November 9, 2019
The 1918 Parade That Spread Death in Philadelphia
In six weeks, 12,000 were dead of influenza.
The influenza pandemic of 1918-19 killed between 50 and 100 million people around the world, more than died in the battles of World War I. In the United States, the hardest-hit city was Philadelphia, where the spread of the disease was spurred by what was meant to be a joyous event: a parade.....MUCH MORE
Writing in Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, the historian Thomas Wirth explains what happened: “On September 28, despite the increased infiltration of the disease among the civilian population, a rally for the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive proceeded with minimal debate about the repercussions for public health.” The head of Philadelphia’s Naval Hospital told the Public Ledger in the days before the parade: “There is no cause for further alarm. We believe we have it well in hand.” So, the parade went forward. “In the streets of downtown Philadelphia 200,000 people gathered to celebrate an impending allied victory in World War I. Within a week of the rally an estimated 45,000 Philadelphians were afflicted with influenza.”
While frequently called Spanish flu, the disease did not originate in Spain. Rather, the country’s wartime neutrality contributed to higher reports of its escalation in its newspapers. Exactly where and when it started in 1918 is still under speculation. But by the fall of that year, it had arrived in Philadelphia.
“At first, Philadelphia’s epidemic did not differ from that in other major American cities,” the historian James Higgins writes in Pennsylvania Legacies. “Yet by the first week of October, roughly five weeks into the outbreak, Philadelphia’s mortality rate accelerated in a climb unmatched by any city in the nation—perhaps by any major city in the world.” And that spike is attributed to the patriotic event, one of several Liberty Loan rallies organized in Philadelphia to raise money for the war. This time it was joined by a baneful guest: “The virus, an invisible presence at the parade, had enjoyed an unprecedented opportunity to spread throughout the city and in the coming days announced its presence in a skyrocketing wave of sickness and death.”
Soon hospitals were at capacity, as were the morgues and cemeteries. In a study published in 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on the incidence curves of the 1918 epidemic in Philadelphia, researchers note that, 72 hours following the parade, all the beds in the city’s 31 hospitals were filled and by “the evening of October 3, the closure of schools, churches, and places of public amusement was adopted by the Philadelphia city council.”
In six weeks, 12,000 were dead. The smell of bodies left to rot in homes while they waited to be removed permeated the streets. The spread of the virus was exacerbated by existing conditions in the city: a booming population drawn by the wartime industries, a density of housing, and a lack of sanitation services and safe drinking water in these working-class neighborhoods....
