It was the summer of 1918 and the Spanish Flu had already ravaged much of the world— including millions of deaths in the United States. Meanwhile across the Atlantic, World War I raged on and American soldiers were thousands of miles away fighting on foreign soil.
People were restless. Besides, the flu had begun to subside.
Government officials needed to boost morale— and also promote the War Bonds effort, which helped subsidize the war. So against the better judgement of medical and health professionals of the time, politicians did what politicians do and succumbed to the under-educated and ill-informed opinion of the masses… and threw a parade.
That’s right. A parade. The kind where tens of thousands of people pack the sides of the street like sardines to get a glimpse of the floats and marching bands and their favorite celebrity… in this case, John Philip Sousa.
Politicians Ignore Doctors
Wilmer Krusen, the city’s public health director, ignored the concerns of medical experts and denied that the Spanish Flu was a threat.
When the Liberty Loan Parade in the City of Brotherly Love kicked off on September 28, there were more than 200,000 people cramped along Broad Street cheering wildly, sneezing, coughing and sharing droplets as America showed off her military arsenal.
The parade included floating airplanes that were built in Philadelphia’s Naval Yards and patriotic tunes.
Each time the music stopped, bond salesmen singled out war widows in the crowd, a move designed to evoke sympathy from the crowd and encourage people to buy bonds so that Philadelphia met its Liberty Loan quota from the federal government.
A newspaper story the day before warned Philadelphians to beware of the “lurking pickpockets” who would be mingling in the crowds but the pocket thief would be the least of their worries that day.
Also lurking in the crowd was an invisible monster known as the Spanish Flu virus that would infect citizens of the city– en masse.
The fallout was swift and deadly. Within 72 hours of the parade, every bed in Philadelphia’s 31 hospitals was filled. In the week ending October 5, some 2,600 people in Philadelphia had died from the flu or its complications. A week later, that number rose to more than 4,500.
On a single October day, 759 people died in the city and more than 12,000 Philadelphians would die in a matter of weeks.
On October 3, attempting to slow the carnage, city leaders shut down the city, shuttering most public spaces – including schools, churches, theaters and pool halls.
But the influenza virus was relentless. Hospitals reached capacity, morgues were overflowing with corpses and profiteers took advantage of people’s grief– and the situation. Casket prices skyrocketed.
Immigrants blamed
Though the disease knew no gender, racial, or ethnic boundaries, infecting black and white men and women at an equally high rate, the city’s immigrant poor suffered hard and a destructive anti-immigrant sentiment took hold.
Those born of foreign parents in the Greek, Russian, Hungarian, and Italian communities, among others, died at a higher rate, with some 1,500 more total deaths than those born to American mothers.
Immigrants became the primary target of native-born Americans and were blamed for spreading the flu.
Public health officials and private citizens alike scrutinized the personal hygiene habits of foreign born residents and often linked “unhealthy” tendencies to the supposedly questionable morals associated with “alien” cultures, including Greek men and their tendency to gather in male-only coffee houses.
One “disgusted woman” wrote to the Philadelphia Evening Public Ledger in October 1918 demanding that “don’t-spit signs be placed in our post-office building in all languages necessary, to reach all foreign men, and with fines for violations.”
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