Despite these valiant efforts on the part of the city fathers, Spanish flu raged through Winnipeg and its suburbs and, by 31 October, 2,162 cases had been reported. Just as in the United States, medical interventions were thwarted by a shortage of doctors and trained nurses. Out on the prairies, small towns in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta attempted to quarantine themselves through isolation, but this did not stop the Spanish Lady’s inexorable progress across Canada. The infection arrived in the remote Hudson’s Bay Trading Company outpost of Norway House, Keewatin, on 4 December 1918, courtesy of a dog team carrying the mail packet from Crow Lake, which was already badly infected.27 This region of Canada was notable for harsh conditions at the best of times. Locals eked out a hunter-gatherer existence, subsisting on food hunted and foraged from the bush, while basic supplements such as flour, tea and sugar were traded in return for furs from the Hudson’s Bay Company stores. They had little laid by in the way of food, and when Spanish flu struck in the dead of winter, families starved. Harry Everett, who grew up in Berens River, Manitoba, recalled the Spanish flu vividly in his memoir:
My first recollection is being on a hammock like swing and seeing beds all around the room and one woman reaching down inside her blouse in front and bringing out her small purse and giving it to my Dad. This was during the Spanish Flue [sic] Epidemic. My Dad was the only one that was not sick and was pretty well alone for a number of days making the rounds to different houses to see that they had enough wood inside to keep the fires going and to take any bodies that were in the house … They said if the sick that died had stayed in the house where it was warm [sic]. They went out too soon and got cold and had a relapse.28
Desperate to find food for their families, many recovering victims got up too soon and developed secondary pneumonia. In an additional complication, their constitutions were already compromised by tuberculosis, which was rampant among the Canadian indigenous people at the time.
Reverend Henry Gordon described conditions when Spanish flu hit the Grenfell Mission in Cartwright, Labrador.
It has struck the place like a cyclone, two days after the Mail boat had left. After dinner I went on a tour of inspection among the houses, and was simply appalled at what I found. Whole houses lay inanimate all over their kitchen floors, unable to even feed themselves or look after the fire … I think there were just four persons in the place who were sound … A feeling of intense resentment at the callousness of the authorities, who sent us the disease by the Mail-boat, and then left us to sink or swim, filled one’s heart almost to the exclusion of all else. The helplessness of the poor people was what struck to the heart … It was very upsetting, people crying, children dying everywhere.29
The frozen ground of a northern winter made it impossible to bury the victims of Spanish flu, and locals devised ingenious solutions for keeping the bodies away from ravenous dogs. Some corpses were wrapped in sheets and placed on rooftops, creating a vista of ghostly shrouds until they could be buried in the spring.30 At Norway House, bodies were stacked like firewood in a cabin until they could be buried. One eyewitness recalled:
There were so many people, you know, they can’t bury them all … when they all gathered and they were buried in a box. They just threw the bodies in a box, I don’t know how many in that box. And they had big cranes you know and they put those bodies together and there’s a lot of people and children … they have an awful time, difficult time, to gather all the people and to bury them. Though some of these people were kept in the cabin until after, they didn’t have much lumber to use for coffins, and they just buried them like that in a bag.31
Parish registers from the Christian mission at Norway House suggest that some 183 deaths per 1,000 population occurred during the 1918–19 epidemic, a sevenfold increase in deaths compared with the two decades on either side; approximately one-fifth of the adult population over the age of twenty perished in this epidemic.32 Nathaniel Queskekapow, a Cree elder, not even born at the time, was well informed about the epidemic, his knowledge handed down from his predecessors. Interviewed by researchers around 2002, at the age of seventy-two, Nathaniel said: ‘It was very strong on the south side and the people were just, somebody was walking over there and somebody dropped, just like a shot. Even the children, they, about 10-year old, [sic] they just fell down and died. Like that. They don’t, you don’t bother anybody, just fall right down.’33
Meanwhile, back in the United States, the Spanish Lady hurtled west, harvesting corpses as she went. Camp Funston, the site of an earlier outbreak back in February 1918, received a second onslaught of influenza in October, when the 29th Field Artillery was devastated by a further epidemic, leading to 14,000 cases and 861 deaths by the end of the month.34
By this time, First Lieutenant Elizabeth Harding was an experienced senior nurse who had already dealt with over ‘800 cases of mumps, measles, smallpox, diphtheria, and every conceivable contagious disease’.35 When Harding left Fort Riley in October 1918, for duty in the Office of the Surgeon General, the second wave of influenza had just struck.
The day I left there were over 5,000 patients. Barracks were opened at Camp Funston to accommodate the sick. Several nurses died, I am not certain, but it seems to me at least sixteen. The nurses who had been on duty at Fort Riley stood up very well, but nurses who were rushed in for the emergency were hard hit, and arrived sick.36
Sergeant Charles L. Johnston, writing home to his wife from the camp infirmary, left a vivid picture of conditions at Camp Funston.
It’s about 3 a.m. and all the poor old boys are resting very well. I am sure some nurse, believe me. I have been working nights for about three days now, from 7 to 7 and fight the flies the whole day long while trying to sleep. I thought I was getting along on very little sleep when I was home, but this has the world cheated … there are between 6 and 7,000 cases in the camp. I never did know that a sick fellow was so hard to wait on before. These birds almost chase you to death after water or pills or something else all the time.37
When he wasn’t waiting on his patients hand and foot, Sergeant Johnston was occupied with replacing the covers as the men kicked them off during a high fever, and administering ‘sponge baths to run down the temperature. Each of our men has about 20 patients, so you see we are pretty busy rookies.’38
Over in Lincoln, Illinois, ten-year-old William Maxwell had been enjoying an idyllic childhood. William, who would grow up to become a famous author and a fiction editor at the New Yorker magazine, later composed a haunting memoir of his childhood experiences of the Spanish flu epidemic. When America had entered the war, William’s mother had volunteered for the war effort and he remembered her dressed in white, with her head wrapped in a tea towel with a red cross on it, rolling bandages. It was a way of helping, but at this point the war seemed a long way off. So did the epidemic of Spanish flu. ‘We heard stories, lots of stories. We heard about what was happening in Boston, but people didn’t want to believe they could be healthy in the morning and dead by nightfall.’39
When Mrs Maxwell fell pregnant, the family decided that she would give birth at the large city hospital in Bloomington, just over thirty miles away. William and his brother were duly packed off to stay with their aunt and uncle – strict, churchgoing people – in their big gloomy house. ‘My aunt and uncle were narrow minded … my brother and I were very uncomfortable being in their house. I can best suggest the quality of the house by saying in the living room there was a large framed photograph of my grandfather in his coffin.’40
William fell sick that very day. A skinny little boy, normally with a massive appetite, he couldn’t touch the big turkey dinner his aunt laid out in front of him. After touching his forehead, William’s aunt took him upstairs and put him to bed in his uncle’s office, a bleak room containing little more than a desk and a filing cabinet. At this point, time became a blur. William slept and slept, awoken at times to be given pills. ‘I remember being awakened at intervals during the night and day. If it was nigh
t, my aunt would be in a nightgown with her hair in a braid down her back, holding a pill out to me and a glass of water. At other times, it was my uncle.’41
Delirious or not, William could still hear everything that was going on, as his room was at the top of the stairs and he could hear the telephone. William learned that his mother was still in hospital in Bloomington, and that the baby had been born. ‘One day I overheard my aunt say the dreadful phrase, “She’s doing as well as can be expected.” I’ve never heard that used except in circumstances where the worst was about to happen.’42
On the third day after the baby was born, William’s father rang.
I heard the telephone conversation from my room. I heard her say, ‘Will, oh, no,’ and then, ‘If you want me to.’ She came into my room and took me into my grandmother’s room. I sat on my grandmother’s lap. My aunt brought my brother into the room. She tried to tell us what had happened, but tears ran down her face, so she didn’t need to tell me. I knew that the worst that could happen had happened. My mother was marvelous and when she died the shine went out of everything.43
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE SPANISH LADY GOES TO WASHINGTON
WHEN LOUIS BROWNLOW, City Commissioner for Washington, DC, was informed that forty patients had been admitted to one hospital with ‘la grippe’ on 2 October, he took instant action. Brownlow knew that 202 Bostonians had died of influenza the day before; he was anxious to prevent a similar epidemic in Washington. Commissioner Brownlow shut down Washington, DC, closing schools, theatres, pool halls and bars. Medical centres were opened in empty schools and an emergency hospital in a store on F Street, supervised by Dr James P. Leake, an epidemiologist.1 With no shortage of resources in wealthy Washington, Model T Fords and chauffeur-driven limousines were pressed into service as ambulances. Brownlow, with his two fellow commissioners already sick, took responsibility for the city, as Dr Noble P. Barnes of the American Therapeutic Society publicly declared: ‘Persons at large sneezing and coughing should be treated as a dangerous menace to the community, properly fined, imprisoned, and compelled to wear masks until they are educated out of the “Gesundheit!” and “God Bless You” rot.’2 The Red Cross distributed gauze face masks, and advertisements warned the public:
Obey the laws
And wear the gauze
Protect your jaws
From septic paws.3
But the Spanish Lady was not so easily defeated. The sick-list swiftly rose to over ten thousand. Hundreds of police officers and trolley drivers fell ill. So many firemen were sick that the capital’s Fire Marshall feared ‘the whole city’d burn to the ground if a fire ever got started’.4 The Federal government was paralysed and the courts went into recess. At Herbert Hoover’s Food Administration, half the employees went off sick. Congress closed its public galleries and at the State Department staff were ‘aired’ for twenty minutes every day, taken outside and instructed to breathe deeply. As he studied Washington’s mortality figures at the Vital Statistics Bureau, a clerk named W. E. Turton collapsed and died.5 The Washington Evening Star ran a regular column entitled ‘Prominent People Who Have Died of Influenza’.
One famous person who refused to die of influenza or even entertain the notion of falling victim to the disease was humourist James Thurber. Writing a letter in reply to a concerned friend on 15 October 1918, Thurber described the mood in Washington in his typically irreverent style: ‘All one sees here is nurses & hearses and all he hears is curses and worse. And such a heroic thing to pass out with, Influenza!’ Dying of influenza in these times of brave, poetical deaths … I’d just as soon go with house-maid’s KNEE.’6 Thurber maintained he was in ‘chipper’ condition, with the correct psychological attitude towards all flu. ‘The influx of Enza will have to select a clever rapier and twist an adroit write [sic] to pink me, altho’ I am in the pink of condition.’7
Eleanor Roosevelt, who had returned to Washington with Franklin and their family, witnessed the horror at first-hand:
As soon as we returned to Washington the ’flu epidemic, which had been raging in various parts of the country, struck us with full force. The city was fearfully overcrowded, the departments had had to expand and take on great numbers of clerical workers. New bureaus had been set up, girls were living two and three to a room all over the city, and when the ’flu hit there were naturally not enough hospitals to accommodate those who were stricken. The Red Cross organized temporary hospitals in every available building, and those of us who could were asked to bring food to these various units, which often had no kitchen space at all.
Before I knew it, all my five children and my husband were down with the ’flu, and three of the servants. We succeeded in getting one trained nurse from New York … this nurse was put in charge of Elliott [aged eight years old] who had double pneumonia. My husband was moved into a little room next to mine, and John, the baby, had his crib in my bedroom, for he had bronchial pneumonia. There was little difference between day and night for me, and Dr Hardin, who worked as hard as he possibly could every minute of the time, came in once or twice a day and looked over all my patients. He remarked that we were lucky that some of us were still on our feet, for he had families with nobody able to stand up.8
Despite the constant anxiety for her own family, Eleanor tried to take the opportunity to do some good in Washington: ‘If all the children were asleep I went in the car and visited the Red Cross unit I had been assigned to supply and tried to say a word of cheer to the poor girls lying in the long rows of beds.’9
Six-year-old Bill Sardo, whose family ran a small funeral parlour, was surrounded by death. Caskets were stacked in the living room, the dining room and along the hallways. Bill himself was roped in to build caskets in the basement morgue. ‘I was constantly afraid. I would walk through rows and rows of caskets, seeing names, people I knew. Entire families were dying. The dead were everywhere.’10
Commissioner Brownlow’s draconian response to the epidemic saved lives. Working with Dr H. S. Mustard, a public health service epidemiologist and specialist in malaria control, Brownlow declared Washington a ‘sanitary zone’ and divided the city into four self-contained districts. A new law made it a crime to knowingly transmit influenza, and it was also a crime to go out in public when sick. Fines for doing so started at $50.
Despite this, Washington’s hospitals were swamped. At George Washington University Hospital, every single nurse went down with influenza. At Garfield Hospital and the emergency hospital at Leake, staff were overwhelmed, with patients spilling out into the corridors. ‘The only way we could find room for the sick was to have undertakers waiting at the back door, ready to remove bodies as fast as people died. The living came in one door and the dead went out the other.’11
At Camp Humphreys near Washington, 5,000 men were sick with influenza and the chief medical officer, Lieutenant Colonel Charles E. Doerr, had died. Despite this, Brownlow insisted that fifty soldiers were sent from Camp Humphreys to Washington to dig graves. This was in spite of the fact that there were no coffins to be had for love or money, with unscrupulous undertakers pushing up their prices. One Washington official commented: ‘Charging high prices for coffins in this direful time is nothing short of ghoulish in spirit and unpatriotic to the point of treason.’12 Brownlow proved himself not above theft. When he heard that two cartloads of coffins destined for Pittsburgh were in the Potomac freight yards, Brownlow hijacked the shipment, and had them redirected to the playground of Central High School, where they were placed under armed guard.
One afternoon, Commissioner Brownlow, nursing his wife who was sick with flu, answered the telephone to hear a woman sobbing and saying she shared a room with three other girls. Two were already dead and the third dying. She was the only one left. Brownlow called the police and asked them to go and visit the woman. A few hours later, a police sergeant rang back and told Brownlow: ‘Four girls dead.’13
In another part of Washington, a volunteer nurse knocked on a door and heard a
voice rasp: ‘Come in.’ She walked into the room where, to her horror, she found the only creature left alive: a pet parrot.14
Congress itself was not spared. US Congressman Jacob Meeker, forty, was taken to the Jewish Hospital on 14 October after being ‘stricken’ with influenza at a hotel. Meeker married his secretary in a small private ceremony, with bride, groom, judge and witnesses all wearing masks, and died just seven hours later.15
As Commissioner Louis Brownlow and Dr Mustard both fell victim to influenza, young Bill Sardo was drafted in to help at his father’s funeral parlour. The house was stacked with coffins.
When grieving relatives came to see their loved one, my father would tell me, ‘Go up to the second floor, and in the third row of the living room or the fourth row of the dining room you’ll find a body. Take these people there.’ So I would lead them through the house, past all the other bodies, to where their beloved was resting.16
Years later, Bill Sardo could not recall the events of October 1918 without a shudder.
From the moment I got up in the morning to when I went to bed at night, I felt a constant sense of fear. We wore gauze masks. We were afraid to kiss each other, to eat with each other, to have contact of any kind. We had no family life, no school life, no church life, no community life. Fear tore people apart.17
In North Carolina, news of the epidemic spread more slowly. Seven-year-old Dan Tonkel worked in the yard goods department of his father’s clothing store. To Dan’s surprise and shock, he found that suddenly the farmer’s market and the local movie theatre had been shut and schools had closed. At first, Dan was excited when the schools closed, but then he was pressed into service by his father, who needed him to help run the business because all his employees were sick.
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