Social and institutional Reactions to the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-20

ABSTRACT

This essay challenges generalizations since the late enlightenment about the effects of epidemics and pandemics on collective mentalities: that from antiquity to the present, epidemics, regardless of the disease, have sparked distrust, social violence, and the blaming of others. By contrast, the pandemic that killed the greatest numbers in world history–the Influenza of 1918-20 – was a pandemic of compassion. No one has yet to uncover this pandemic sparking collective violence or blaming any minorities for spreading the disease anywhere in the globe. The essay then explores the variety of charitable reactions and abnegation that cut across social divisions in communities from theatres of war in Europe to nations thousands of miles from the direct military encounters. Most remarkable, however, was the overflowing volunteerism of women, especially in the US, Canada, and Australia. To explain this widespread charitable reaction, the essay investigates the milieu of the First World War, showing how that context in domestic war settings was not conducive to risking life to aid total strangers, especially when those strangers came from different foreign countries classes, races, or religious faiths. I end with a reflection on the unfolding socio-psychological reactions to Covid-19 from the perspective of 1918–20.

KEYWORDS:

• Influenza Pandemic
• 1918-20
• world War I
• charity
• women
• blame

Disclosure statement

No financial interest or benefit will arise from this research.

Notes

1. Similar remarks are easily found; for instance, Irwin, J. 2008. ‘Scapegoats’ in Encyclopaedia of Pestilence, Pandemics, and Plagues, 2 vols. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press: ‘Throughout history, societies have created scapegoats … the innocent … to rationalize and explain the origins and course of disease outbreaks and epidemic disease’ (618); and Shah, S. 2016. Pandemic: Tracking Contagions from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 116 and ch. 6.

2. Scepticism about mask wearing may have been more widespread during the flu pandemic, especially after Charles Nicolle’s discovery in October 1918 that the agent of influenza was infinitesimally smaller than a bacterium. Acts of violence, however, appear to have been less frequent than we are seeing now, at least in the US; see Cohn, S (1 May 2020), ‘What the Spanish Flu can teach us about making masks compulsory’, The Conversation.

3. See also cholera riots with similar patterns with populations usually on the margins attacking physicians and other health workers, mayor, and police, and destroying hospitals as death chambers of the poor extended late into the nineteenth century in Spain, Germany, Hungary, and other areas of eastern Europe and place as far east as Java and Japan at the end of the nineteenth century; (Cohn 2018). Epidemics: Hate and Compassion from the Plague of Athens to AIDS. Oxford: Oxford University Press, ch. 7–10; McGrew, R. 1965. Russia and the Cholera 1823–32. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press; (Henze, C. 2011). Disease, Health Care and Government in Late Imperial Russia: Life and Death on the Volga, 1823–1914. London: Routledge; (Baldwin, P. 1999). Contagion and the State in Europe, 1830–1930 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; ch. 2; (Morris, R. 1976). Cholera 1832: The Social Response to An Epidemic. London: Holmes & Meier; Durey, M. 1979. The Return of the Plague: British Society and the Cholera 1831–2. Dublin: Gill and Macmillan; Holland, M., Gill G. and Burrell S. (eds). 2009. Cholera & Conflict: 19^th Century Cholera in Britain and its Social Consequences. Leeds: Medical Museum Publishing; Vincent, B. 1988. ‘Le cholera en Espagne au XIXe siècle’, 43–55, in Peurs et terreurs face à la contagion. face à la contagion, ed. J.-P. Bardot, P. Bourdelais, P. Guillaume, F. Lebrun and C. Quétel. Paris: Fayard, 54; Rogaski, R. 2004. Hygenic Modernity, Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 152.

4. For the so-called Mexican swine flu of 2009, right-wing radio talk-show host vilified Mexican immigrants to the US as spreaders of the disease and fabricated conspiracies theories that blamed Obama and the UN. However, these efforts failed to spawn mass rallies or collective physical violence; see ‘Extreme-right propagandists exploit fears of a pandemic flu to demonize Mexican immigrants and the Obama Administration’, Intelligence Report, 30 August 2009.

5. On West Samoa’s rates of mortality, see Tomkins, S. 1992. ‘The Influenza Epidemic in Western Samoa’, Journal of Pacific History, 27: 181–97.

6. See (Cohn 2018), 470–6, which concentrates on the Atlanta, Georgia; Birmingham, Alabama; and New Orleans, Louisiana, along with their hinterlands.

7. On these southern traditions that developed with waves of yellow fever during the nineteenth century with groups such as the John Howard Association, see (Cohn 2018), 383–93.

8. Ibid., 472–4; and Times Picayune, 27 October 1918, 10; and 1 November 1918, 12.

9. Times Picayune, 21 October 1918, 10.

10. Times Picayune, 16 November 1918, 16.

11. From diaries and interviews in the 1970s, Quiney, L. 2003. ‘‘Borrowed Halos’: Canadian Teachers as Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurses during the Great War”. Historical Studies in Education, 15: 78–99. investigated women nurses, the VADs, during the Pandemic of 1918, opening the crucial dimension of women to understanding the Influenza pandemic. Since then, three books have further explored women’s crucial roles in the organization of relief and their self-sacrifice: Jones, E. 2007. Influenza 1918: Disease, Death, and Struggle in Winnipeg. Studies in Gender and History. Toronto: Toronto University Press; Foley, C. 2011. The Last Irish Plague: The Great Flu Epidemic in Ireland 1918–19. Dublin: Irish Academic Press; and Bristow, N. 2012. American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yet their descriptions and explanations are wedged within national contexts without comparative analysis.

12. New-York Tribune, 27 October 1918, 13; Washington Times, 25 October 1918, 5; Evening World, 26 September 1918, 12. for other women of this rank, see (Cohn 2018), 457–8.

13. (Cohn 2018), 505–6.

14. ibid., 2018, 454–6.

15. Less than five days after the interview, one of Richards’ co-workers died of influenza: New-York Tribune, 14 October 1918, 16.

16. Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia, Pa.), 23 October 1918, 10. For similar examples, see (Cohn 2018), 455–7.

17. Evening World (Brooklyn, NY), 11 October 1918, front page.

18. See El Paso Herald, 22 October 1918, 8.(Cohn 2018), 460, 462, Luckingham, B. 1984.

19. See, for instance, the ‘girls’ enrolled in the domestic science class at Winslow, Arizona, Times-Herald (Burns, Oregon), 19 October 1918, front page; and El Paso Herald, 16 October 1918, 5; the girls’ high school in Sumter, South Carolina became a central node of the town’s influenza relief, Watchman and Southron (Sumter, South Carolina), 23 October 1918, 5; and those at Ogden, Utah, Ogden Standard, 17 October 1918, 10; although here boys were also recruited.

20. Such stories of schoolteacher volunteers fill hundreds of North American newspapers from late September to early December 1918; see (Cohn 2018), 446, 452, 453, 461, 462–3, 472, 475–6, 505, 508, 511, 526, 523, 526–7, 543–4.

21. Ibid., 462–4.

22. Ibid., 463; Boston Globe, 27 October 1918, 35.

23. Boston Globe, 27 October 1918, 35.

24. Ibid., 27 October 1918, 25.

25. Kansas City Sun (Kansas City, Missouri; a black newspaper), 19 October 1918, front page.

26. Washington Times, 28 October 1918, 15. On the ‘girl war workers’, see (Cohn 2018), 426, 440, 448, 453, 455–7, 461–2.

27. (Cohn 2018), p. 453. Nurses received greater praise than physicians in defence against the pandemic in newspapers across North America and Euorpe; they also benefitted afterwards with increased spending on nursing education and their professionalization in places such as the UK

28. See a summary of hypotheses from this comparative analysis, (Cohn 2018), 520–1 and 528–30.

29. Ibid., 512–16.

30. Ibid., 503–4.

31. Ibid., 504–11; 516–21; 523–30.

32. Ibid., 523–30.

33. Brisbane Courier (Queensland, Australia), 3 May 1919, 5.

34. Newcastle Morning Herald (New South Wales, Australia), 1 February 1919, 2.

35. Sunday Times (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 20 April 1919, 14.

36. For this study, (Scotland, England, France, and Italy), (Cohn 2018), 476–99.

37. Ibid., 499–501.

38. (Foley 2011), 111–12; and Irish Times, 26 October 1918, 4; Guardian, 1 November 1918, 10.

39. See the conclusions deducted from interviews with pandemic survivors in the 1970s; Quiney 2003; and Quiney 2012. ‘“Rendering Valuable Service”: The Politics of Nursing during the 1918–19 Influenza Crisis’, 48–69, Epidemic Encounters: Influenza, Society, and Culture in Canada, 1918–20, ed. Fahrni, M. and Jones, E. Vancouver.

40. (Cohn 2018), 481–7, as with the military’s role in supplying doctors, nurses, drugs, ambulances and hospital beds within military hospitals to civilians, especially in large cities such as Milan and Rome.

41. Among other places, see Kraut, A. 1994. Silent Travellers: Germs, Genes, and the ‘Immigrant Menace’. New York: BasicBooks.

42. Ibid., 60.

43. Crosby (2003), 67–8.

44. New York Times, 19 June 2011. With President Trump’s controversial campaign rally at Tulsa on 20 June 2020, the horrors of the Greenwood massacre have recently received more publicity than ever before.

45. Toronto Star, 12 August 1918, 2.

46. (Fanning 2010), 47–8, 113–14.

47. Detroit Free Press, 16 August 1916, 2; 13 September 1917, 8; 23 August 1919, 8; San Francisco Chronicle, 14 January 1917, 7.

48. Toronto Star, 27 September 1918, 5.

49. Luckingham, B. 1984 Epidemic in the Southwest 1918–1919, Southwestern Studies 72. El Paso, TX., 8;(García 1981), 7, 188–9.

50. (Lay 1985), 25.

51. (Cohn 2018), 468–9.

52. Guardian (Manchester, UK), 12 October 1918, 5; and 22 October 1918, 5.

53. Ibid., ch. 20: ‘The Great Influenza: Quarantine and Blame’.

54. For instance, Pullman Herald (Pullman, Washington), 18 October 1918, 4.

55. Mount Vernon Signal (Mt. Vernon, Kentucky), 11 October 1918, 4; and Monroe City Democrat (Monroe, Missouri), 18 October 1918, 7.

56. Evening Missourian (Columbia, Missouri), 20 September 1918, 4.

57. New-York Tribune, 20 September 1918, 8.

58. Detroit Free Press, 9 October 1918, 9.

59. The Sun (New York City), 6 October 1918, 12

60. Bisbee Daily Review (Bisbee, Arizona), 12 October 1918, 4: ‘$500 per sneeze’.

61. Birmingham Age-Herald (Birmingham, Alabama), 26 October 1918, front page.

62. (Luckingham 1984), 45–6 and 51.

63. Ibid., ch. 4.

64. Ibid.

65. El Paso Herald, 25 November 1918, 5.

66. For numerous references, see (Cohn 2018), 438–40.

67. Bisbee Daily Review, 19 October 1918, front page.

68. Bismarck Tribune, 9 October 1918, 3.

69. Little Falls Herald, 1 November 1918, front page.

70. Salt Lake Telegram (Salt Lake City, Utah), 20 September 1918, 13: ‘Beware the Kiss!’; and Montgomery Advertiser (Montgomery, Alabama), 28 October 4: ‘Outlaw the Kiss’.

71. Tombstone Epitaph (Tombstone, Arizona), 6 October 1918, 5.

72. The Guardian, ‘A million volunteer to help NHS and others during COVID-19 outbreak’, 13 April 2020, online.

73. BBC News 12 May 2020; and Hélène Mulholland, Interview with Christine Beasley [Former chief nursing officer]: ‘Nursing was in difficulty before coronavirus came along’, The Guardian, 31 March 2020, online.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this paper was conducted during a three-year ‘Major Research Fellowship’ from the Leverhulme Trust, MRF-2013-068.

Notes on contributors

Samuel Kline Cohn

I received my Ph.D from Harvard University, 1978, was Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 2008, a Visiting Professor at the University of Antwerp in 2015; and the first Federico Chabod Visiting Professor, L’Università degli Studi, Milano (Statale) in 2017. Over the past two decades, I have focused on the history of popular unrest in late medieval and early modern Europe and on the history of disease and medicine. Funded by grants from the Wellcome and Leverhulme Trusts, my latest book, Epidemics: Hate and Compassion from the Plague of Athens to AIDS, was published by Oxford University Press. I have now submitted Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy during the Italian Wars to press.