Month: September 2020

The Wilmington Police Department grappled with the unprecedented challenge of maintaining service after the Spanish influenza slipped into Delaware in the autumn of 1918.  In normal times, the 127-person force patrolled streets, preserved peace, operated the lockup, investigated crimes, collected dog taxes, and maintained the fire and police telegraph.  However, early that autumn, as the contagion spread and the death toll mounted, common crime plummeted, the virus driving people off the streets as the Board of Health closed public places.  This included taverns and saloons, typical hotspots for troublemakers.   

Bookings at the city lockup tumbled by late September as wayward types, along with everyone else, stayed away from crowds.  Nevertheless, although work instigated by pickpockets, muggers, run-of-the-mill thieves, and similar lawbreakers declined, the force maintained a vigilant watch as conservators of the peace.  Adding to this, patrolmen had to help stamp out the spread of the contagion and provide relief to the stricken. 

With sickness falling “like a black pall,” striking thousands in the City, as the death rate increased by leaps and bounds, the Board of Health ordered the closing of public places.   That October 2 edict also shuttered 167 saloons.   But it allowed the wholesale liquor stores to say open as they were not congregating places.  That changed on October 11, when Chief George Black requested the shuttering of these outlets.  Drunkenness was excessive, which with the police force handicapped by sickness, was a difficult matter for the force to handle, the chief explained. ((“Bone Dry Town for the Present,” Evening Journal October 12, 1918))   

As officers patrolled the streets, making arrests for disobeying anti-spitting measures and other public health orders, the virus spread in the ranks.  Dozens became ill, their numbers having already been thinned by about 30 men because of the war.     At the same time, headquarters continued getting calls from people who could not secure undertakers to remove dead bodies from their houses. ((“Epidemic Near End After 361 Deaths in City,” Evening Journal, Oct. 12, 1918))

At the peak of the pandemic, the police patrol wagon carried influenza victims to the emergency hospitals around Wilmington. Always on the go, the wagon transported 822 patients in September.  During the first three weeks in October, when the raging disease was at its worst, the two crews of the “machine” worked, day and night.  At times the demands on the patrol crews taxed them to the utmost, and Patrolman Robinson, one of the officers, worked day after day with a high temperature.  When he arrived home one night after a long shift, he collapsed in his yard and was carried to his room, ill with the disease.  Although he recovered, he passed the virus along to his family. 

One member of the force, Patrolman John Jack Riley, died from the ailment.  On his last watch (September 25), Officer Riley escorted World War I draftees to the railroad station, but when he returned home he found that his wife was stricken.  While caring for her, the policeman fell ill, passing away on October 3, at his home at 9 South Jackson Street.  The police band planned to honor the lawman by playing funeral music during the procession to the cemetery, but the Board of Public Health orders prevented that arrangement.  Nevertheless, thirty members of the force went to the Riverview Cemetery.((“Officer Dies After Nursing Sick Wife,” Evening Journal, Oct. 4, 1918))   

In assisting the Board of Health, Police Surgeon George W. K. Forrest and City Physician Allan W. Perkins attended to victims whose relatives or friends called the police for help.  One night the police kept the city physician on the move until daylight attending victims.  Police Surgeon Forrest reported that he had treated 32 patrolmen and six prisoners stricken with influenza. 

To add to the troubles of the lawmen, at least fifteen men detained behind bars in the lockup became ill.  These victims were carried out by the patrol wagon crew and hurried to one of the emergency hospitals. 

While the rank and file were doing this work, Chief of Police Black’s office was besieged with telegrams and phone calls from relatives of those stricken from other cities asking for information about them.  In many cases, those who died here had wives or mothers in other cities, and it rested on the police department to get word to those who had been bereaved to break the news to them.

Toward the end of October, the situation eased so the Delaware Board of Health lifted the ban on public assembly at 1 a.m. Sunday, October 27.  The reopening of taverns had to wait until Monday – this marked twenty-six days that the board kept saloons shuttered.  However, a great deal of thirst had accumulated, as from early morning until late at night that Monday, John Barleycorn held sway in the City for the first time in nearly a month. 

Once saloonkeepers threw open the doors, people crowded around the bars.  This rush was apparent anywhere one looked downtown, the spectacle of intoxicated men on streets being a common one.  Officers booked over 100 lawbreakers in the lockup before midnight.  The authorities likened the situation to the days when the powder plants at Carney Point were in the making, and the patrol wagons were loaded up with intoxicated men at the boat wharves. 

While these scenes unfolded, the police patrol wagon, which had remained idle for a couple of weeks took  on a new lease on life.  For a while it was thought that the “little patrol [wagon],” which had been undergoing repairs during the slump in business, would have to be placed in operation.  But Patrolman Harry Foreman, the mechanic, not anticipating any rush in business, did not have it ready to roll. ((Disciples of Bacchus Hold Day of Revelry,” Morning News, October 29, 1918))

After Wilmington’s barrooms opened, another problem developed.  In Chester, Philadelphia, and other nearby places, the quarantine was still in place, so thirty people flocked to Wilmington.  This influx of visitors seeking liquor was a menace to public health and morals, to say nothing of a nuisance as there were more intoxicated men on the streets than others.  Consequently, Chief Black issued an order closing Wilmington’s saloon at 7 o’clock every night until these nearby places lifted the quarantines ((“Saloons Closed by Police Order at Seven o’clock,” Morning News, November 1, 1918))

That end of October holiday — the time for ghosts and goblins — came around about this time, as police struggled with the liquor trade.  Then ”Halloween Flu” hit Wilmington, the News Journal remarked., as Chief Black banned parties and public revelry.  Nobody was to blame for it, the paper explained.  It was simply too risky.

Despite the order, bands of young people in costume appeared on Market Street but quickly found that the police were not joking when they ordered all false faces to come off and advised the clowns and other “fantastics” to go home.  Confetti and ticklers were suppressed as soon as they put in an appearance too and the police also put the quiet on any undue noise and carnival frolicking.  It left many young people wishing the happy days were back when Wilmington used to have big Halloween parades with bands and decorated fire apparatus and all the fixing. 

Finally, with the emergency waning in late October and sick officers returning to duty, the City’s law enforcement agency started return to its regular routine. 

In the autumn of 1918, the officers who were able to remain on duty did excellent work as guardians of peace and public health.  When these men entered the ranks, they knew they would face risks in the rough and tumble parts of Wilmington, but they never expected to have to struggle with helping to stamp out a deadly virus during a global pandemic. 

For More on the Spanish Influenza in Delaware

Delmarva Spanish Influenza Archive