Influenza Hit New Castle County Workhouse Hard in 1918

After influenza struck Wilmington in the autumn of 1918, concerned officials at the New Castle County Workhouse struggled to keep the county prison from becoming a hot spot.  In the tight cells and confined, overcrowded spaces at Greenbank isolation or what we today call social distancing was impossible.  Thus, Warden Richard F. Cross and the workhouse physician, Dr. William H. Kraemer, took every possible precaution to keep the sickness outside prison walls, as the pandemic’s deadly toll spread in northern Delaware.

Nonetheless, as the contagion upended everyday life in Wilmington, Dr. Kraemer became apprehensive that the walls had been breached.  During daily sick calls in late September, more inmates began showing up with sniffles, sore throats, deep coughs, and chest congestion.  Diagnosing the symptoms in the cramped, poorly ventilated space behind bars, he steadied himself for a fight with the virus with the limited tools the medical profession made available to practitioners as there were no cures or vaccines.

Then a prison guard, Archibald C Dorsey, came down with the flu.  Suffering for three or four days, the 42-year old died at his home at 1330 French Street in Wilmington on September 29, 1918.  Officer Dorsey was laid to rest at Cathedral Cemetery on October 2.((“Deaths,” Morning News, Oct. 1, 1918))   A few days later newspapers mentioned that an outbreak had occurred at the prison, but the cases were generally mild.((“Need for Nurses Growing Daily More Imperative,” Morning News, Oct. 3, 1918))

As the virus spread in Delaware, the courts continued sentencing convicts to the workhouse.  One man, Jas. W. Roundtree, a foreman of a Baltimore shipyard, came to Wilmington early in October to see the superintendent of the local shipyard.  Soon after arriving, he caught the attention of the police when he stole some women’s clothing.  Officer Bullock hauled the man before the city court, which held him on $500 bail.

Shortly after the trial, Roundtree became “wildly delirious.”  Instead of being a common thief, the Baltimorean had been out of his head, suffering from influenza.  The police hurriedly decided not to jail him, but they could not find a doctor to come to the station to treat the delirious man.  So, they sent the patient to the workhouse to receive care from the county physician. It was the only compassionate thing they could do.((More Than 200 Already Dead from Epidemic, Evening Journal, Oct. 5, 1918))

As October slipped painfully by an alarming surge in illnesses indicated that the virus was raging unchecked within the prison walls as inmates and guards fell sick.  When Dr. Kraemer made his medical rounds on the afternoon of Friday, October 11, ten percent of the inmates were ill.  He had forty-five ailing prisoners in cells, while the six most serious cases struggled to survive the infection in the prison hospital.

By contrast, a month earlier on September 11, 1 percent of the inmates were sick, and there were no patients in the hospital.  The rate of infections was far higher within the institution than in the general population of the city.((New Castle County Workhouse Daily Activity Report, Board of Trustees of the New Castle County Workhouse, 1918))

These elevated conditions continued for a little over two weeks, and on October 16, the flu claimed the first inmate. Samuel Green, 33, died Oct. 11, an influenza-pneumonia victim. ((“Epidemic Near End After 361 Deaths in City,” Evening Journal, Oct. 12, 1918)) Five days later, Nineteen-year-old Ernest Holly, serving a life sentence for a murder near Newark, perished at the workhouse on Wednesday night. October 16.  Then on October 19, the disease took another victim, Rosero Malsese, 31.  He was serving two months for highway robbery.  This made the third inmate death at Greenbank during the pandemic.((“Death’s Toll Increasing as Cases Diminish,” Morning News, Oct. 18, 1918)), ((Flu Gets Life Convict, Morning News, Oct. 17, 1918)), ((“Fumigate is Order of the City Board of Health,” Morning News, Oct. 19, 1918))

By October 21, Dr. Kraemer had good news for Warden Cross.   The infections were clearing up rapidly at Greenbank, the few remaining inmates recovering.  Plus, there had been no deaths nor any new cases at the workhouse in the past 24 hours.((“City Almost Free of Influenza,” Evening Journal, Oct. 21, 1918))

At least one more inmate, Frank Smith, perished.  The 39-year-old sentenced on November 9, 1917, to three years died one year later after incarceration on Nov 8. 1918.   Pneumonia associated with influenza was listed as the cause of death.

Gradually the suffering diminished at the county prison, but at least four people died during the outbreak.  The previous year, only four inmates deaths occured during the entire twelve months. 

The New Castle County Workhouse was located at Greenbank, about six miles west of downtown Wilmington.  The first prisoners arrived at the modern house of corrections on November 6, 1901. Designed for 350 inmates,   World War I considerably accelerated the incarcerated population as Wilmington’s war industries boomed.  “To guard and supervise in a safe and sanitary manner, a population at times nearly six hundred in an institution designed for three hundred fifty was obviously impossible,” Caldwell notes.  “On December 1, 1918, five hundred forty-eight prisoners were crowded into the inadequate accommodations of the workhouse.”((Robert Graham Caldwell, “The New Castle County Workhouse,” University of Pennsylvania: Dissertation, 1939))