Pandemic 1918

by Catharine Arnold

  The condition the needles had produced was ‘surgical emphysema’ caused by air, or in this particular case, oxygen, in the subcutaneous tissues. Remarkably, the patient survived and was discharged soon afterwards. Byam concluded that the delivery of oxygen under pressure had released it into the patient’s bloodstream. The only person left unsatisfied by the entire episode was the patient’s estranged wife, who was not impressed by the fact that her estranged husband was still alive and accused Byam of lying to her.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  ‘NATIVE DAUGHTER DIES’

  SAN FRANCISCO IN 1918 was a small city of some 550,000 souls, many of whom were members of the recent immigrant population, particularly Italians and Chinese. When the Spanish Lady appeared menacingly on the skyline on 21 September, Dr William Hassler, chief of San Francisco’s Board of Health, responded by imposing quarantine restrictions at the Yerba Buena Island Naval Training Station and other Bay Area naval installations.

  Hassler was a familiar and well-respected public figure. Following the 1906 earthquake, he had set up a births and deaths registry on the porch of his own house. Along with Surgeon General Rupert Blue he had steered San Francisco through several epidemics of bubonic plague in Chinatown. But on this occasion, Hassler wavered. Instead of imposing sanitary precautions on the city, Hassler expressed doubt that Spanish flu would actually reach San Francisco, citing the city’s ‘ideal climate’ as protection against the disease.1 Any discussion of further quarantines or closing the schools and theatres was postponed. Instead, on 28 September, the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive saw 10,000 people parade down Market Street displaying an effigy of Kaiser Wilhelm in an open coffin. There was community singing for 25,000 people and silent screen star Mary Pickford addressed thousands at a rally at the Bethlehem Shipbuilding Corporation.2 On 6 October, 150,000 people attended a rally at Golden Gate Park, and a few days later French tenor Lucien Muratore stood on the steps of the San Francisco Chronicle and sang ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and ‘La Marseillaise’ to a crowd of 50,000 people. The national anthem was disrupted by the wail of an ambulance and the crowds parted to let it through. This was an ominous sign. A week later, San Francisco was engulfed by an epidemic of Spanish flu.3

  When the epidemic became obvious, Hassler efficiently mobilized civic resources. Citizens were told to wear masks and the city was divided into districts, each with their own resources. Nevertheless, Hassler was appalled by some of the sights he witnessed. In Chinatown, he saw influenza victims languishing on the streets, suspicious of western medicine and refusing official help. Hassler felt he could do little more than advise the wealthier San Franciscans to keep their Asian servants at home, away from the infection in Chinatown.

  Soon, San Francisco was at full stretch. Dental students took on the role of doctors; schoolteachers turned into laundresses; police trucks served as ambulances and policemen collected bodies. With the entire staff of the coroner’s office off with influenza, a fireman was running the morgue. San Franciscans lobbied Mayor Rolph to pump water from the Pacific into the streets, to keep them continuously washed down. The mayor’s response was that ‘You might as well sit out and watch the changes of the moon.’4

  Hassler was particularly adamant about the value of masks, declaring that ‘every person appearing on the public streets [or] in any public place … shall wear a mask or covering except when partaking of meals’.5 Mayor Rolph echoed Hassler with this stern warning: ‘Whomever leaves his mask behind, dies.’6 The San Francisco Chronicle soon got behind the campaign, advising that ‘The man who wears no mask will likely become isolated, suspected, and regarded as a slacker. Like a man of means without a Liberty Loan button, he’ll be shy of friends.’7

  By October 1918, masks had become an enduring symbol of the Spanish influenza epidemic, adding a surreal quality to the photographs of the period. Images of masked people going about their daily business, from police officers directing traffic to typists absorbed in office work, from children playing to pet animals, resemble stills from an old science fiction movie.

  First worn by doctors and nurses, masks were made of surgical gauze fastened behind the head with tapes. They were of little practical value as the virus itself passed easily through the thin fabric. While a layer of fabric might have absorbed the water droplets in which the virus was carried, it would have to be a great deal thicker, and more cumbersome; and such masks would only have succeeded if worn at all times, indoors and out, with goggles to protect the eyes.

  Eye-catching but totally ineffective, the masks proved universally popular, despite their ineffectiveness. Dr H. S. Mustard of Washington, DC expressed his scepticism when he referred to masks as ‘an absurdity, a menace when worn by the civilian population, military or naval class’.8

  While the Red Cross gave out thousands of masks for free, manufacturers were quick to foist masks on the gullible public. Woods Hutchinson, a New York-based physician who travelled the country in the autumn of 1918 espousing the virtues of the face mask as a means of preventing the spread of influenza, told newspaper readers in late October, as a way of enticing fashion-conscious women to don masks, that masks had been effective in the East, and that ‘chiffon veils for women and children have been as satisfactory as the common gauze masks’.9 As supplies of gauze masks ran low, the chairman of the San Francisco chapter of the American Red Cross suggested that women craft flu masks from linen.

  The San Francisco Chronicle described some city residents as wearing masks ranging from standard surgical gauze to creations resembling nosebags, from the Turkish-inspired muslin yashmak veil to flimsy chiffon coverings draped lazily across the mouth and nose.10 Some wore ‘fearsome looking machines like extended muzzles’ on their faces as they walked the streets and shopped in downtown stores.11

  Dr William Hassler himself resorted to an elaborate mask, comically described by the San Francisco Chronicle: ‘The snout extends partially, like the helmets affected by the French knights at the period of Agincourt, but it is not so protrusive as the metal muzzles. Furthermore, it is sheathed outside in gauze like the common or garden mask more usually adopted by the public.’12 The three most popular styles were the ‘Agincourt’, like Hassler’s; the square ‘Ravioli’, favoured by policemen; and the veil, which was particularly popular with young women.13

  The majority of San Franciscans were content to wear masks, particularly as it showed one was ‘doing one’s bit’, an important consideration during wartime. While the vast majority of San Franciscans followed the mask order, police arrested 110 people on 27 October alone for failure to either wear or keep their masks properly adjusted. They were each charged with ‘disturbing the peace’, and the majority given a $5 fine, with the money to go to the Red Cross. Arrests continued in the following days, with the majority receiving small fines and a few being sentenced to a few days in jail. Enforcement soon became an issue. As the city chief of police later told reporters, if too many residents were arrested and jailed for the offence, he would soon run out of space in his cells. As the number of arrests mounted, the city jail did indeed become crowded, and judges worked long into the evenings and on Sundays to clear the backlog of cases.14

  For some, wearing a mask was simply a nuisance, and if they believed they could get away without donning one in public they tried. Others may simply have been among those unfortunate enough to be caught during a momentary lapse or when they thought no one would notice. This was especially the case for commuters who passed through San Francisco, many of whom were caught with their masks dangling from their chins while they enjoyed a morning pipe on the ferry. To ensure that there could be no excuses, the Red Cross set up a stand at the ferry terminal to sell masks to those who did not have them for their commute.15

  While most residents caught without a mask were simply forgetful or minor transgressors, some harboured deep resentment over being forced to wear a mask in public. One woman, a downtown attorney, argued that the mask ordinance was ‘absolutely unconstitut
ional’ because it was not legally enacted, and that as a result every police officer who had arrested an unmasked citizen was personally liable.

  An extreme example of the consequences of refusing to wear a mask was captured in the San Francisco Chronicle on 28 October 1918:

  REFUSES TO DON INFLUENZA MASK; SHOT BY OFFICER

  While scores of passers-by scurried for cover, H. D. Miller, a deputy health officer, shot and severely wounded James Wisser, a horseshoer, in front of a downtown drug-store early today, following Wisser’s refusal to don an influenza mask.

  According to the police, Miller shot in the air when Wisser first refused his request. Wisser closed in on him and in the succeeding affray was shot in the arm and the leg. Wisser was taken to the central emergency hospital, where he was placed under arrest for failure to comply with Miller’s order.16

  The anonymity conferred by masks was a godsend to criminals. One night Mr W. S. Tickner, a taxi driver, picked up three masked men who proceeded to rob him at gunpoint, dump him by the side of the road and drive, their identities concealed by their masks.17

  HAVING INFLICTED EPIDEMIC sickness upon San Francisco, the Spanish Lady headed down the coast, drawn by the bright lights of Hollywood. Among her victims was a beautiful young film actress, Myrtle Gonzalez, veteran of seventy-eight silent movies, who had starred in The Girl of Lost Lake to great acclaim. Myrtle had retired from acting after her marriage to a young army officer, Allen Watt, a former assistant director at Universal, and tried to live with him at his base in Washington. However, despite the fact that she was regularly cast as the outdoor type, Myrtle proved too fragile for life in a military camp and had retreated to her parental home in Los Angeles before the epidemic broke out. On 22 October 1918, Myrtle succumbed to Spanish flu at her parents’ home, aged just twenty-seven.18

  Another film star, Lillian Gish, was more fortunate. Lillian developed Spanish flu on the way home from a costume fitting in the closing days of October 1918. Lillian had been trying on costumes for D. W. Griffith’s melodrama Broken Blossoms, in which the twenty-four-year-old actress had been cast as the physically abused twelve-year-old daughter of a boxer. Although she was wealthy enough to afford two doctors and two nurses, Lillian’s condition still gave sufficient cause for concern for her mother to telegraph home:

  THINK SHE WILL RECOVER RAPIDLY AS WE TOOK CARE OF IT IN TIME HER FEVER HAS GONE DOWN FROM HUNDRED FOUR TO HUNDRED TWO IF SHE GETS WORSE WILL LET YOU KNOW.19

  According to Lillian herself, who recovered just as the bells were ringing out to celebrate the Armistice, the only drawback of the flu was the legacy of unattractive nightwear. ‘The only disagreeable factor was that it left me with flannel nightgowns,’ she told fans. ‘Have to wear them all winter – horrible.’20

  Lillian’s brush with death had at least conferred one advantage. Being twenty-four years old and tall, Lillian had queried Griffith’s wisdom in casting her as a twelve-year-old child. Griffith duly raised the character’s age to fifteen, but by the time filming rolled around, Lillian had lost so much weight from influenza that she looked appropriately waif-like.

  Meanwhile, further up the Pacific coast in Seattle, the McCarthys were planning to head back east with their four small children. Mary, their seven-year-old daughter, would later become a famous author and described the devastating consequences of this journey in her memoir, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood. The subsequent tragic sequence of events began at the end of October 1918, a timetable of grief recorded in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: ‘Mr. and Mrs. McCarthy, with their four young children, left Seattle on October 30 for Minneapolis, where they were to make their future home.’21

  The party that departed from Seattle on the evening of 30 October 1918, aboard the Northern Pacific’s North Coast Limited, consisted of Tessa and Roy McCarthy, their children Mary, six, Kevin, four, Preston, three and Sheridan, one. Also travelling with them were Roy McCarthy’s brother and sister-in-law, budding millionaire Harry McCarthy and his lovely young wife, Zula. Harry and Zula had travelled from Minneapolis to Seattle to help with the move. Tess and Roy’s house at 934 22nd Avenue (now 22nd Avenue E) had been sold, and the family spent their last days in Seattle with Harry and Zula at the New Washington Hotel, the grandest hotel in the city.

  Roy McCarthy, charming but feckless, was keen to make the trip home to Minneapolis to see one of his brothers, Louis McCarthy, who was due home on leave from the aviation service. Roy’s family were also keen to get him home, as a means of controlling his improvident nature and constant appeals for financial help. Conditions could not have been worse: not only was Spanish flu raging across the United States but Roy was an invalid, and the prospect of a long train journey with four small children was scarcely ideal. Mary McCarthy later recalled that the atmosphere in their hotel suite had been decidedly sombre the night before departure, with Aunt Zula and the baby already sick.

  Despite their reservations, the McCarthy family boarded the train on Wednesday, 30 October 1918. With the other members of their party lying sick in their sleeping compartments, Mary and her father gazed out at the awesome landscape of the Rocky Mountains. As Roy McCarthy regaled his daughter with tales of rocks hurtling down and crushing passing trains, Mary’s teeth began to chatter. At first, she thought it was from fear; but she was in fact developing the symptoms of Spanish flu. As members of their party fell sick, the conductor threatened to put the McCarthys off the train at a tiny station in the middle of a North Dakota prairie. Roy McCarthy responded by pulling a gun on him.

  At Minneapolis, the family were met by stretchers, a wheelchair, distraught officials and Mary’s grandparents, and had to be carried off the train one by one. A week later, this headline appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

  NATIVE DAUGHTER DIES

  Mrs. McCarthy died on last Wednesday and her husband on the following day. The children are recovering. Mr. and Mrs. Preston, informed of the serious condition of their daughter, left Seattle for Minneapolis last Wednesday, but Mrs. McCarthy died before they arrived.22

  Tessa McCarthy was just twenty-nine years old; Roy was thirty-nine.

  Their children, meantime, were taken in by their grandmother and nursed ‘during those fatal weeks of the influenza epidemic, when no hospital beds were to be had and people went about with masks or stayed shut up in their houses, and the awful fear of contagion paralyzed all services and made each man an enemy to his neighbor’.23

  Several weeks later, they ‘awoke to reality in the sewing-room … to an atmosphere of castor oil, rectal thermometers, cross nurses and efficiency’.24 Told that their parents had been taken to hospital, it was further weeks still before the children learned that their mother and father were dead. Indeed, this development came to be regarded by Mary’s grandmother as something of a social gaffe: ‘Our father had put us beyond the pale by dying suddenly of influenza and taking our young mother with him, a defection that was remarked on with horror and grief commingled, as though our mother had been a pretty secretary with whom he had wantonly absconded into the irresponsible paradise of the hereafter.’25

  In Denver, Colorado, Katherine Anne Porter was a reporter on the Rocky Mountain News, a big regional daily with a large circulation. At twenty-eight years old and newly divorced, Katherine struggled to survive on $20 a week, living on coffee and doughnuts so she could save her money for clothes.26 Katherine was also a heavy smoker, a habit which enabled her to fit into the dresses she loved, but ruined her health.27 When Spanish flu hit Denver in the first week of October 1918, Katherine was living in a rooming house at 1510 York Street. Katherine’s landlady threatened to throw her out when she came down with influenza, but with the hospitals overflowing, there was nowhere to go. Katherine was fortunate enough to find a bed when her friends appealed to her physician, head of the local emergency committee.28

  Even then, it seemed as if help would come too late. Katherine had been running a fever of 105° for nine days when she was admitted to the county hospit
al. Gay Porter Holloway, Katherine’s sister, rushed up to Denver and telephoned their other sister, Kitty, every day. Both girls expected Katherine to die at any moment, and her family planned her funeral while colleagues at the Rocky Mountain News typeset her obituary.29 Meanwhile, the delirious Katherine hovered between life and death, swinging in and out of consciousness and suffering from terrifying hallucinations.

  One Sunday afternoon, with the doctors convinced nothing more could be done, Katherine was left behind the screens to die.30 As Gay telephoned their sister Kitty to say that she was having a special Mass said for Katherine, a group of young interns examined Katherine and decided to give her an experimental shot of strychnine, as a last resort. Miraculously, Katherine’s temperature dropped and an overjoyed Gay rang Kitty to say that Katherine was going to live.

  Recovery was far from a simple process. Writing about the experience later in Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine recalled ‘a terrible compelling pain running through her veins like heavy fire, the stench of corruption filled her nostrils, the sweetish sickening smell of rotting flesh and pus’; ‘she opened her eyes and saw pale light through a coarse white cloth over her face, knew that the smell of death was in her own body and struggled to lift her head’.31

  Katherine’s convalescence lasted for months. Her hair turned white, then fell out (she tied bandanas around her head until her hair grew back); the first time she tried to sit up she fell out of bed and broke her arm; she had phlebitis (an inflamed vein close to the surface of the skin caused by a blood clot) in one leg and was told she would never walk again. But Katherine was determined, and after six months she took her first steps since her illness.