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
For additional photos see the Facebook album
