1918 Influenza Epidemic

Type	Disaster
Date	1918

The influenza pandemic of 1918 reached Billerica in the latter part of September 1918, in the last weeks of World War I, and stayed into the early months of 1919. By January 20, 1919 the Board of Health had received reports of "some four hundred and fifty cases with nineteen deaths," in a town that had counted 3,246 people at the state census of 1915 and had grown since with the opening of the railroad shops, so that something like one person in eight or nine was reported sick. For three weeks in the autumn the board closed the churches, schools and libraries and forbade public gatherings, and the schools lost so much time that the school day was lengthened for the rest of the year.

The disease came to Billerica from its neighbors. It had broken out among the soldiers at Camp Devens in September, and in Lowell the Board of Health counted the city's first official case on September 20, closed the schools, theaters and movie houses about September 26 and banned public gatherings on September 29, keeping its orders until October 28. On October 8 the Lowell Sun's North Billerica column reported fifteen cases in the village within a few days and one death, while the Fourth Liberty Loan drive lagged. The North Billerica mill village and the new Boston and Maine car shops, which had employed more than a thousand men since 1914, made North Billerica the most crowded part of the town.

The Board of Health of 1918 was Dr. Neil K. Forhan, its chairman, Dr. E. J. Alley, its secretary, and the plumber Thomas A. Ellis. In its report of January 20, 1919 it wrote: "During the latter part of September there was an outbreak of influenza, which is still prevalent. There have been reported to the board some four hundred and fifty cases with nineteen deaths. During the height of the epidemic, the board had the assistance of Drs. Conway and McCrillis who were sent to us by the State Department of Health. The board deemed it necessary at one time to order the closing of churches, schools, libraries and forbid the holding of public gatherings. After three weeks conditions had improved so that the ban was lifted." Influenza had been made a reportable disease in Massachusetts only that October, and the board warned the selectmen that "with the extension of the laws relating to reportable diseases, and the support of those affected by them," its charges would rise. Its spending on contagious diseases for 1918 was $222.52, for board and treatment, medical attendance, drugs, fumigation and disinfectants, and throat cultures.

The town clerk, Albert S. Bull, recorded 77 deaths in Billerica in 1918, against 72 in 1917 and 80 in 1919. Thirty-five of them came between September 15 and the end of the year, fifteen in October alone, and twenty-six of those thirty-five were of people between fifteen and fifty years old, the age group the pandemic struck hardest. The clerk's register gives no causes of death, so the nineteen influenza deaths counted by the Board of Health cannot be named from it.

The schools suffered most. The Talbot School in North Billerica, the Pollard School at the Centre and the new Howe High School, with 773 pupils in December 1918, were all closed during the epidemic. The School Committee reported that "we were obliged to keep the schools closed for an unusually long period on account of the influenza epidemic" and urged parents to have the children study at home. Superintendent Eugene C. Vining lengthened the school day, "in the attempt to make up some of the time lost through closing on account of the influenza," by fifteen minutes in the grades and thirty minutes in the High School. The school physician, Dr. Maurice A. Buck, explained that while children were thought safer in school than in the street during the familiar contagious diseases, "the influenza epidemic was generally little understood and it was deemed wise to follow the action of other towns in closing the schools."

A second wave followed. "The opening of school in January 1919 was delayed on account of the influenza," Dr. Buck reported, "and this had hardly subsided before scarlet fever appeared"; whooping cough followed, and the drawing supervisor wrote of "the various interruptions during the past winter and spring caused by epidemics." In his 1919 report the superintendent renewed the call for a school nurse, noting that "each year during the last five there has been an epidemic of one kind or another" in which a nurse following up the sick in their homes "would have repaid the expense incurred." The town had both a municipal nurse and a school nurse by 1921, when a state law required towns to have a school nurse.

People

Neil K. Forhan: Chairman of the Board of Health, which ordered the three-week closing of churches, schools and libraries and reported 450 cases and 19 deaths.
E J. Alley: Physician and secretary of the Board of Health during the epidemic; signed its report of January 20, 1919.
Thomas A. Ellis: Member of the Board of Health during the epidemic.
Maurice A. Buck: School physician who explained the closing of the schools and reported the delayed opening of January 1919.
Eugene C. Vining: Superintendent of schools who lengthened the school day to make up the time lost and asked for a school nurse.
Albert S. Bull: Town clerk whose register of 1918 deaths shows the autumn rise in deaths.

1918 Influenza Epidemic

1918 Influenza Epidemic

People

References