Pondering the 1918/1919 Influenza Pandemic
We've posted this once before, but as I'm going to refer to it again on the site I'm posting it again. It's an excellent article.
Part of the reason I'm posting this is that this article has been getting a lot of renewed attention due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Like everything by Roberts, it deserves the attention its getting. I was going t repost it about a week or so ago, but as I'd posted it before, I didn't at that time. however, as I'm referring to it in an answer to a question that's been posted yesterday, I thought I'd note it again.
I'll also note that the 18/19 Flu is getting a lot of attention in the press due to current events, and one of the things that is locally drawing attention is the steps taken to combat it. The Wyoming Tribune Eagle (which occasionally quotes our This Day book), recently ran an article stating, about quarantines that first appeared in Kemmerer:
As precautionary measures, the health officials sanctioned the cancellation of all parties and the closure of churches, movie houses and theaters – anywhere that large groups of people congregated together.
Most people took these sanctions to heart, but there was no penalty for not doing so. It wouldn’t be until the crisis got worse that the recommendations would become orders.
In the meantime, doctors made recommendations that might sound familiar: If you are sick, stay home in bed, stay at least five feet from people, cover your nose and mouth when coughing or sneezing, and stay away from people who are noticeably ill. Droplets from coughing, sneezing, talking and laughing were the source of the disease’s spread. There was an immediate effort to ban public spitting on sidewalks, stairs and streetcars.
Some folk wisdom crept into the papers as well: Refrain from wearing tight clothes and shoes, keep cool while walking and warm while sleeping. These had little effect on the disease, but some, such as warnings not to use public towels or drinking cups, seem like common sense today. One thing neither professionals nor good Samaritans mentioned was to wash your hands, especially after caring for a sick family member.
On Oct. 8, the Spanish Flu arrived in Cheyenne. At first, only 10 people were stricken with the disease. Not taking any chances, Superintendent A.L. Jessup followed health officials’ recommendations and closed the city’s schools Oct. 9. He asked parents to keep their children close to home and not let them loiter in the neighborhoods, something parents were reluctant to do. Pool halls and saloons remained open, although loitering in the depot lobby was banned.
On Oct. 10, the cases in Cheyenne sprang up to 50 persons. In response, all libraries and club reading rooms closed. Civic organizations cancelled meetings. To prevent loitering, cigar stores were ordered to pull their seats or box them up. Soda fountains had to remove their chairs and stools. On Oct. 11, Gov. Frank Houx ordered all saloons, pool halls, Red Cross work rooms and night schools across the state closed. By public order, all funerals would be private family affairs.
By Oct. 15, the increasing count of flu cases jumped by 100 in less than 48 hours. Police chased children off the streets, while doctors pleaded with restaurants to change the worst of their habits.County 10 News had an interesting article regarding events in Fremont County (hence "County 10", it's license plate number), in which it noted that the local newspaper was complaining about orders put in place by that county's health official in October, 1918. None the less, local quaranties there soon expanded, as it reports:
A little more than a week later, Dr. Thomas Maghee, the doctor serving at the State Training School was appointed the health officer of Lander. He issued a quarantine order that read as follows:
A quarantine, with all its objectionable features, is imposed for the object, to stamp out and terminate an epidemic, thus preventing much suffering and even loss of life.
The prime necessity is to PREVENT CONTACT of infected persons with those who are well. Therefore, a person will not be permitted to assemble on the street corners, in places of amusement or in business houses.
TWO PERSONS are an assemblage under the law.
Persons who have symptoms of the Influenza or who have recently had it, must remain at home or suffer arrest.
Visiting between families and acquaintances must cease at once. Ladies with children must remain at home and keep their children with them.
Children are absolutely forbidden to be on the streets or to visit neighbors. Special arrangements will be made by the authorities when necessary to use a child to send on errands. Children found on the street, without a permit will be arrested.
Hotels are permitted to allow only the guests from out of town to remain about the lobbies. And the people of the town must not congregate there.
Merchants will deliver supplies to the quarantined houses when requested.The Powell Tribune also recently looked back at the 1918/19 flu in this context, noting:
Crowds assembling at the newsstand, the depot or post office will no longer be permitted. Until further orders, one person ONLY at ANY ONE TIME will be permitted to enter or remain in a saloon as long as it is necessary to get a drink, nor can persons frequent cigar or candy stand except under the same circumstances.
There was good news with the end of World War I hostilities a week later, but no end to the flu quarantine. In fact, the Powell Tribune of Nov. 22 recorded even stricter quarantine rules issued by the town council. The post office lobby was closed for two hours at mid-day. Stores could remain open for business, but it became unlawful for anyone to be in a store except to transact business. And children were required to stay home.
The town council stated flatly “an emergency exists.”
Quarantine regulations made it unlawful for parents to allow their children “to congregate or play with other children in this town, or allow or permit them to congregate or play on the streets or property within town except on the premises where they live.”
As November drew to a close, the Powell Tribune still expressed hope the quarantine was doing its job.
“According to the report of our local health authorities this morning, there are now only about a dozen cases of influenza in Powell, and as none of the patients are seriously ill, it is taken as a hopeful sign that the situation is improving,” the Tribune reported on Nov. 29.
But it was not to be. Nor would there be public festivities for Christmas. For many Powell homes there was profound grief and gloom during the Christmas season. According to research by Park County Archives Curator Brian Beauvais, 187 cases of the flu were reported in Powell that December, on the heels of 89 cases in November.Elsewhere events caused advertisements to appear that are reminiscent of what we're seeing now, in our own era. Hard hit in 1918/19, and hard hit again in 2020, Teton County's paper of a century ago had merchants noting business restrictions as follows:
Yes, a century ago we're seeing curbside due to quarantines. . . just like we've been seeing this past month.
Things went further:
So what to take away from all of this?
Well, even though the 1918/19 Flu is something we posted on here well before we started daily entries on events 100 years past here, we've done a really poor job of what it was really like. We just rolled right over the news of the era, noting it, but not really digging deep into it. World War One was our focus. But for people enduring the 18/19 Flu, it was more than something playing in the background, it was the major daily event of their lives.
And those lives were hugely disrupted by it, then as now. Quarantines were put in effect all over the state. Then, like now, there were some in some places that objected to the restrictions when they first came in. According to at least one Wyoming newspaper, relaxing things too soon caused the disease to advance, although with a titanic viral wave of the type faced at that time, before there was any vaccine, that's pretty debatable.
It's common in these retrospectives to note, if a lesson is supposed to be drawn, that "we've been through this before", but most of us really haven't. Therefore, we can't really claim that we should be encouraged by the suffering endured in 1918/1919. Indeed, I've heard some pretty bad attempts at that including one just the other day by somebody who noted that in his family they'd kept on keeping on, but entire family groups had died. That's not exactly something that encourages us now. If anything, should comfort at all, it's the long pause that's given by the fact that to some extent such events are the human norm, the species will get through it, and we're all just passing through anyhow, something that gives few people comfort.
But for historians and fans of history, there's something else here. And that is this. We're living through history right now. The current pandemic dominates our thinking and the news right now, and soon a major recession will, and is already starting to. Locally, the absolute crash in oil prices is on a lot of our minds.
So are cancelled high school graduations and weddings, birthdays for children that are on Zoom, and a gloom that settles over everything we do. It must have been like that during the winter of 1918/1919 as well. We look back and think of the Spring Offensive of 1918, the Battle of Belleau Wood, the end of the German and Austrian Empires, and the like. But for people living at the time, there was a lot going on, and a lot of it was pretty bad. Maybe there's some odd comfort in that, and maybe that's a lesson on taking in our sense of history a little less compartmentalized than we tend to do.
