This is not the first time a flu pandemic has hit New England. Following is the grim tale of the 1918 influenza pandemic that was also a world-wide catastrophe like the coronavirus is now.
As World War I raged in Europe, New Englanders died at home from a foe more deadly than bullets: the 1918 flu epidemic. The granddaddy of infectious disease epidemics, it killed as many as 100 million people and struck young adults hardest. It could have killed as many as 10 percent of all young adults in the world.
More people died from the 1918 flu epidemic in a year than from the Black Death in a century. It killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS killed in 24 years. In fact, no other disease in history killed as many people.
The close quarters and massive troop movement of World War I quickened the spread of the disease and helped it mutate. All of New England was affected by the pandemic. It was first noted in Massachusetts and then rushed like a wildfire through the rest of the region.
The Boston area was especially susceptible because of the soldiers and sailors moving through the city. On August 27, 1918, several sailors on Commonwealth Pier in Boston were reported to have the disease. The next day, eight cases were reported. On the third day, the toll rose to 58 cases. The sailors were sent to Chelsea Naval Hospital, from which the disease spread to Boston and the rest of Massachusetts.
On September 8th, the 1918 flu epidemic traveled 40 miles to Fort Devens, which held 50,000 soldiers. By the 23rd, there were 10,500 cases of the flu reported there — as many as the other 24 army camps combined. The military camp became a hellhole of death. Soldiers clutching blankets lined up outside the hospital in the rain while cots overflowed into hallways and onto porches. Doctors had to step over piles of corpses to watch an autopsy.
A doctor at Fort Devens wrote a letter to a friend describing the 1918 flu epidemic: “This epidemic started about four weeks ago, and has developed so rapidly that the camp is demoralized and all ordinary work is held up till it has passed. All assemblages of soldiers taboo.
“These men start with what appears to be an attack of la grippe or influenza, and when brought to the hospital they very rapidly develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen. Two hours after admission they have the mahogany spots over the cheek bones, and a few hours later you can begin to see the cyanosis extending from their ears and spreading all over the face, until it is hard to distinguish the coloured men from the white. It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes, and it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate.
“It is horrible. One can stand it to see one, two or twenty men die, but to see these poor devils dropping like flies sort of gets on your nerves. We have been averaging about 100 deaths per day, and still keeping it up. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a new mixed infection here, but what I don’t know.
“My total time is taken up hunting rales, (crackling sounds from the lungs) rales dry or moist, sibilant or crepitant or any other of the hundred things that one may find in the chest, they all mean but one thing here — pneumonia — and that means in about all cases death.”
By late September, the flu epidemic struck 50,000 residents of Massachusetts and spread beyond the commonwealth. So many young men got sick the Army canceled a draft call, though it badly needed them for the war effort.
By October 1st, Massachusetts alone had 75,000 cases of the flu. The next day, the city canceled its Liberty Bond parades and sporting events, closed churches, canceled school and put the stock market on half-day. Six days later, at least 1,023 people died from the 1918 flu epidemic in Boston alone.
Doctors could do nothing to contain the disease. They desperately searched for a vaccine and treatments, but failed. They could do nothing but wait and hope.
The flu epidemic began to subside in mid-October. Later estimates put the number of Massachusetts flu deaths at 45,000 from Sept. 1, 1918 to Jan. 16, 1919, but public health officials now consider those numbers low.
On September 11th, the first case of flu in Connecticut was reported in New London. Within a week it spread throughout the state. In Hartford, four Yale students walked into the hospital. They felt ill on the train to New Haven and decided to get off. Twenty-four hours later, all four had died.
Doctors turned the Hartford Golf Club into an emergency hospital. Within five weeks, there were 325 reported deaths in Hartford; 294 in Waterbury, 209 in; New Haven and 69 in Bridgeport had 69 deaths. Still, the flu epidemic didn’t hit Connecticut as hard as Massachusetts. The commissioner of health urged all nurses and doctors to resist requests for help from Massachusetts.
It is not certain exactly when in September of 1918 that the pandemic first reached Rhode Island, but it is certain that the toll was terrible.
One of the first flu deaths reported in Rhode Island was of John Stanley Hardman, a hospital apprentice in the Naval Reserve. He died 36 hours after contracting the disease while nursing two flu patients in late September. His fiancée, Miss Alice Wood, sat by his side as he died; they had intended to marry on October 1st.
During the pandemic, Rhode Island experienced shortages of medical personnel. Part of that shortage was due to the pandemic taking down trained personnel. It was also due to the fact that three-quarters of Rhode Island’s nurses (230 of 300) had volunteered for national duty during the pandemic’s early stages.
Because of the shortage, student nurses took to caring for patients. They were busy. Emergency hospitals were set up in several Rhode Island cities: Pawtucket, Woonsocket, Warwick and Westerly. In Westerly, an abandoned school was turned into a hospital – complete with new wiring and new plumbing – almost overnight.
Many of those not caring for the sick were trying to contain it in other ways. In Providence, as in many other places, there was a debate about whether or not to cancel all public gatherings.
One of the surprising dissents came from Charles V. Chapin, the head of the Rhode Island Department of Public Health and a nationally recognized expert in public health. Dr. Chapin said that banning all assemblies would do little good since the disease had already spread through the state. He said that the disease would have to take its course – and take with it as many as it would.
The toll was as grim as Dr. Chapin’s advice. By the first week of November, the state was reporting “50 deaths per day” to the U.S. Public Health Service. By the time the pandemic flu finally departed, between 2,000-2,500 Rhode Islanders had fallen to it.
The flu epidemic finally ended suddenly in the summer of 1919. People had either died from it or developed an immunity to it. The flu strain had also mutated into a less lethal version.
Note: The above was taken from the New England Historical Society website and the Rhode Island State Summit History Supplement remarks by the Honorable Mike Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services, January 13, 2006.