The great pandemic of 1918 wears on in region
Courtesy of Washington County Historical Society
A Nov. 5, 1918, headline from the Washington Observer
Courtesy of Washington County Historical Society
A Nov. 5, 1918, headline in the Washington Observer.
Editor’s note: This is the second in a two-part series on the Spanish influenza outbreak of 1918 and its spread across Western Pennsylvania.
As the battle against the Spanish Flu wore on in October 1918, a somber new reality descended upon Washington.
On Oct. 24, the Washington Observer told of 82 new cases in town and another tragic aspect of the influenza: the disease was rapidly spreading among children of school age. In response, Washington schools were finally ordered closed – nearly three weeks after the closure of saloons, theaters, churches, and other social gathering places.
The Observer, offering a steadying voice in the chaos, advised parents of school-age children “to take every care possible with them and not allow them to run at large and expose themselves unnecessarily to the disease.” But the Observer also tried to be pragmatic: “[the epidemic] simply has to run its course. The only thing to do is to take proper care of the cases that develop and use every preventative possible to minimize the spread.”
Ultimately, the school closure came too late for children such as 8-year-old Sven Leaf, a school boy who died Oct. 27 of the influenza at home on Allison Avenue, and 7-year-old Paul Woods, the son of a doctor who died Oct. 30 at home on Penn Street.
Amid all this gloom, it was oddly reassuring some capitalism was flourishing during the outbreak.
The Vick Chemical Company of Greensboro, N.C., aggressively advertised its Vick’s VapoRub product to “supplement the physician’s treatment” of influenza. According to a large Vick’s ad in the Observer Oct. 29, public demand “due to the present epidemic” had “wiped out excess stocks” of VapoRub, and urged retailers that “our duty – and your duty – is to distribute VapoRub in the quickest possible manner to those sections stricken by influenza.”
As if the medical challenges of the expanding outbreak were not enough to contend with, local officials soon had another problem on their hands.
By Oct. 28, business owners, sustaining unbearable losses, began to voice their objections to the closure orders of Dr. Benjamin Franklin Royer, Pennsylvania’s commissioner of health.
Such objections had already hardened into protest in other places.
In fact, city officials in Lancaster and Pittsburgh began to suggest that their cities might break from the state Department of Health’s orders, either by outright defiance of them or by noncooperation in their enforcement.
Projecting strength from Harrisburg, Royer warned of “drastic steps” to quash any such noncompliance.
But Royer was walking a tightrope. He knew he had to have the cooperation of local officials to combat the influenza’s fatal spread. He knew additional doctors would need to be dispatched to hot spots in Washington and Westmoreland counties, among others. And he knew his public statements on the trouble in Lancaster and Pittsburgh had to be measured and consistent – the rest of the state would be watching.
On Oct. 30, state officials announced a total of 27,478 deaths had resulted from pneumonia and influenza in Pennsylvania since the beginning of the month. The Observer noted 161 new cases in Washington Oct. 31, and updated readers on conditions at various points in the county.
While the outbreak was “being handled well” at Meadowlands, Avella and the western part of the county, the Observer reported the Monongahela Valley was being “very hard hit.” At Donora, conditions were dire – placed under a strict quarantine with active cases spiraling, “state police officers are stationed there and persons getting off trains are asked their business,” according to published reports.
Even with such hot spots of the influenza still arising in various places in the state, Royer was seeing enough improvement to start planning for the eventual lifting of restrictions in certain counties.
While acknowledging new cases had already peaked in Pittsburgh, Royer remained cautious and warned city officials of the dangers of a premature reopening.
As Pittsburghers would soon read, however, protest had turned to defiance in the unlikely city of Lancaster. On Oct. 31, Judge Charles I. Landis, of the Lancaster County court, had voiced his opinion that the state health commissioner had no legal right to keep saloons closed. Later that evening, half of Lancaster’s saloons reopened in open defiance of the state order.
Lancaster’s Board of Health made no effort to close them.
In Harrisburg, Royer was mortified.
Fearing that a hot spot in Lancaster would forfeit all the progress of the state’s social distancing since early October, he took the most drastic action imaginable Nov. 1 – a full-scale quarantine of Lancaster. Trolley and train service was halted. State troopers were ordered to close roads in and out of town.
Royer defended the quarantine in a proclamation: “This action is taken for the purpose of protecting the people living outside of the city of Lancaster…” In response, Lancaster’s city solicitor sought a hearing for an injunction to void the quarantine “because it is not a health preventative measure, but a retaliatory move against the Lancaster Board of Health.”
As this drama was unfolding in Lancaster, city officials in Pittsburgh were indeed watching.
When Royer delayed Allegheny County’s prospective reopening from Nov. 4 to perhaps Nov. 9 or later, the patience of Pittsburgh mayor Edward V. Babcock ran out.
Babcock issued a proclamation “that the time has arrived for the resumption of our accustomed devotions, the opening of our schools and amusements and all our various channels of business.”
Effective at 5 a.m. Nov. 3, Babcock was reopening Pittsburgh – in open defiance of the state Department of Health.
Scrambling to avoid a debacle in Pittsburgh even worse than the one in Lancaster, Royer issued a tersely-worded statement that Babcock “has absolutely no power or authority to rescind or modify in any way the closing order issued by the state Department of Health,” and that Babcock’s proclamation was “an invitation on the part of the mayor” to “lawlessness and disorder.”
But Royer also appealed directly to Pittsburgh’s saloon and theater owners by stating he would refrain from taking punitive action “until it is definitely ascertained that the closing order has been violated,” in consultation with the state attorney general.
Meanwhile, the situation was becoming stranger by the day in Lancaster.
On Nov. 4, the Harrisburg Telegraph reported an extraordinary ruling by Judge Charles I. Landis’ county court. Landis issued an injunction against the state government, temporarily blocking the enforcement of the state Department of Health’s quarantine of Lancaster.
Despite the injunction’s questionable legality, Royer could only warn other municipalities that closures would be enforced with “every means at the control of the commonwealth.”
In Washington Nov. 5, the Observer reported a staggering total of 32,437 deaths from influenza and pneumonia in Pennsylvania since the beginning of October. Although the epidemic had passed its state-wide peak, closure restrictions remained in place in Western Pennsylvania. In Pittsburgh, impatient owners of several theaters and motion picture houses exploited Babcock’s dispute with Royer to reopen their businesses.
The state Department of Health announced that these violators would be prosecuted – agents of the department were reportedly in Pittsburgh gathering evidence.
As controversy continued at a full boil in Lancaster and Pittsburgh, however, the overall trends of the influenza in Western Pennsylvania were clearly encouraging.
To his credit, Royer never deviated from the metrics necessary for reopening Western Pennsylvania and he immediately acknowledged when they had been met.
And so it was that some good news finally arrived in Washington Nov. 6, when the Board of Health received an official communication from Harrisburg that the state closure order for Washington, Allegheny and several other counties would be lifted Nov. 9.
Despite continuing howls of protest and defiance in certain places, the three days passed quickly and at 12 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 9, the so-called “Influenza Ban” was lifted in Washington County. Life began to normalize in Washington and Pittsburgh. Cooler heads prevailed in Lancaster.
And another momentous development came just a few days later.
On Nov. 11, 1918, an armistice brought the Great War in Europe to a long-awaited close. As the nation’s war machine began to gradually wind down, troops began migrating home, schools planned to reopen, church choirs sang, football games were played, and life went on. But while the public health risk had returned to tolerable levels, such as they were in 1918, the influenza relentlessly went on as well.
With the public somewhat desensitized to the mounting losses, only occasionally did the influenza merit an above-the-fold news story after the worst had passed.
But deaths from the influenza continued as autumn grew colder in 1918.
On Nov. 25, Mr. and Mrs. Abraham Rodgers, having been ill just a few days, died together of influenza while “clasped in each other’s arms” at their home on Central Avenue in Washington. Anonymous in life, a teamster and a housewife, the circumstances of their demise flashed across the state on the newswire.
It is estimated the 1918 Spanish Influenza killed a staggering 675,000 people in the United States from 1918 to 1920, with approximately 50,000 dead in Pennsylvania. It remains the most severe pandemic in recent history.
Tom Milhollan is operations and development coordinator of Washington County Historical Society.