Month: November 2020

Nurse Ethel Tammany Died Fighting the Spanish Flu

Since I started researching the pandemic of 1918 two years ago, I have spent many hours online mining data and at archives analyzing death certificates, undertaker registers, physician statements, and health department reports.  Once I have sifted through death records for an area, I frequently pause to visit the cemeteries to remember those who perished in that perilous time when there was no vaccine or treatment to protect people from the virus.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in late autumn, while strolling through the Riverview Cemetery in Wilmington searching for victims, I paused at the headstone for Nurse Ethel Tammany.  The twenty-three-year-old healthcare professional graduated from the Delaware Hospital School of Nursing in 1917 at the head of the class, a distinction she justly deserved, her colleagues at the hospital noted. “She had a bright, sunny disposition and seemed to bring sunshine into each room of suffering she entered.  She was deeply devoted to her work, and the many doctors and nurses with whom she had been associated will miss her helping hand,” a published tribute added. 

With a diploma in hand, the caregiver soon took a job at the Harlan Plant of Bethlehem Steel in Wilmington as an industrial nurse.  The global pandemic clobbered Delaware the next year, and several emergency hospitals opened across the City to expand Delaware’s capacity for in-patient treatment.  Miss Tammany started working at the New Century Club Emergency Hospital, helping alleviate pain and suffering.  After becoming infected by the virus, she developed pneumonia and died on Oct. 9, 1918.   Dr. John Palmer wrote that the “La Grippe” was the primary cause of death on the state certificate. 

Ethel Tammany was laid to rest at the Riverview Cemetery in Wilmington.  Her mother, father, three sisters, and two brothers survived her.    She had lived at 2114 W. 17th Street, Wilmington.

About a quarter of the United States population caught the virus, 675,000 died, and life expectancy dropped by 12-years. With no vaccine to protect against the pathogen, people were urged to isolate, quarantine, practice good personal hygiene, and limit social interaction. That was all they had.

I will share more of these remembrances as I complete my fieldwork and visit cemeteries to remember the front line heroes fighting the global pandemic of 1918.

For more on Nurses & Others on the Front Line of the Pandemic of 1918 see

Wilmington Nurses Paid a Heavy Price Fighting the Pandemic of 1918

Delmarva Spanish Flu Archive

For additional photos see the Facebook album

nurse ethel tammany
The monument for Ethel Tammany, 23, a graduate of the Delaware Hospital School of Nursing.

Don’t Come to Delaware for Liquor

don't call to Delaware for your liquor was the message in October 1918
Opening of saloons may bring rush. (Morning News, Oct. 28, 1917)

Listening to the Delaware COVID-19 update on WDEL this Tuesday afternoon (11/24/2020), Governor Carney caught my attention when he said don’t come to Delaware for your alcohol!

One-hundred-two years ago, public health and police officials in Wilmington had a similar situation during the Pandemic of 1918. That October, Delaware authorities closed public gathering places, including saloons, taprooms, and taverns and those establishments remained closed for most of the month.

Saloons Thrown Open

Toward the end of October, the influenza 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 saloon keepers 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. 

Drunken men fill city in 1918 as saloons reopen
Drunken men again fill police cells. (Source: Morning News, Oct. 30, 1918)

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, Carney’s Point, Camden and other nearby sections of New Jersey and Pennsylvania saloons were still closed because the quarantine was still in place, so thirsty people flocked to Wilmington.  This influx of the visitors from Philadelphia 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, the Board of Police Commissioners and 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))

Liquor Establishments Reopen

Wilmington police order closed liquor establishments.
Wilmington emergency order. Evening Journal, Oct. 31, 1918

Wilmington’s Mayor John Lawson felt the matter would adjust itself after the saloons opened in the neighboring states. And in a week or so it did as strangers stopped coming to the Delaware to “liquor up.” The other places had lifted the local quarantines in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.