greenbank, the few remaining inmates recovering.  Plus, there had been no deaths nor any new cases at the workhouse in the past 24 hours.9

At least one more inmate, Frank Smith, perished.  The 39-year-old sentenced on November 9, 1917, to three years died one year later after incarceration on Nov 8. 1918.   Pneumonia associated with influenza was listed as the cause of death.

Gradually the suffering diminished at the county prison, but at least four people died during the outbreak.  The previous year, only four inmates deaths occured during the entire twelve months. 

Workhouse Opened in 1901

The New Castle County Workhouse was located at Greenbank, about six miles west of downtown Wilmington.  The first prisoners arrived at the modern house of corrections on November 6, 1901. Designed for 350 inmates,   World War I considerably accelerated the incarcerated population as Wilmington’s war industries boomed.  “To guard and supervise in a safe and sanitary manner, a population at times nearly six hundred in an institution designed for three hundred fifty was obviously impossible,” Caldwell notes.  “On December 1, 1918, five hundred forty-eight prisoners were crowded into the inadequate accommodations of the workhouse.”10

Medical Cases at the New Castle County Workhouse in 1918
Medical Cases at the New Castle County Workhouse, 9/24/1918 – 10/27/1918 (Source: Workhouse Daily Activity Report, Delaware public Archives)
Endnotes
  1. “Deaths,” Morning News, Oct. 1, 1918[↩]
  2. “Need for Nurses Growing Daily More Imperative,” Morning News, Oct. 3, 1918[↩]
  3. More Than 200 Already Dead from Epidemic, Evening Journal, Oct. 5, 1918[↩]
  4. New Castle County Workhouse Daily Activity Report, Board of Trustees of the New Castle County Workhouse, 1918[↩]
  5. “Epidemic Near End After 361 Deaths in City,” Evening Journal, Oct. 12, 1918[↩]
  6. “Death’s Toll Increasing as Cases Diminish,” Morning News, Oct. 18, 1918[↩]
  7. Flu Gets Life Convict, Morning News, Oct. 17, 1918[↩]
  8. “Fumigate is Order of the City Board of Health,” Morning News, Oct. 19, 1918[↩]
  9. “City Almost Free of Influenza,” Evening Journal, Oct. 21, 1918[↩]
  10. Robert Graham Caldwell, “The New Castle County Workhouse,” University of Pennsylvania: Dissertation, 1939[↩]

Researching the Pandemic of 1918 in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. Corridor

Some of my current research is focused on investigating the impact of the 1918 pandemic in communities along an extended corridor stretching from Baltimore to Philadelphia. This work has or will take me to cities and counties along I-95, as well as jurisdictions near this region.

In the summer of 2019, before the novel coronavirus upended normal life, part of my fieldwork took me to rural Salem County. As I worked in South Jersey, the Salem County Historical Society asked if I would write an article for the quarterly newsletter. When the piece appeared in the print, no one could have guessed that in six months, another pandemic of historic proportions, the novel coronavirus of 202o, would rip across the world, shutting Salem County down for months as public health officials struggled to control the pathogen’s spread.

Thus this summer, as the nation battles the COVID-19 outbreak, the editor asked if I would take a further look at the fight against the disease there, 102-years-ago. This installment focused on the frontline workers when the so-called Spanish influenza ripped across the county in 1918.

My research continues as I have been working with the Delaware Public Archives death records, police blotters, public health reports, death certificates, governor’s correspondence, workhouse journals, Wilmington city records, and much more. As conditions permit, I plan to do additional fieldwork in Harrisburg, Trenton, and Philadelphia.

Here is the front page from the Quarterly Newsletter.

Salem Countians on the Frontline of the Global Pandemic of 1918, an article in the Quarterly Newsletter of the Salem County Historical Society (Fall 2020)