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…
Category: Spanish Flu
New Delaware Humanities Lecture Examines Pandemic of 1918
I am pleased that Delaware Humanities has selected a timely new program I have been researching about the pandemic of 1918 in the region. The goal of this program is to understand how the experience of 1918, a situation that called for drastic action, unfolded and use this examination in a discussion that connects the…
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…
Researching the Pandemic of 1918 in the Baltimore-Washington D.C. Corridor
Some of my current research is focused on investigating the impact of the 1918 pandemic in communities along an extended corridor stretching from Baltimore to Philadelphia. This work has or will take me to cities and counties along I-95, as well as jurisdictions near this region. In the summer of 2019, before the novel coronavirus…