100 Years Ago: The Pandemic That Started in Massachusetts

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak, to tell their story for them.”

--Czesław Miłosz, Polish poet and writer

It's a largely forgotten story now, lost to history, vaguely remembered by some Americans but almost never recalled for the huge public crisis that it was. How many lives it took; how it disrupted all forms of public life; how it stole away husbands and wives, young children and young adults, folks who were supposed to live long and loving lives, but who instead died in the grip of a mysterious plague.   

And it all happened exactly 100 years ago in the fall of 1918.

The previous spring, reports had come from Spain about a deadly form of influenza, the flu, sweeping through groups of soldiers, killing scores of previously robust and healthy young men. It was World War I, "the war to end all wars" and Americans were being sent to Europe by the hundreds of thousands and, of course, then coming back home. The Spanish flu, as it came to be called, was first detected at an Army base in Kansas, but then the outbreak dramatically escalated, and right here in Massachusetts. It appeared at Camp Devens, a military base 45 miles northwest of Boston, and at naval shipyards in the city's downtown.

Victims of the outbreak would first suffer from normal flu symptoms: fever, nausea, aches and diarrhea.  But for many, especially the young, folks considered in the prime of their lives, the sickness would turn fatal. Severe pneumonia would develop. Patients would turn blue from a lack of oxygen, and eventually die, as their lungs filled up with fluid, victims drowning in their own bodies. 

In the Boston area by mid September, hundreds of cases were reported in the city and its suburbs. In response public schools were closed at the end of September and almost all public gatherings--military parades, sporting events, concerts, movies, clubs, etc.--were temporarily banned. Churches were given the option to stay open but most closed out of great caution. Still the pandemic grew. By October there were thousands of cases of influenza around the region and dozens of people were dying each day. Coffins were in short supply.  Understaffed hospitals could not keep up.  As one nurse of that time said, "It seemed as if all the city was dying, in the homes serious illness, on the streets funeral processions.” 

By early December, Boston had lost 4,794 people to the flu, with many more added to that number after a brief flare up the following winter.  Boston's influenza death rate was 710 per 100,000 residents, making it the third hardest hit city in the country.  Imagine 5,000 Bostonians dying in a matter of months from the flu in 2018 and you can begin to comprehend the depth of the crisis.

Scientists and historians estimate that worldwide, 20 to 50 million people died from the Spanish flu; that number includes 675,000 Americans, 140,000 of whom were soldiers. Some reports estimate that upwards of 5 percent of the global population died in this outbreak.  More folks died from the flu than all the military deaths from World I and World War II combined. 

But then in 1919, as quickly as the Spanish flu flared up, the flu died out, leaving families, communities, cities and nations ravaged, a whole generation lost to a disease that we still do not fully understand. How did it develop?  Where exactly was the first case reported? Why did it go away?  Could it happen again?  Such important questions.   

Yet why then do most of us suffer from historic amnesia when it comes to this, the worst worldwide pandemic since the bubonic plague, or Black Death, of the mid fourteenth century? Part of it may have to do with a lack of storytellers: folks who survived 1918-19. For the most part they are long gone from this life.  Maybe we neglect to remember because death was so random and chaotic--no logic to it. So hard to understand or comprehend.  Perhaps the story is untold because unlike casualties of war, which are often framed in dramatic, patriotic terms, folks who died from the flu went quietly, anonymously, and privately. 

But remember we must. To affirm this part of history as a part of our human story and our American story. To name the lost, these children of God: to recall them in memory, in honor, and in prayer. A few years ago, while on a bike ride, I discovered a lone gravestone at a local state hospital, now long ago closed. The marker stands at the entrance to a field of unmarked graves, anonymous souls who passed on. Affixed to that stone is a brass plaque, that simply declares: “Remember us: for we too have lived, loved and laughed.”

One hundred years ago.