100 years ago in The Record

Saturday, Nov. 16, 1918. “October’s health report for the city will probably go down in history as one of the most exceptional statements yet recorded in the city annals,” The Record reports as the toll from the Spanish flu epidemic is made public. 557 people, including 101 non-residents, died in Troy during the month of October 1918. By comparison, 108 people died here in September, and only 86 in August. The month with the secondhighest mortality this year was January, which saw 132 deaths. Our reporter estimates that more than 500 of October’s deaths were flu-related. Along with 88 attributed to “grip” (i.e. flu) directly, 316 are attributed to pneumonia and 117 to bronchial pneumonia, complications of the Spanish flu. “Deaths from other causes show the same ration as in former years,” the reporter notes. Another likely casualty of the flu is Sergeant Arthur K. Reilly of the Fourth Motor Mechanics, Sixteenth Company, Aero Squadron. His brother, Frank Reilly of 612 Grand Street, receives word this weekend that Arthur, a former amateur baseball star, died of pneumonia in a French hospital on October 22. Instantly Killed A 12 year old Burden Avenue boy is struck and killed by a car as he tries to cross the street behind a trolley car, the Sunday Budget reports. Joseph O’Connor is declared dead at the scene from a fractured skull. A coroner’s investigation determines that the driver of the car, Joseph Marois of Cohoes, is not at fault. Marois is a driver for Robert Pinkerton of Green Island. “The automobile was being driven at a moderate rate of speed, and when passing a trolley car, the boy ran from behind the car and directly in the path of the machine,” a reporter explains, “Before Marois could stop he had struck the lad knocking him to the pavement.” Arsenal Activities Despite a mass exodus of employees this week, the Watervliet Arsenal “will continue indefinitely to be a very busy place,” The Record predicts. In his weekly column, our paper’s Washington correspondent writes that “It is not expected here that the termination of the war will greatly affect the Watervliet arsenal at present, although no official decision has been made in the matter. “It is assumed, however, that the permanent arsenals will be depended upon to supply the normal army in times of peace, and that army will be larger than it formerly was.” Hundreds of workers quit their jobs after the arsenal stopped offering overtime shifts. While our editors predict that “there undoubtedly will be retrenchment,” the arsenal can’t return to a “peace footing” while millions of U.S. troops remain in Europe.