THE WORST PANDEMIC IN WORLD HISTORY
In the early cooling nights of October 1918, just as the people of the United States were beginning to feel that world peace was at hand, the worst pandemic in the history of the world began to spread from one country to another, even to some of the most isolated Pacific Islands and to the frigid regions of the Arctic. Realistic estimates of health organizations put the death total at anywhere from 17 million to 50 million or more. Known as the “Spanish Flu”, reports of the spread and mortality of the virus were hidden from the major countries of the world, but freely reported in Spain, which was neutral during World War I.
In Georgia, the hardest hit areas were Atlanta, where approximately 829 people died in the first five weeks, and the army installations at Camp Gordon (Atlanta,) Camp Wheeler (Macon,) and Camp Hancock (Augusta.) Early on, about 2000 soldiers at Camp Gordon were infected and nearly 100 died. Obviously, the most thickly inhabited cities were struck with a vengeance.
Seventeen months after the Spanish influenza first hit Georgia, another, less devastating rash of cases appeared in Dublin. Sixty-five cases of flu were reported by Dr. Cheek on the 22nd and 23rd of February 1920 alone. It seemed that history was repeating itself. Cheek was working non-stop from his office on the 2nd floor of the Burch Building (
LEFT) next to the Post Office on East Madison Street. In a few weeks, Cheek gave close to 2500 flu vaccinations and more than 1,000 small pox vaccinations in a few weeks.
By the early days of March, County Health Department director, Dr. Cheek and city officials saw a drop in cases. After much consideration, they decided to keep a lid on everything for an extra two-week scrutiny of the public’s health. On March 21, 1920, after a week’s delay, the ban against public gatherings was lifted, but not after many deaths. Despite the downturn and release of the ban, that didn’t stop the flu from attacking County School Superintendent Zollicoffer Whitehurst who missed several days of work. Nor did it stop 133 new cases and 11 deaths in the second week of March. Slowly people came out of their homes, but kept caution as their watchword in their daily lives.
Nearly thirty percent of the people in the United States, or thirty million persons, contracted the flu. Rough estimates, after a century of studies, put the death toll between 500,000 to 650,000 people in the United States or roughly one person in twenty died from the deadly strain.
The City of Atlanta banned all mass gatherings on October 7 for up to two months. One by one, cities and towns of Georgia followed the lead of Atlanta, which was virtually shut down for the first time since General Sherman’s army invaded the “Capital City.” Nearly all public gatherings of governments, schools, churches, entertainment shows, shopping, and dining were closed until further notice. For two months, the virus waxed and waned throughout the cities and the countryside. One Atlanta judge threw out a case against illegal drinking stating that the state’s interests would be better served by allowing citizens to imbibe as a way of controlling the flu.
Within a few weeks, the numbers began to noticeably drop, allowing officials to approve a limited number of public events, including Atlanta’s Liberty Loan Parade. Then within five weeks of its appearance in Atlanta, the epidemic virtually disappeared.
The epidemic spread to Macon, where terror-filled citizens were walking around with primitive homemade cloth masks, with two eye holes and a slit for the mouth.
In Georgia, after the first three weeks of October, state officials began to lose count of the number of cases and the resulting deaths. In that three week total, twenty thousand people showed symptoms, five hundred of them died. The flu spread like wildfire. Seemingly no one was immune.
The Georgia Department of Health reported that 15,405 persons died in October, 9,616 in November, and 5,701 in December for a three month total of more than 30,000 persons in Georgia alone.
Nearly daily reports were coming out in the Atlanta Constitution. In Dublin, new cases were October 22 (109,) October 23 (212 with three deaths,) October 26, (no report,) and October 27, (37) were reported from Dublin The October 22nd figure, which may have been the pinnacle of the epidemic locally, was the second highest number of cases reported among Georgia cities, only behind Savannah.
Ironically, Laurens County did not establish the Laurens County Health Department until August 1, 1919. Dr. Ovid H. Cheek, the department’s only employee, had just returned from military duty in Europe. His appointment was a direct result of the influenza epidemic the year before.
Laurens County counted among her deaths from influenza three servicemen, Joel Attaway, George Attaway, and Frazier Linder. Thirteen more Laurens County soldiers and one Dublin sailor died of pneumonia during the influenza outbreak.
By the middle of October, Dublin city officials, and Laurens County Board of Health, were forced to take action against the growing menace. School students were ordered to spray their noses and throats thoroughly every morning or risk being sent home for the day. The County Health Board, composed of local physicians, signed an order closing all schools, movie theaters, fairs, skating rinks, churches, soda fountains, and all public gatherings of any kind or nature. Health officials knew only an approximate count of the reported cases of flu in the city, said to be one hundred to two hundred. At first, city and county schools avoided closing schools. When the threat was too ominous for the health of the children, a ban prohibiting school classes was instituted until there was a dramatic drop in flu among the students and their families.
Local Red Cross nurses and volunteers aided the effort through the county’s doctors, whose ranks were thinned because of the still raging war in Europe.
The first and only death reported in the first three weeks of October came on a Sunday morning, October 13, when Henry W. Hale, the 27-year-old manager of the Atlantic Ice and Coal Corporation and Sergeant of the Dublin Guards, succumbed to the deadly virus. He was buried in Fort Valley. Hale’s twenty-year-old widow Annie Laurie was also stricken. Fortunately, she lived for another sixty years before her death in 1980. Mrs. Hale is buried her daughter Elizabeth Hale, who was only nine months old then the flu killed her father. Miss Hale also enjoyed a long life, dying in Orlando in 2011 at the age of ninety-three.
Although on the last weekend of October, doctors received a report of 206 new cases, it appeared that the new numbers were going down, in some cases dramatically. On the very day that the fighting end in World War I, the Laurens County Health Board released the ban on public gatherings, but urged extreme caution in light of the predictable mass celebrations which ensued after the Armistice was signed later in the week.
In this case, the flu outbreak in Dublin was an unusual, but isolated, occurrence. In those days, influenza was always feared annually during the late fall and the rest of the winter. Locals were not as worried as the minor epidemic was not occurring around the world as it had in 1918.
While there is little to none existing evidence to show how many persons contracted influenza in Dublin and Laurens County, it is reasonable to believe that the deaths were in the dozens and the number of cases were easily five hundred or more.
Let us all hope and believe that the current Covid 19 pandemic will like its evil brother a century ago, soon run its natural course and pass away. Listen to the professionals: “Wash your hands, use common sense while around others, and report severe cases to health officials immediately.
Comments