100 YEARS AGO IN THE SARATOGIAN
Tuesday, Feb. 11, 1919. The Spanish flu epidemic took 65 lives in Saratoga Springs in 1918 according to the public safety commissioner’s annual report released today.
Almost 1,300 cases of influenza were reported in the Spa City, according to commissioner William B. Milliman. The flu struck hardest in October, killing 53 people out of 1,166 cases reported in that month alone. The epidemic increased total mortality for the year to 366 deaths, compared to 276 in 1917.
Turning to crime, Milliman reports that, despite a panic over a racing-season crime wave last August, there were 222 fewer crimes committed in Saratoga Springs in 1918 than during the previous year.
“There were twenty burglaries during the year, fourteen of which took place during the month of August in quick succession and caused considerable worry and excitement in the city,” the commissioner notes, “Stories of hold-ups and robberies became the chief topic of conversation with the result that every stranger on the streets after 10 o’clock at night was looked upon as a suspicious person.
“Eventually a member of the local force located and arrested the burglar and it developed that he was the lone actor in the drama of crime and also that the gang or gangs that were reported to be operating in the city were merely imaginary.
“With the arrest of the lone burglar the crimes suddenly ceased, excitable persons calmed down and the people once more enjoyed peace.”
Colored Fighters Won State Praise
The state senate adopts a resolution today officially thanking the soldiers of the all-black 369th U.S. Infantry regiment, formerly the 15th New York National Guard, for distinguished service in France during the world war.
Corporal Harold G. King of Saratoga Springs served in the 369th. In town on furlough while awaiting his discharge, King leaves a strong impression on a Saratogian reporter.
“If you had been 191 days at the front without relief and had heard the constant rumbling of the big guns; if your days and your nights were all as one and you slept and ate only as the war permitted you to, you would understand better why it is that the soldier boys returning to Saratoga Springs find their nerves somewhat shattered,” the reporter writes.
King was wounded in the arm on September 29 and barely avoided having the limb amputated. He tells the reporter that he was kept in the military hospital longer than necessary in order to raise fellow patients’ morale by playing the piano.
“Some of them sure needed entertaining,” King says, “I never saw such battered limbs in my life, and never want to again.”