Seeking lessons from 1918
Have we learned anything in a century?
Seven months into the heart of the corona-crisis, nestled between the opening of schools and Election Day, I’m curious about the state of lower Fairfield County 102 years ago, when the so-called “Spanish Flu” was of similar vintage.
Time travel is possible. We just need to strap on that Wayback Machine known as newspaper archives.
We’ve arrived at Oct. 1, just as the disease is taking hold in Connecticut. State Board of Health member Dr. J. H. Egbert is offering a diagnosis to Stamford physicians gathered at Town Hall. It carries a familiar ring of quackery. “Hysteria,” he says, is killing more people than the disease.
Dr. Egbert’s suggested treatment is to post a verse in public places:
“Remember — should you cough or sneeze, and so make others ill,
Uncle Sam can call you a slacker and a friend of Kaiser Bill.”
The local battle plan recommends walking to work, keeping children in classrooms so teachers can monitor their health, sharing information via schools, churches and motion picture houses (hmm, perhaps there was distrust in the media ... umm medium), and, above all, to “avoid promiscuous spitting.”
The 17 latest cases in Stamford bring the total in the town/city (Stamford had a dual identity at the time), to 85.
How are things going elsewhere? Let’s leap forward a couple days in our machine.
Oct. 3: Boston is shutting down saloons. This is probably not going to be received well by Red Sox superstar Babe Ruth. Meanwhile, the flu is not fizzling out in Connecticut despite turning off soda fountains
Oct. 5: A plea is issued for all doctors and nurses to remain in Connecticut. And a new defense is suggested to citizens: Wear a mask.
Oct. 9: There appears to be a bias in the local rag, which reports that people are satisfied with Republican office-holders “despite the attempts of the Democratic Town and City Committee to mislead them.”
An agreement is reached in Stamford to pay full salaries to educators who catch influenza while teaching. There is also a new requirement that any outside group using school facilities must pay to disinfect them.
State Health Director Dr. John T. Black, noting the disease spreads “by means of discharge from nose and throat,” issues a fresh mandate: “No sneezing in church.”
If suppressing sneezes and writing verse seem like quaint responses, consider our “modern” approach in comparison with this advice from 1918: Don’t touch masks, change
them every two hours, and disinfect them by boiling them for five minutes (keep in mind how much harder that was to do then). And wash hands in antiseptic solutions.
All guidance appears to come from the medical community. Of course, the commander-in-chief (Woodrow Wilson) has an obstacle we don’t in 2020 — his world is at war.
The State Council of Defense outlines measures to those experiencing symptoms: Go to bed, take a saline cathartic (a dose of Rochelle or Epsom salts) followed by a drink of hot lemonade “to get the bowels and skin active.”
Here’s one that’s evergreen, even for presidents: Stay in bed for at least 48 hours after the fever subsides.
Oct. 11: Dozens of bodies in Connecticut pile up in cemetery vaults due to a scarcity of coffins and grave-diggers.
Oct. 12: This is the last day before everything changes. Dr. J.J. Costanzo, Stamford health officer, advises anyone riding on floats in the Liberty Parade to “keep a reasonable distance from your neighbor” and to carry extra handkerchiefs “if you feel it is necessary to expectorate” (it sounds like a Harry Potter spell, but merely means “spit”).
Oct. 13: Stamford, with 232 influenza cases in three weeks, cancels church services and local meetings and discourages large house parties. Things are more grim in Greenwich, where 640 cases and a dozen deaths lead to the closure of schools. Stamford does the same in days to come.
Unemployment does not appear to be an issue, in part due to the war. Stamford approves an ordinance that any able-bodied man between ages 18 and 60 who is not employed (dubbed a “loafer”) must pay a fine of at least $100 (worth more than $1,700 today).
Oct. 18: Most flu news does not grab headlines. That changes when the front page blares “Barbers to wear gas masks.” The Stamford Health Department provides the first supply of the gauze masks. Meanwhile, saloon keepers are ordered to remove tables and chairs to discourage men from loitering.
Another poem, “Beware the Germ,” appears in the Advocate,
noting that the “G.O.P.’s immune.”
Oct. 19: Workers are checked as they enter factories, where brick walls are plastered with information about the flu. Yale & Town Mfg. Co., which typically reports 200 or so absentees a day, now averages 500. In Greenwich, there have now been 800 cases and 22 deaths. More than half of the town nurses have caught the flu.
Oct. 22: The barbers of Stamford rebel. Half reject the masks outright. Those wearing glasses complain of fog. Some gripe about hair clippings sticking to the gauze. One vents about an issue that does not translate to modern times: heavy smoking in the barbershops makes their masked heads spin.
Aleap forward in time brings us to Election Day, 1918.
Apparently, teenagers were equally fearless back then: “The fear of influenza germs doesn’t lead the boys to hold the girls any less tight at the dances.”
We have made some progress 102 calendars later. Woman will finally be granted the right to vote in the months after this 1918 election. And sentences like this are reminders of progress up the towering mountain of racism, even if we have yet to reach the summit: “To the local undertakers, it seems strange that so few colored people have died from the influenza.”
Even then, there was absentee voting. A Greenwich soldier in France, Cornelius McCarthy, jotted a note to American strangers on the card containing his ballot: “We are helping to clear up the Huns in Italy, and Connecticut is well represented and the boys are making good. Hurray for Uncle Sam.”
At least Americans were all on the same side about something.
Still, I wish this time machine were real. I wish I could warn people to be far more cautious, for two more waves of the pandemic would come before that virus was starved of hosts. I wish a travel in time didn’t also reveal a glimpse of our own dark, seemingly inevitable, future.