Retro: Baltimore bounced back quickly after 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic
The early fall of 1918 brought the deadly Spanish influenza to Baltimore — our other, earlier pandemic. The death toll, often affecting people in their 20s and 30s, was devastating. But public reaction to this medical calamity was different from that of the coronavirus.
“During its six-week reign as the king of all diseases, Spanish influenza struck down 50,000 persons in the city and state and killed 5,160,” The Evening Sun reported in November 1918.
The city’s annual Halloween carnival, usually a sprawling parade of costumed merrymakers along Baltimore Street, was canceled. And for some weeks before, virtually every place of public assembly was closed.
But as calendars changed to November 1918, something curious happened. The flu that killed and sickened so many Baltimore residents seemed to disappear. And Baltimore, almost overnight, changed direction from cautious back to normal.
On the morning of Nov. 1, 1918, the city’s health authorities lifted the ban. Movie theaters immediately opened their doors for matinees. Department store cash registers rang out. Saloons filled patrons’ beer and Maryland rye shot glasses. Church and synagogue services had resumed a few days before. On the following Monday, schools were free to open.
The five-week quarantine of military personnel at Fort Meade (then called Camp Meade) also ended abruptly. One day, the soldiers were confined to the Army base, and the next, thousands were boarding trains to visit their families.
“Those [five] weeks were weary ones, and sad ones ... the most depressing period in the history of the camp,” reported The Sun, which did not mention the number of flu deaths at Camp Meade just weeks before.
The Sun noted that the solemn feast of All Souls on Nov. 2 fell on a Friday and that Roman Catholics would be permitted, as an exemption, to eat meat that day. The paper predicted that cemeteries would be filled with mourners decorating graves with flowers.
Face masks? Only dentists were required to wear gauze face masks. One lingering restriction was that department stores were banned from having goods sent to customers on approval. That restriction was soon dropped.
Because Baltimore more or less shut down for a portion of October, people seemed ready to forget about their restricted life and make up for lost time.
On a chilly Nov. 9, 1918, crowds gathered along Charles Street for a victory parade. Cardinal James Gibbons led the pageant in a closed car.
Women whose sons had died in the recent war marched down Charles Street in a unit. They wore fabric banners with gold stars and would later be known as the Gold Star Mothers.
A few days later, nearly 2,000 people packed The Lyric theater for a peace pageant.
What was then called Armistice Day, making the end of World War I, led thousands to gather downtown Nov. 11, 1918. People did not seem to concern themselves with possible contagion on crowded streetcars.
A Baltimore trolley, painted in a red-and-cream color scheme, was a welcome sight after minimal transit service was the norm in October, when United Railway and Electric Co. employees had been incapacitated by illness.
The end of the war brought out thousands of enthusiastic revelers. The Sun reported that the event resembled a “religious exaltation.”
Lexington Market resumed normal trading, and by Thanksgiving week, merchants decorated their stalls with garlands of fresh sausage and barrels of root vegetables. Everything was plentiful — crabmeat, rabbit, eggplant, turnips, duck, guinea hen, squab, calf liver and brains, chicken, turkey and Brussels sprouts.
The month ended with another huge gathering: a military dance at the 5th Regiment Armory.
“It is likely that 75,000 is an underestimate of the number of cases of influenza that occurred in Baltimore between Sept. 20 and Dec. 31,” wrote Dr. John F. Hogan in his report of the Baltimore City Health Department. “The city has never been visited by such an epidemic as prevailed in the fall of this year.”
