The First Quarantine

The First Quarantine

by Rachel Dworkin, archivist

On the morning of October 15, 1918, Elmira Free Academy freshman Clara Gilbert was on her way to school with friends when they were stopped by a neighbor. “Girls, there’s no school on account of influenza,” he told them. As she wrote in her diary later that night,  she was so happy she could have hugged him. She would soon change her mind. “Jiminy, I’d rather go to school and have parties than stay home,” she wrote on the 18th. By the times the schools opened again on November 3rd, it was a relief to go back.

Clara Gilbert, student & diarist

In the autumn of 1918, Spanish Flu was ravaging the nation. Over one quarter of the population fell ill and approximately 600,000 Americans died. Despite the alarming numbers, there was no nationwide, or even statewide, plan to deal with the crisis. It was up to each community to decide what, if any, precautions they wanted to take.

On October 15th, Elmira made the decision to shut down schools, theaters, churches, pool halls, bowling alleys, libraries, and art galleries. There would be no club meetings, dances, public funerals, or other large gatherings. The street cars could run, but they would have to be thoroughly cleaned daily and keep the windows open to allow for increased ventilation. All big sales at area stores were to be cancelled, but shops remained open.  So too did factories and the railroads, although employees were told not to come in if sick. Surrounding towns and villages shut down schools and churches too. Horseheads did it first on October 10th with Southport following on the 15th, and Wellsburg on the 16th. 

Elmira Herald, October 15, 1918

Life under influenza was not exactly social distancing. Today across the state, all non-essential businesses are shut down and people are being encouraged to stay at home. In 1918,  students and people put out of work by the quarantine were encouraged to volunteer to bring in the potato harvest on area farms. At least 10 of them were known to have done so. The mayor urged citizens not to slack off on the purchase of war bonds and boy scouts continued to sell them door to door. Clara Glibert fell sick on October 21. That same day, her little sister had two school friends over. 

Despite the lack of prohibitions on public interactions, the quarantine was no picnic. Stuck in my home, I can stay entertained with Netflix and the internet, but Elmirans in 1918 didn’t have any of that. With TV not yet invented and the theaters and libraries closed, students stuck at home were bored out of their minds. Clara spent a lot of time hanging out with friends and making paper dolls. 

A number of area churches and synagogues have started streaming their services on-line. In 1918, the newspapers published the sermons in the Sunday morning papers. Although the churches were closed to the public, Catholic priests were still allowed in to perform the mass to an empty church. Congregants were encouraged to pray along at home at the usual time. 

The city-wide quarantine ended on November 3, 1918 with much fanfare. In retrospect, it probably shouldn’t have. At the height of the quarantine, there were 60 new cases in the city a day with between 6 and 10 daily deaths. On the day it was lifted, there were “only” 28 new cases. The city's two hospitals were still full, as was the temporary hospital at the Gotham Hotel. People continued to fall sick in the city well into the start of the next year. 

Majestic Theater ad, November 2, 1918

There were 3,549 confirmed cases of Spanish flu in the city with an untold number cases inaccurately reported as pneumonia or polio. At least 150 Elmirans died of it or related complications. Could the spread have been slowed and those deaths prevented if health officials had enacted more stringent quarantine measures for longer? It’s impossible to say but, in the current crisis, we do know that social distancing will help to ease the strain on the health care system and save lives. Check out our other blog posts Spanish Flu and Flu Season for more information about the 1918 flu epidemic while you do your part to help flatten the curve. Stay healthy, stay safe, and we’ll see each other again. 

Flu Season

By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

On October 1, 1918, the Weinstein family of Elmira was notified that their son, Jacob, was sick at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station near Chicago. Spanish Flu had reached epidemic proportions at the base, and one Elmira man had already died there. Jacob, a Pharmacists Mate, had been tending the sick when he fell ill. His brother David boarded the first available train to Chicago. By the time he arrived at 4pm Chicago time, Jacob was already dead.

The Spanish Flu epidemic was the second deadliest epidemic in history. There are no definite numbers due to poor record keeping, but somewhere between 20 and 100 million people died of it worldwide. Nationwide, over a quarter of the population was infected while approximately 600,000 died. While most flus only kill the very young, the very old, and the sickly, the Spanish Flu’s main victims were healthy young adults. Young people in the armed services dropped like flies. 

During World War I, approximately 5,000 Chemung County residents joined the armed services. 138 of them never came home alive. Of those, nearly 2 dozen died of the flu or related complications. 

In many ways, the war created the perfect storm for the epidemic. Soldiers traveling across the country in crowded troop trains infected each other and people in the towns they passed. Here in Elmira, the local chapter of the Red Cross had a canteen at the railroad station to provide refreshments to men on the troop trains. During 1918, they served 126,798 troops. In late October, Red Cross canteen workers discovered 12 Oklahoma men sick with a flu on a passing troop train. The men were removed to Arnot-Ogden Hospital where they all eventually recovered. Who knows how many men they had already infected by then? 

Red Cross canteen at the Erie Railroad station

Conditions at the training camps were terrible as men from all over the country infected each other. The camps were very crowded with as many as 25,000 to 55,000 men. The flu first struck in Boston in late August and, within ten days, thousands of recruits at the nearby Camp Devens were sick. Seemingly healthy soldiers were transferred out to other camps, spreading the disease with them. Rates of infection at the camps varied wildly from just 10% at Camp Lewis, Washington, to 63% at Camp Beauregard, Louisiana. The average were somewhere between 25 to 40%, with approximately 2% of the infected dying. 

Camp Wadsworth, South Carolina, where Elmira's Company L trained.

Training camps were woefully unprepared to deal with the epidemic. Not only were individual camps slow to initiate quarantines which might have prevented the spread of the illness outside the camps, they failed to institute internal quarantines as well. Men were turned away from sick call unless they were running a fever of over 101 degrees and the military’s insistence that training continue meant that those who did not yet qualify for sick call could infect their classmates and instructors. Camp medical personnel often lacked necessary supplies to treat the sick. At the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, only 96 out of 674 hospital workers were issued masks. Over 25 nurses and hospital corpsmen, including Jacob Weinstein, died as a result. 

Check out Spanish Flu to see the effects of the flu on Chemung County. 

GET A FLU SHOT!

Spanish Flu

By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

Apparently, this year’s strain of flu is spreading faster than usual. Luckily for me, I’ve always made a point of getting a vaccine since I found out my maternal grandfather’s parents died of Spanish Flu in 1918. They were in good company. Nationwide, over a quarter of the population was infected while approximately 600,000 died. For comparison, the yearly average is somewhere around 20,000. There are no definite numbers due to poor recordkeeping, but somewhere between 20 and 100 million people died of Spanish Flu worldwide making it the second deadliest epidemic after the Black Death.

The Spanish Flu hit Chemung County in October of 1918 and it hit hard.  It started small, oddly enough, with an outbreak of what the City Health Department insisted was polio, despite the fact it didn’t fit the contingent model for the disease. By the start of October, Spanish Flu was killing 200 people a day in Boston, and Elmira officials were desperate to avoid a panic. On October 5^th, the paper reported that ten Elmira College students were under quarantine for the flu, but City Health Officer, Dr. Dr. Reeve Howland, continued to insist there was no epidemic in the city. Five days later, there were over 100 people sick with the flu in Horseheads and the town had decided to shut down schools and churches in an ultimately fruitless attempt to contain the spread. The City of Elmira finally conceded to reality and followed suit on October 15^th, shutting down schools, churches, theaters, and all public gatherings. 

Dr. Reeve Howland, City Health Officer. He tried.

It was too little, too late. Between the start of October 1918 and the new year, there were 3,549 reported cases of the flu in Elmira. That is to say that somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of the city caught it. Approximately 150 Elmirans died of Spanish flu during the 1918-19 flu season. Over 100 of them died in October alone. The Elmira Herald reported that there were between six and ten deaths per day at the height of the epidemic. 

The city struggled to cope with the sheer number of sick people. Arnot-Ogden and St. Joseph’s both ran out of beds and the Elmira Board of Health created a make-shift overflow hospital at the Hotel Gotham on State Street. Families struggled to survive as parents fell sick. The entire Wilcox family of Pearl Place was stricken except for the eight-year-old daughter who eventually had to call the police to help take her parents to the hospital. The Red Cross established a kitchen at the Federation Building to feed children whose parents were too ill to cook. At the height of the epidemic, they feeding some thirty families. 

Hotel Gotham, 201-203 State Street, served as a make-shift hospital during the epidemic

 

By the time the war ended on November 11, 1918, the worst of the epidemic was over. Schools, churches, and theaters were re-opened on November 3^rd. People were still falling ill (there were 12 new cases on November 12^th) but that was way down from 60 new cases a day in October. The emergency hospital at Gotham Hotel was closed on November 15^th and, just like that, the city was back to normal. Except, of course, for all the dead people.

Annual report of the Elmira Board of Health, 1918