100 years ago in The Saratogian
Sunday, Oct. 27, 1918.For the first time in three weeks, the churches of Saratoga Springs are open for a full schedule of Sunday services, The Saratogian reports.
The churches had first been limited to morning service only, then closed entirely as the Spanish flu epidemic spread through the region. City health officer Dr. A. Sherman Downs gave the green light for churches to reopen last Thursday.
In a further sign that the epidemic is subsiding, Spa City movie theaters will reopen tomorrow. The city’s public schools are scheduled to reopen a week later, on November 4.
Many Saratogians refuse to take chances, however. “Attendance at all the city churches were unusually small,” a reporter writes.
The reporter pays special attention to the services at St. Peter’s Catholic church, where “prayers were said for the repose of the souls of the dead, and for the recovery of the sick.” Approximately 100 parishioners have had the flu, including U.S. Navy seaman William J. Barrett, who died at the Pelham Bay training facility this week. Barrett is the first St. Peter’s parishioner to die in service to his country during the war with Germany.
Influenza Hospital at Mechanicville
A temporary emergency hospital for flu patients opens its doors in Mechanicville today, The Saratogian reports.
The hospital is located in a three-story structure at 49 North Main Street, belonging to Roy W. Smith. “The committee had the building thoroughly cleaned and renovated, sixteen cots set up, two rooms fully furnished for nurses’ quarters, two trained nurses employed and on the way from Boston, Mass., and a competent cook, Mrs. Janet Hale, secured before 6 o’clock Saturday night,” a Mechanicville correspondent writes.
The nurses don’t arrive until today, delaying the hospital’s opening. As patients arrive, the special influenza committee determines that two nurses won’t be enough and sends a request to Boston for a third.
At least two Mechanicville residents die of the flu today at their homes. Former village attorney J. Lewiston Flanagan dies this afternoon at his residence on 18 Greenwood Street, while Nellie Holohan passes away this evening at 37 South Main Street.
Flanagan, a Georgetown graduate, was “one of Mechanicville’s most brilliant and highly esteemed young men,” a local correspondent writes, “He had a pleasing personality and his gentlemanly manner and conduct won him a host of friends.” He’s survived by his wife, his mother and three siblings.
Three Delaware & Hudson railroad employees are hospitalized today after they’re found in the Mechanicville railroad yard “quite ill … and without proper care.” They had been living in sleeping cars that are now being disinfected.