When COVID-19 disrupted everyday life in March, the research I had been working on for over a year, the pandemic of 1918, took on greater urgency. But, the storehouses of primary documents I needed to provide deeper insight for the investigation closed. Of course, I mined the great abundance of digital content accessible from the Delaware Digital Newspaper Project and Delaware Public Archives partnerships with content providers. These important on-demand sources yielded enormous data as I closely read 102-year-old newspapers, seeking to understand how Delaware responded to the growing outbreak.
Although these primary sources provided a day-by-day understanding of the fateful year, I needed to carefully analyze more robust original traces of the past to fully assess the deeper, complex dimensions of the pandemic in Delaware. Government officials, prison wardens, police officers, judges, public health officers, nurses, coroners, doctors, undertakers, and cemetery caretakers penned reports in 1918 to document their work as they struggled to cope with the Spanish Influenza. This 102-year-old data is found in death registers, police blotters, prison registers, court calendars, coroner’s inquests, and the minutes and correspondence of health boards and local and state government.
Delaware Libraries
These mainly undigitized materials are carefully curated in special collections departments of public and university libraries and in the vast holdings at the Delaware Public Archives, whose collections, spanning centuries, open windows to the past. Here is where the Wilmington Public Library, the Delaware Public Archives, and Special Collections at the University of Delaware came in. These organizations, each in its particular way, adapted to our upended world in 2020, continuing to serve researchers and patrons.
At the Wilmington Library, the librarians found other ways to support the community after the institute shut its doors to walk-in patrons. One was to provide remote reference desk assistance so this opened up the strong resources of the Delaware Room. I have used that outstanding resource many times. For this investigation, I needed 1918 annual reports from the Homeopathic, Delaware, and Memorial hospitals, the New Castle County Workhouse, and the Bureau of Police. Within 24-hours, the Wilmington Reference Librarians scanned the relevant sources for me.
Furthermore, the reference department provided valuable additional information in the vertical files (newspaper clipping) in the Delaware Room. This gem for researchers, a unique pre-computer age catalog of 3 X 5 cards and vertical files with local materials from 1922 to 1977, should not be overlooked. For the better part of the 20th century, the city’s librarians cut out and indexed articles about local subjects and people from several periodicals. Included were newspapers, such as the Delaware Republican, Morning News, Evening Journal, Journal Every Evening, and Sunday Morning Star.
Although the staff doesn’t add to these files now as databases have replaced this old method for accessing information, they continue to maintain the catalog and the vertical files. And even though many Delaware newspapers have now been digitized, this repository of excellent material still yields helpful information not located digitally.
Delaware Public Archives
Another collection was at the Delaware Public Archives. Working carefully within guidelines laid out by public health officials, the state agency reopened to research by appointment. That provided an opportunity to spend days in the reading room, studying the prison registry from the New Castle County Workhouse, court dockets, the Wilmington Bureau of Police Blotter, the city ambulance log, and minutes from state and local boards of health.
At the University of Delaware, an email to Special Collections at the Morris Library produced annual reports that weren’t available at other repositories.
As Delawareans struggled when COVID-19 struck the nation, these Delaware libraries and the Archives found ways to adapt and serve during a global pandemic as they re-engineered ways to make resources available to patrons. Thank you, Wilmington Public Library, Delaware Public Archives, and Special Collections at the Morris Library at the University of Delaware for maintaining access to your collections during this unprecedented year. This assistance was essential as I researched a new lecture on the Spanish Influenza in Delaware in 1918 for the Delaware Humanities.
For more Information
New Delaware Humanities Lecture Examines Pandemic of 1918
