Category Archives: Disasters

February 8, 2012

1918: Spanish Flu, Attitudes toward Housekeeping, and a Little Bit about Linguistic History

By Forgotten New England
"Coughs and Sneezes Spread Diseases - As ...

Image via Wikipedia

One of the more interesting aspects of writing a blog is seeing which topics attract the most interest.  In mid-December, I wrote a post about the Spanish flu (link below) and its spread across Massachusetts in 1918 and 1919.  Since then, it’s been one of my most popular posts (placing fourth most popular of the current 45 posts, actually).  So, the other day I was reviewing my notes from that post and came across an interesting column (also below) that I didn’t use at the time, but saved for later.

Spanish Flu, sometimes called the 1918 Flu Pandemic, was a worldwide pandemic and one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in humanity’s history.  Experts estimate that somewhere between 50 and 100 million people died worldwide, and that some 500 million were infected.  Stateside, one in every four people suffered some form of the Spanish flu, and the death toll was so staggering that it shortened the average US life expectancy by 12 years during the first year of the outbreak.

These days, it’s rare to come across first-hand living memories of the Spanish flu epidemic, now more than 90 years ago.  My grandfather, who grew up in Lawrence, Massachusetts often spoke of his memories, but he died more than 35 years ago.  That’s why when I came across this column, in the November 1, 1918 edition of The Lowell Sun, I decided to save it.

There are a few things that are interesting about the article, from a column called Man About Town.  First, I’m also working on a post exploring the linguistic heritage of New England – said more simply, the distinctive accent and unique words and phrases we’re known for.  More specifically, I’ve been exploring the idea that we would notice ‘historical accents’ if we were able to talk with people of the past.   In the column below, the writer, uses the phrase “issue of even date” in her letter – a term, now obsolete, that she uses to refer to “today’s edition” of the newspaper.

Typist wearing mask, New York City, October 16...

Typist wearing mask, New York City, October 16, 1918, during the "Spanish flu" influenza pandemic. - Image via Wikipedia.

Another interesting comment about the letter is the writer’s reaction against the “fresh air” idea that was so prevalent during the epidemic.  Soon after Spanish flu emerged, fresh air was thought to be one way to protect against infection.  Open-air emergency camps were quickly set up across Massachusetts to treat the infected.  And, amidst all of the fear, one newspaper columnist proposed that a messy home and poor housekeeping put people at a greater risk of infection.  An irritated reader wrote the following response, taking him to task for assuming that her house was “in a dirty condition” just because the Spanish flu had invaded her home.

From the Friday, November 1, 1918.  Lowell Sun, Page 18.

Dear Sir: 

In your issue of even date you say you wish we could have a national, state, or municipal statute to enforce personal and household cleanliness among industrial families.  You state you have thought about it more particularly since the Spanish influenza has been prevalent because the social workers tell you of unsanitary homes (bordering on being in a state of filth) and that this causes the disease to thrive more than any other single agency.

I am writing this in all kindness and good feeling toward the Man About Town, but I do not like to think that because I happen to have a case of Spanish influenza in my home, it was brought about because my home was kept in a dirty condition.  I am

Sincerely yours,

A MAN ABOUT TOWN READER

The Man About Town responded, and his counterpoint also exhibits the general thinking of the time, regarding WWI-era thoughts about women, housekeeping, and protection against infections:

The Man About Town’s Response:

A woman wrote this.  No name was signed to it, but I can tell a woman’s handwriting and sometimes detect the feminine process of thinking.  I rather think she is a good housekeeper and her house is kept in a clean condition.  If it got to that point where she wanted me to personally inspect her home and qualify as a judge of a clean home, or, if she had any lingering doubts in her own mind as to whether she was as good a housekeeper as she ought to be, I think here is a situation she and I ought to both sidestep.  I think, if judgement must be passed on her home, she and I ought to leave it to the opinion of her family doctor and of the nurse employed.  But I am satisfied to believe that this woman’s home is clean and all right.

Sometimes, veering off the beaten path of research materials (and into the land of columns and other ‘lighter’ newspaper content) can yield interesting insights into the lives and thoughts of people whose living memories have long since faded.  These insights can help us better envision as living, breathing people the names and dates of the individuals who make up our family trees.  They can also breathe life into the events and beliefs that shaped their lives and that we now read about in historical accounts.

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6 comments   |  tags: , , , | posted in City Life, Disasters, history, Linguistic History, living memory, lowell, Massachusetts, Writing Life

February 5, 2012

The Great White Hurricane – New England’s Blizzard of 1888

By Forgotten New England

The Blizzard of 1888 in New York City, via Wikimedia Commons.

During New England‘s Blizzard of 1888, also known as the Great White Hurricane, over four feet of snow fell in Connecticut and Massachusetts.  The storm dumped as much as 40 inches of snow in New York and New Jersey.  In a world before road salt and snowblowers, the Great White Hurricane suspended communication and travel in the U.S. Northeast for nearly a week in March 1888.  History most remembers the particularly horrific conditions in New York City.  There, the New York World reported that almost two feet of snow had fallen amidst biting 50 mph winds and sub-zero temperatures.  However, the storm also wrought havoc in smaller northern cities along the US East Coast.

A wet, swirling snow began to fall around dawn on Monday, March 12, 1888, in Lowell, Massachusetts, then a city of about 65,000 residents.  Many of Lowell’s residents, workers in the textile mills, gingerly picked their way along slick sidewalks as they began their workweek.  Most did not know that a blizzard was approaching and that it would drop increasing amounts of snow in Lowell on that day and the next.  As they took their places behind their spinning machines and warpers, the morning’s light breezes intensified into winds and then gales.  Temperatures, near freezing in the morning, never warmed.  Outside the mills, milkmen shoveled passages through drifts that had grown several feet high.  Patrolmen struggled through blinding snows before being forced to suspend their rounds later that afternoon.  Most agreed that they had never before seen such a storm.  Almost all had thought these kind of storms only happened in the “west”, which had suffered through the Schoolhouse Blizzard just two months before.

Windows, and even their buildings, rattled in the howling winds as heavy, wet snow began to blanket Lowell, Massachusetts.  Communication with other cities was soon lost as strong gusts brought down telephone wires and telegraph poles, already heavy with snow and ice.

Travel to, from, and around Lowell soon devolved into chaos.  Snow drifts grew to ten, or twenty feet high on some train tracks.

Front Page Headlines from the Boston Globe - March 13, 1888

Those lucky enough to arrive from surrounding towns and cities came late.  Some unfortunate souls ended up stranded with their disabled trains in a dark, white wilderness.  The heavy, wet snow just proved too much for the steam engines.  To make matters even worse, downed telegraph wires meant that the stalled trains had lost all means of communication, leaving the stranded passengers and crew completely cut off.

For those relying on horse-cars to travel within Lowell, the situation was hardly any better.  Snow had settled into the horse-car tracks far more quickly than the plows had been able to remove it.  This, and the increasing number or passengers seeking refuge on the city’s horse-cars, began to overtax the city’s work horses.  Newspaper accounts recorded the concern expressed over the horses’ welfare.  When one of the horses dropped dead from overexertion early in the evening, the horse-cars were called back into the stables for the night and any attempts to keep the tracks clear of snow was given up.  Those stranded in Lowell remarked at the city’s oddly quiet streets, deserted without a single horse-car, or even any visible horse-car tracks for that matter.  Sleighs gradually claimed the streets, no longer needing to be mindful of the usual risk of overturning in the horse-car tracks.

City officials fretted that an electrical surge would take out the city’s fire alarm system.  At 5:30 that afternoon, officials shut down the city’s electric light system, after sending a notice to shopkeepers advising them to convert to their gas lights.  Most closed at dusk instead, sending their employees out into the evolving chaos that had been the city’s transportation system.  City officials tried to light their way using the old gas light lanterns that still hung along most streets.  They soon abandoned the effort, however, when they learned that the glass was missing from most of the lantern panes.

The increasing weight of the wet snow proved too much for telegraph wires too.  Communication with Boston was lost by 3 PM on March 12; New York fell silent several hours earlier.  New England Telephone Company suffered extensive damage to its telephone lines as well.

The sun finally reappeared by the afternoon of Tuesday, March 13, but failed to melt much as temperatures failed to hit even 30ºF.  Throughout the day and evening, teams of men picked away at the deep drifts covering the horse-car tracks with their picks and shovels.  Horse car service began to be reinstated on the following morning.  By dusk on March 14, nearly all horse-car service was available.

Train service, too, began to return to a state of normalcy.  Trains that had spent the storm trapped within deep drifts began arriving during Tuesday, March 13.  A train that had left Fall River, Massachusetts at 5:45 AM on that day arrived in Lowell almost 12 hours later, at 5 o’clock in the afternoon.  By Wednesday, March 14, train service too had returned to normal schedules, even though even a passing snow squall had dropped even more snow on the area.

Western Union and New England Telephone remained hard at work in the days following the storm.  Although Western Union began work on felled telegraph poles after the storm ended on March 13, it was several days before service was restored.  New England Telephone had restored most of its service by Thursday, March 15.  Electric light service was restored to Lowell by dusk the night before.

As repairs were completed in the days following the storm, the Blizzard of 1888 faded from local newspaper headlines.  And as communication was restored with Boston, New York and beyond, news of the extent of the damage in New York City became known, where deaths and much more serious damage had been recorded.  Lowell, Massachusetts, recorded several injuries related to the Great White Hurricane of 1888, but escaped the greatest brunt of the storm.  The Blizzard of  1888 remained the benchmark for all other snowstorms, however, for nearly a century until the Blizzard of 1978 swept across New England and became the storm of record.

7 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in City Life, Disasters, history, lowell

January 13, 2012

Worries of the Past: Smallpox and Boston’s Epidemic of 1872

By Forgotten New England

A smallpox inoculation sign from 1801, via Wikipedia Commons

First, flu-like symptoms emerge -fever, aches, pains, nausea.  Exhaustion soon follows.  It’s not until a few days later when the telltale, flat, red spots appear about the face, hands, and arms.  The spots evolve into pus-filled blisters that scab first and then fall off, to reveal deep, pitted scars.  Smallpox was one of history’s most dreaded diseases, not only for its tendency to produce significant and deep scarring to victims’ faces, but also for its ability to cause blindness, or even worse, death.

Smallpox deaths in Boston, 1811-1873

Fear of smallpox never lurked far from the worries of 19th-century Bostonians.  Older folks still spoke of an epidemic that had struck Boston during 1721 and 1722 and killed 844, which was then more than 7% of the population.  The chart at right, from a February 1881 edition of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal shows the level of smallpox contagion in Boston during most of the 19th century.  During the century’s first decades, after the first smallpox vaccinations were introduced in 1800, smallpox all but disappeared from Boston.  From 1839 forward, the presence of smallpox remained more or less constant in the city.  The epidemic that everyone talked about, though, dwarfed all the others and even rivaled the earlier outbreak of 1721.  The smallpox epidemic of 1872 claimed over 1,000 lives before it finally abated in the first weeks of 1874.

During the 1872 epidemic, smallpox victims, or even those suspected of having smallpox, were brought, sometimes against their will, to Gallop’s Island in Boston Harbor.  During the epidemic, those who could not get to the island or afford care there, were re-directed to the city’s smallpox hospital on Albany Street.  The hospital, overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of smallpox infections, quickly found its 30-patient capacity stretched to 48.  Charges soon emerged that those admitted to the Boston Smallpox Hospital on Albany Street did not receive proper care or food and that they were forced to endure substandard conditions.  The testimony provided by patients and medical staff has been preserved and provides some interesting insights into the experiences of 19th-century hospital patients.

The main complaint emerging from the hearings seems to have been the casualness around the enforcement of the smallpox quarantine.  Several hospital patients claimed seeing the hospital’s gates open at different times of the day.  Others reported seeing smallpox patients come in very close contact with women who came into the hospital yard to collect rags or boys who had come to collect nails.  Several saw sailors near the hospital’s gates.  Nearly all could not recall ever seeing the red flag (indicating smallpox contagion) hung at the gates to warn passersby and visitors of the smallpox infection inside.

Late 19th century sanitary water closet

Another complaint involved the hospital’s water closet, or bathroom/restroom as we call it today.  Nearly all patients complained that the water closets were filthy and that most did not work.  Administrators did acknowledge that toilets did not always work and explained the difficulty in finding plumbers who were willing to enter the hospital, make the repairs, and risk infection.  Nevertheless, the stench from some water closets was so oppressive that several patients took it upon themselves to clean the water closets.

Lastly, many patients complained of the food, claiming that there wasn’t enough, or that it was of poor quality.  Several claimed that eggs or meat that had been served them had gone bad, and in the case of meat, contained maggots.

In the end, the Smallpox Hospital was closed in September 1872, and patients were once again cared for either in the facilities on Gallop’s Island or in their own homes.  Claims charging inadequate food or insufficient care were never substantiated.  However, the claims that the hospital was overcrowded and lacked enough help were found to be true.  The committee investigating the claims did decide that more nurses were needed, but also considered that patients, when sufficiently healthy, were expected to patch in too.  Regarding the broken toilets, the committee did find that it was indeed broken, but sympathized with the hospital, which claimed, probably quite truthfully, that no one would enter the hospital to fix them because they were afraid of being infected with smallpox themselves.

No effective treatment was ever discovered for smallpox, a disease that killed up to 30% of those who were infected, and pockmarked up to 80% of its survivors – most often on the face.  In 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a successful global eradication program, which led to the world’s last case of naturally-occurring smallpox, in 1977.

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