The grippe hits home: In, 1918, a deadly second wave overwhelmed local health system

Editor’s note: John Larson, director of the Polson Museum in Hoquiam, compiled this account from the pages of the Washingtonian, a newspaper published in Hoquiam from 1898 until 1957, most of those years as a daily paper. In part 1, which appeared in Thursday’s Daily World, by early October of 1918 word was reaching Grays Harbor of a flu epidemic across the country. Within about two weeks, Aberdeen officials had closed theaters and banned public meetings. On Oct. 7, the Hoquiam School Board closed schools. Right after that, the Army ordered the military annex at Hoquiam General Hospital into full quarantine.

By John Larson

Polson Museum Director

Over the next two weeks in mid-October of 1918, daily reports detailed an ever increasing number of influenza cases. The Hoquiam-based Washingtonian newspaper focused on Hoquiam’s statistics. Then, as now, people longed to know the daily numbers – five, two, six, zero, eight – eventually bringing Hoquiam to 50 “all mild” cases by October 20. Then, as now, tracking the infection rate was both complicated and fraught with inaccuracies. Underreporting was a problem and the headlines of the Washingtonian’s October 27 story announced a “sudden increase” in cases, bringing Hoquiam’s total to 190. Two days later Hoquiamites mourned the city’s first reported influenza death when 16-year-old William Wyrick passed after only two days of illness. On October 30 another 28-year-old, Private Paul Peter, serving in the Spruce Division’s Camp D-1 on Elk River, succumbed to the virus.

On October 24, a new influenza serum arrived in town, alleged to prevent one from contracting the virus. The “vaccine” was administered via three injections given at 48 hour intervals and was initially reserved for those in the medical profession and for workers engaged in war-related efforts like the harvesting of airplane spruce. (Little scientific knowledge of viral infections existed in 1918 and later study indicated this serum would have had no effect as a preventative. It is likely the injections administered here and throughout Washington were a convalescent serum effective against some bacteria but not against viruses. If the serum had any positive effect, it would have been against the pneumonia that tended to follow influenza infections.)

More serum arrived in town by Halloween, when Hoquiam’s total cases topped 250 and reports noted the Hoquiam General Hospital and the city health office “literally were besieged … by people who desired injections of the anti-influenza serum.” A separate story revealed that local doctors were so inundated with nighttime calls that the town’s three doctors (the other four were away in war service) had received little or no sleep in recent days.

An October 29 report indicated the first appearance of gauze masks being used in public. On November 1, Aberdeen and Hoquiam officials coordinated with the Grays Harbor Railway and Light Company management to enforce mask wearing for all street car riders. Influenza cases in Aberdeen’s two wartime shipbuilding yards had spiked in recent days and masks were deemed essential to stop the virus’s spread among the hundreds of shipyard workers commuting by street car. All hospital nurses were also now required to wear masks. (It is worth noting that most gauze masks of this era have been deemed by modern standards to be as effective at stopping the influenza virus as a chain link fence is to stopping flies.)

In the following ten days a small trickle of new cases were reported in the Washingtonian, as was news of the state health office order making mask wearing compulsory. Demand for masks skyrocketed and the local Red Cross kept “work going at top notch speed” to produce over 3,500 masks in short order. Classic gender attitudes of the era prevailed, with women urged to purchase their own gauze to make their own masks so that men could be given those already produced. Local health officers urged citizens and businesses to “cheerfully obey” the mask order.

All accounts indicate widespread compliance until November 7 when a Western Union telegram declared Germany had signed the armistice and the population went wild. The next day’s paper reported, “The demonstration started with the ringing of the fire bell followed quickly by the blowing of every mill and boat whistle in town. The fire apparatus was gotten out and raced up and down the streets and the celebration was on. Every one that had a flag got it out, and either hung it about his premises or decorated his auto. Horns of every description from tin to brass, band instruments, drums, tin pans, cow bells and in fact every instrument of noise and torture was gotten out and for some hours during the forenoon pandemonium reigned.”

Though deemed “fake news” within hours, there would be consequences for the unguarded celebration. When asked in a separate news story on November 8 regarding the current state of influenza infection locally, Hoquiam’s health officer Dr. Harry Watkins remarked that the preceding day’s revelry led to “the congregation of crowds under conditions that would tend to the spread of the disease.”

Accurate news of Germany’s surrender came on November 11 and the entire Harbor district erupted into continuous celebration. The Washingtonian story said it all: “During the day no one thought of work. Every industry was closed down, and for the first time in the history of the city, it is said, every establishment except two, even the small cigar stands and other such places conducted by foreigners, closed their doors in honor of the great event. There were crowds on the street constantly from the time the news was announced, but by 7 o’clock in the evening the streets were almost a solid mass of humanity, all to highest good humor and carnival inclined.”

Though this “solid mass of humanity” contradicted the social distancing mandate, the end of World War I also marked an abrupt and unexpected lifting of the influenza restrictions on the Harbor and throughout the state. Officials cited a steep decline in cases, coupled with the liberal administration of serum and the wearing of masks as cause to end the ban. Without fanfare the Washingtonian reported on November 12 that all normal business activity was to resume at once, that students and teachers were to report to schools the following day and that those with outstanding library books should turn them in immediately. A single cautionary note from Hoquiam’s health officer Watkins concluded the announcement: “People must not take it for granted that the lifting of the ban means the influenza has gone completely. It has not, and the people must exercise every care and precaution until it has died out entirely.”

A second wave

All too soon it became abundantly clear that “care and precaution” had been abandoned for business as usual. The virus, however, had not disappeared from the Harbor. By early December a second, virulent wave of cases quickly spread across the Harbor and the medical force was overwhelmed. A heart-wrenching call to action was published on December 4:

People of Hoquiam, there is a clarion call to duty.

Suffering is rampant in this city and steps must at once be taken to relieve it.

Here is a case in point. Yesterday Dr. A. J. McIntyre reported to Rev. MacLeod that an afflicted family, that of Fred Wiebold, at 211 Hayes street, needed immediate assistance. Mr. MacLeod went at once to the place and this is what he found:

The mother is sick in bed with the body of her dead child lying by her side.

Two small children on the floor, crying from hunger, cold and fear.

The father lying helplessly ill in the next room.

The house in great disorder and squalor for want of a woman’s hand.

Can you fathers and mothers picture a more harrowing scene?

The Wiebolds are not paupers or objects of charity, in the common acceptance of the term. The father is a hard-working man and had some money when this awful unfortune overtook him, although his surplus is probably exhausted now.

But money has not availed to secure the assistance so badly needed. All efforts to procure a nurse or a woman to care for the children or one to put the house in order, failed.

Other cases similarly sad exist, or will come to light during the epidemic of Spanish influenza which again is taking hold here.

The hospital is crowded and all trained nurses are worked to the limit, while hired help is hard to get.

…

All women or men who are willing and ready to obey the call of duty and to devote some time to the relief of distressed humanity, either voluntarily or for pay, are requested to at once register at the Red Cross building, corner of Eighth and L streets.

You do not have to be a trained nurse, although those are preferable. If you can hush a crying child, boil soup, or handle a broom you can perform a high duty.

It is up to us.

Most of the nearly 300 cases reported in Hoquiam prior to November 11 had been characterized as “mild.” Though death called on young men like Raleigh Gregg and William Wyrick, most victims recovered. On December 5 the Washingtonian reported that this new wave of infection was devastating dozens of entire families throughout the Harbor. Heikel’s Drug Store published a major advertisement in the next day’s paper presciently warning that “our greatest danger now … is the great American tendency to forget easily and to believe the peril is over.”

Like most druggists of that era, however, Ossi Heikel also purveyed the proverbial snake oil cure-alls. In the same ad, Heikel urged customers to purchase a “Hyomei Outfit” which consisted of a bottle of the “pure oil of Hyomei and a little vest pocket hard rubber inhaling device.” Users of this remedy were assured that it would destroy “germs before they actually begin work in your blood … mak[ing] yourself practically immune to infection.”

The influenza crisis turned dire on December 6 when the Red Cross set up an emergency hospital in the Eagles’ Hall to accommodate the overflow of infected patients. (That J Street hall was located on the small lot found today between the 7th Street Theatre and Protheroe’s Economy Cleaners.) This makeshift hospital took in infected patients from the entire Harbor district. Aloha and Moclips were singled out as having particularly severe outbreaks. A record 40 new cases was reported that same day and a new plea requested volunteers to staff the hospital. Separate men’s and women’s wards were set up, 25 beds procured and two new nurses were expected to arrive from Seattle to assist Matron Nurse Witrick.

Reported deaths that day included Charles Stevens of Aloha, whose four children also had influenza, and 28-year-old Mabel Wiebold of Hoquiam, who had lost two children only days before and whose husband Fred was still in critical condition. An unnamed death in Hoquiam was reported on December 9, and in the next few days another 45 new infections developed. The Hoquiam General Hospital was completely full and the emergency hospital in Eagles’ Hall was expanding its capacity to accommodate the flood of sick people.

Red Cross chairman Frank Lamb detailed the urgency of the situation in a December 12 appeal for new volunteers to care for households left unattended by sick parents, for donations of blankets, fruits and jellies, and for nurse aides, cooks, and food servers. Grim news continued in the Washingtonian. Another daily record, 54 cases, was reported on December 12 and calls for more volunteers to staff the emergency hospital continued. Fred Isensee, 46-year-old owner of a Hoquiam pool hall and cigar store, succumbed to pneumonia after contracting the virus. And another 60 new cases were reported over the following two days.

On December 12 the schools were ordered closed until after Christmas and children were again banned from theaters and other public places. Still, the measures taken in late October to isolate adults from one another were never reinstated. Another batch of serum arrived on December 17 but mask use remained unmentioned in print. Remarkably, the second wave of infection seemed to leave as fast as it arrived and on December 20 conditions were deemed calm enough to lift the ban on children attending theaters. Schools reopened on December 30 and, by early January, news of influenza had all but vanished from the press until a minor third wave appeared in the second week of January. After that, however, the disease was largely gone.

A Washingtonian editorial published on January 3 titled the “Mystery of Influenza” characterized the pandemic as “the greatest calamity of the kind in the history of the country,” which continued to “baffle the skill of medical science.” 1918’s pandemic remains one of history’s most wide-reaching and catastrophic contagions. Examples from that time are undoubtedly relevant now as we seek a path forward and a return to what we once thought of as “normal.”