Dora Lewis was the member of prominent Philadelphia family. She was dedicated fighter for the right of women to vote.

In 1919, Lewis participated in the Watchfires protests, in which suffragists burned the speeches of Woodrow Wilson to reject his hypocricy of speaking about democracy and justice without protecting them for women at home.

The woman suffrage movement in the United States is usually said to have begun at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848. The Convention, organized by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and several friends and colleagues, produced a Declaration of Sentiments that called for women to "secure for themselves their right to the elective franchise."

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (left) and Susan B. Anthony (right) met in 1851 and become close friends and dedicated fighters for votes for women.

The "New Woman" of the turn of the 19th century was educated, independent, and career-minded. These women were more demanding than previous generations and less concerned about upsetting gender norms.

I joked in this episode about New Women and their bicycles, but this was actually an enormous breakthrough for women. For the first time, women had freedom of movement that opened up a world that been narrowly restricted for previous generations.

Alice Paul was charismatic, magnetic, and impossible to refuse. She was willing to work herself into the hospital and expected the same level of effort from her friends. (She is also, in this photo, wearing an awesome hat.)

Alice Paul spent the years between 1907 and 1909 in the United Kingdom, where she joined the radical suffragette movement. She learned the power of protest in England, as well as the power of her own will.

In 1909, Paul went on a hunger strike in prison and was force fed. This was a horrifying, traumatic experience--a fact that the suffragettes didn't hesitate to leverage in their promotional material.

Paul's first major action back in the United States was the Woman Suffrage Procession of 1913. Scheduled the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, it achieved maximum publicity for the cause. This image was used as the cover of the official procession program.

This photo shows the start of the procession, with attorney Inez Mulholland on horseback.

Paul and other organizers intended to segregate African-American marchers to the end of the parade, but Ida B. Wells-Barnett had no intention of being segregated. She joined the Illinois delegation halfway along the route.

Massive crowds viewed the parade. Without adequate police monitoring, the crowd got out of control, spilled into the street, and began harassing the marchers.

In 1917, the Silent Sentinels began protesting daily at the White House. They carried banners demanding the president take action on women's right to vote.

For several months, the protests were peaceful. But Paul began cranking up the tension in the summer, and D.C. police began arresting and detaining the protesters.

Eventually, suffragists were sentenced to time at Occoquan Workhouse a grim, remote facility. Here several suffragists, including Dora Lewis, pose in their prison uniforms.

Suffragist prisoners began protests in prison, refusing to wear uniforms or do assigned work. Some, including Alice Paul, went on hunger strikes. Prison guards reacted with increasing violence. Here one of the suffragists has to be helped to a car after a harrowing stay at Occoquan.

At the same time the members of the NWP were protesting daily at the White House, members of the rival organization NAWSA were conducting a massive campaign for suffrage in New York. They won the vote for 2 million women and reinforced the nationwide conviction that the time had come for a federal amendment.

The New York campaign was one of the most inclusive in suffrage history. NAWSA partnered with both the Wage Earner's Suffrage League and the New York City Colored Woman Suffrage Club. African-American suffrage clubs were popular in northern states; this image is of such a group. (I was unable to figure out exactly where these women were from.)

After the House of Representatives passed the federal woman suffrage amendment in 1918, the NWP and NAWSA set aside their differences and worked together to lobby Senators for votes for women. They developed an early form of a database in an index card system that tracked each Senator's friends, memberships, and donors. They also logged notes of each meeting with a Senator, as you can see in this card.

When the amendment failed to pass the Senate in 1918, the NWP began its Watchfires protests burning the president's speeches and even an effigy of the man himself. Crowds inevitably gathered, as seen in this photos, and often the women were arrested.

In the summer of 1919, Wilson finally took decisive action, and the House and Senate passed the woman suffrage amendment. The fight moved to the states for ratification. Eventually it all came down to Tennessee the vote of one man, Harry Burn. This is a photo of the letter from Burn's mother that was delivered to him the morning of the vote that made him decide to vote "aye" for suffrage, knowing his constituency would not approve.

Women across the country celebrated the passage of the 19th Amendment.

NAWSA evolved into the League of Women Voters and devoted itself to the education of new voters. It continues in this role today.

Alice Paul kept the National Woman's Party in operation and began advocating for the Equal Rights Amendment to remove all legal descrimination against woman. Here she is seen in 1969 with one of the original banners from the suffrage fight.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• "Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote," by Tina Cassidy
• "Suffrage: Women's Long Battle for the Vote," by Ellen Carol DuBois
• "Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote," by Susan Ware
• Declaration of Sentiments - Wikipedia
• "The Woman's Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote," by Elaine Weiss
• "Woodrow Wilson and Woman Suffrage: A New Look," by Christine Lunardini and Thomas J. Knock (paywalled)
• The 1913 Women's Suffrage Parade - The Atlantic
• Arrests and Violence - Voices of History: The Woman's Suffrage Movement
• "Occoquan Guards Show Marks of Picket Battle," Richmond Times-Dispatch, Chronicling America « Library of Congress
• "How the Spanish Flu Almost Upended Women's Suffrage," by Alisha Haridasani Gupta, The New York Times
• "How the Spanish flu nearly derailed women's right to vote," by Ellen Carol DuBois, National Geographic
• American Women's Suffrage Came Down to One Man's Vote - HISTORY
• Why the Fight Over the Equal Rights Amendment Has Lasted Nearly a Century - HISTORY
• Sufferin' til Suffrage -- Schoolhouse Rock
• American Experience: The Vote, premieres July 6, 2020

Correction: In this episode I state that Arthur Conan Doyle stopped writing mysteries after the flu pandemic. This is simply not true. Doyle published numerous mysteries, including several Sherlock Holmes stories, between 1919 and his death in 1930. My apologies for the error, and thanks to the listener who caught it.

Heroic efforts went into creating a vaccine for Pfieffer's Bacillus, which was believed by many doctors to cause the Spanish Flu. These efforts were all in vain, since Pfeiffer's Bacillus is a fairly common bacteria and not the cause of the flu. The actual cause would not be understood until the existence of viruses was proven in the late 1930s.

The Spanish Flu hit in three waves, in the the spring of 1918, the fall of 1918, and the spring of 1919. There is no evidence that the relaxing of social distancing and/or quarantines triggered the second wave. It is more likely that the virus mutated into a more easily transmitted and more deadly form over the summer. However, the third wave can be linked to relaxed social distancing.

Dr. Kilmer's Swamp Root was a popular patent medicine used to treat the flu. So were onions and Vick's Vapo-Rub.

Nurses played an enormous role during the Spanish Flu, perhaps a greater role than doctors, since recovery was largely the matter of careful nursing. A severe shortage of nurses put a huge burden on those trying to treat patients.

The American health system was strictly segregated in 1918-1919, and nurses of color struggled to treat the patients that overwhelmed the small and underfunded African-American hospitals.

There was no precedent in 1918 for the federal government to play anything other than a coordinating and research role during the Spanish Flu. But the situation was so dire that states and cities begged for help. Surgeon General Rupert Blue seemed unable to rise to the challenge.

The Surgeon's General's advice on how to avoid the flu was distributed widely but offered little in real help and failed to acknowledge the severity of the situation.

The 1918 mid-term election went ahead as planned, but in parts of the west, polling places were unable to open because too many workers were sick with the flu.

Public campaigns urged individuals to cover their faces when coughing or sneezing and to avoid shaking hands. If this cartoon is any indication, some people thought the efforts were extreme.

Cities railed at residents to stop spitting on the street. This was an enormous problem, although this warning seems particularly stark.

Masks were adopted across the country, and some cities mandated their use. The masks became a symbol of the disease. This cartoonist pokes fun at their ubiquity by proposing new styles soon to come out of the Paris fashion houses.

San Francisco required residents and visitors to wear face masks, and initially compliance was high. Red Cross workers sold masks at ferry terminals and on the street.

But people soon tired of wearing masks, or wore them slung around their necks. Soon police and public health officers were busy fining and arresting scofflaws.

Crowds packed the Civic Auditorium for a boxing match in November 1918, and a photographer snapped this image of hundreds of San Franciscans without a mask in sight. Dozens of city leaders were fined for violated the mask ordinance. The ordinance was lifted a few days later.

However, the ordinance was re-imposed in January when the flu returned to San Francisco. This time, opposition to masks was not just heated but organized. An anti-mask league held a meeting to which up to 5000 people attended.

Violet Harris was 15 years old and living in Seattle when the flu closed schools. She kept a diary that gives a sense of life during the shut down.

Some rumors traced the flu pandemic to German scientists and claimed the disease was spread by German submarines. This Brazilian cartoon conveys in this a rather grim way.

Hundreds of thousands of children were left orphaned by the Spanish Flu. This photo shows a group of children who lost their families when the flu raged through the Bristol Bay region of Alaska.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, by Laura Spinney, Amazon
• The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, by John M. Barry, Amazon
• Influenza 1918 | American Experience | Official Site | PBS
• "Influenza 1918: Searching for Cures," American Experience, PBS
• "Did Lack of Social Distancing in 1918 Pandemic Cause More Deaths Than WWI?", by Dan Evon, Snopes.com
• "Why the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Was So Deadly," by Dave Roos, HISTORY.com
• "Aspirin Misuse May Have Made 1918 Flu Pandemic Worse," ScienceDaily
• “Eat More Onions! Desperate and massively debatable medical advice from 1918." by Catharine Arnold, Lapham’s Quarterly
• "'A terrible new weapon of war': The Spanish flu had its own share of conspiracy theories," by Ofer Aderet, Israel News - Haaretz.com
• "Fake news and the flu," by Hannah Mawdsley, Wellcome Collection
• "Nursing During the Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918,"by Elizabeth Hannink, Working Nurse.
• "In 1918 and 2020, race colors America’s response to epidemics," by Soraya Nadia McDonald, The Undefeated
• “'There Wasn't a Lot of Comforts in Those Days:' African Americans, Public Health, and the 1918 Influenza Epidemic," by Vanessa Northington Gamble, Public Health Reporter.
• Responsibilities in a Public Health Emergency, National Conference of State Legislatures.
• "How a Fragmented Country Fights a Pandemic," by Polly J. Price, The Atlantic
• "How they flattened the curve during the 1918 Spanish Flu," by Nina Strochlic and Riley D. Champine, National Geographic
• "Everyone wore masks during the 1918 flu pandemic. They were useless." by Eliza McGraw, The Washington Post
• "Face masks: what the Spanish flu can teach us about making them compulsory." by Samuel Cohn, The Conversation.
• "When Mask-Wearing Rules in the 1918 Pandemic Faced Resistance" by Becky Little, HISTORY.com
• San Francisco, California and the 1918-1919 Influenza Epidemic | The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918: A Digital Encyclopedia
• "The 1918 Flu-Pandemic Quarantine Was Profoundly Lonely," by Noah Y. Kim, The Atlantic
• "Spanish flu quarantine: Life during 1918’s pandemic was just as weird as today," by Michael Waters, Slate.
• 1918 Pandemic Influenza Survivors Share Their Stories [Oral Histories], Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH)
• 1918 influenza pandemic survivor interview: Mrs. Edna Boone, interviewed 2008 - YouTube
• "Survivors remember 1918 flu," NBC News
• "Pandemic Influenza of 1918: An Interview with Edna Register Boone." Alabama Public Health.
• "Grandfather's letter amid Spanish Flu gives family a glimpse at life under quarantine 100 years ago," Jenson Strock, wtol.com
• "Dining during an epidemic," by Jan Whitaker, Restaurant-ing Through History Blog
• "Theatre and the Last Pandemic," by Charlotte M. Canning, American Theater.
• "How the 1918 Flu Halted Hollywood," by Hadley Meares, Hollywood Reporter
• "The 1918 influenza did not kill the US economy," by Efraim Benmelech and Carola Frydman, VOX, CEPR Policy Portal
• "Economic Effects of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic: Implications for a Modern Day Pandemic," by Thomas A. Garrett, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (PDF)
• "The Lessons of the Elections of 1918," by Donna Searcey, The New York Times
• "The Spanish Influenza Pandemic of 1918: A Defining Characteristic in the Life and History of the American Family," by Ellie Vance, The Thetean.
• "The political lessons of the 1918 pandemic," by David Faris, The Week.

The Wingfoot Express took its maiden voyage around Chicago on July 21st, 1919. The 150-foot long airship was filled with hydrogen gas--lighter than air, but extremely flammable.

The dirigible caught fire in downtown Chicago, inside the Loop, right above the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank, at the corner of LaSalle Street and Jackson Boulevard. The entire ship was consumed in literally seconds. The five men aboard jumped and tried to inflate their parachutes, but only three were successful. One man, mechanic Carl Weaver, plunged through the skylight of the bank.

In this photo of the bank before the disaster, you can see how the interior was ringed by a circle of teller stations. They enclosed an area where typists, telegraphists, and other bank staff worked. For security purposes, this inner area could only be accessed through two gated entrances.

Flaming debris, including the engine and two full tanks, crashed through the skylight above this inner area, starting a massive fire and trapping employees inside.

This image of the interior of the bank after the disaster gives some sense of the horror of those trapped inside. 13 people died in the crash, ten of them bank employees.

Before radio, fans had few ways to follow a live baseball game. Newspapers would receive game updates by telegraph and posted results in their windows. In 1912, the Washington Post invested in an elaborate scoreboard system complete with lights indicating balls, strikes, and position on the field. You can see here fans gathered to "watch" the 1912 World Series.

The American and National Leagues kept player salaries low with the reserve clause, a provision in player contracts that kept players tied to one team and unable to negotiate higher salaries. The clause also made it difficult for new teams and new leagues to attract top-quality players. The Federal League, founded in 1913, tried to operate as a third major league and ended up suing the established leagues for operating an illegal monopoly.

This is an official scorecard of one Federal League Team, the Neward Peps.

The case came before Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. It couldn't have landed on the desk of anyone more deeply invested in the game of baseball.

At the start of World War I, team owners were desperate to keep the game going and their players out of the trenches. One attempt to demonstrate their patriotism was the practice, seen here, of holding drill sessions with players before games. The War Department was not impressed and made players eligible for the draft after the 1917 World Series.

The president of the American League, Ban Johnson, suggested reserving 18 players for each team and conscripting the rest. No one was impressed by this plan.

While more than one third of major league players enlisted, others went to work for factories in essential industries such as steel manufacturing or shipbuilding. The players spent far more time playing baseball for factory teams than painting or welding, and team owners worried that major league baseball would be run out of business by industrial ball.

Charles Comiskey, owner of the Chicago White Sox, denounced the factory team players as unpatriotic and sniffed that he wasn't sure he wanted them back on his team.

The 1918 World Series was held in early September at the request of the War Department, so the second, most deadly wave of the Spanish Flu pandemic was just getting started when baseball ended for the season. Nevertheless, at least some players took to the field in masks to prevent the spread of the disease.

I have been able to find out little about this photo. I don't know who was playing or the exact date. I wish I knew more--when and where the picture was taken would be a start. If I find out more, I will post it.

The 1919 White Sox had a fantastic team, with several top-notch players and one genuine superstar in Joe Jackson.

Shoeless Joe Jackson is one of baseball's all-time greatest players.

Eddie Cicotte was a fine pitcher and possibly the inventor of the knuckleball.

Lefty Williams was another strong pitcher for the White Sox.

Chick Gandil, on other hand, was just average. On the other hand, he had a reputation as being crooked and multiple contacts with gambling organizations.

Gandil's connections went all the way back to New York underworld figure Arnold Rothstein. Thoughtful and scheming, Rothstein inspired multiple fictional representations, including Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls.

The Cincinnati Reds beat the White Sox in the World Series five games to three. It was difficult to tell, watching the White Sox play, if some men on the team were playing to lose. Certainly, some of the players seemed off, but a player can have a run of bad luck. Other members of the team, such as the catcher, were sure something fishy was going on. Rumors swirled throughout the series and into the off-season that the the series had been fixed.

In the fall of 1920, the story broke open, the case went before the Cook County grand jury, and all eight players were indicted. Cicotte, Jackson and Williams confessed before the grand jury--after being told they would not be prosecuted if they told the truth. In fact, the person who made that promise, Charles Comiskey's attorney, had no power to make such a promise.

In the summer of 1921, the Black Sox went on trial for intent to injure the business of the Chicago White Sox. It was a difficult case to prove. Cicotte, Jackson and Williams retracted their confessions, and it proved impossible to get the gamblers in court. Ultimately, the men were acquitted.

Despite their acquittal, Judge Landis, now the Commissioner of Baseball, declare the men banned from baseball for life. This had the intended effect of cleaning up the game, but was seen then and now as unjust.

In this cartoon from 1921, a laundry woman, identified as the jury, shows Landis the White Sox uniforms and declares them "Clean and white!" Landis replies, "They look just th' same to me as they did before."

A myth arose about the Black Sox, that they were more sinned against than sinning--hard working, blue-collar guys who just wanted to play ball but were unfairly treated by the owners, the lawyers, and the commissioner. The ultimate expression of this myth is the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. In this scene the spirits of the players emerge from an Iowan cornfield to again play baseball.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• The Betrayal: The 1919 World Series and the Birth of Modern Baseball by Charles Fountain
• Black Sox Scandal Research Committee, from the Society for American Baseball Research
• City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago, by Gary Krist
• History of the Illinois Trust and Savings Bank
• "Horrified White Sox fans witness Wingfoot Express blimp disaster in Chicago," Jacob Pomrenke, Society for American Baseball Research
• "The History of How We Follow Baseball" by Philip Bump, The Atlantic
• Opinion | Forget What You Know About the Black Sox Scandal - The New York Times
• 'On Account of War' | Baseball Hall of Fame
• "1918 flu pandemic did not spare baseball" by Bill Francis, Baseball Hall of Fame
• The 1919 Chicago Black Sox Scandal w/ Charles Fountain - Most Notorious Podcast on Youtube
• Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the 1919 White Sox - ESPN
• Frank Sinatra - "Oldest Established Permanent Floating Crap Game" from Guys And Dolls (1955) - YouTube

William Monroe Trotter was one of the most significant civil rights leaders in Amerian history, yet he is little remembered today.

Trotter crossed the Atlantic on the SS Yarmouth as assistant cook--a strange position for a Harvard graduate with two degrees and a Phi Beta Kappa key.

Trotter's father James Monroe Trotter fought in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment during the Civil War. Afterward, he served as the first Recorder of Deeds for the District of Columbia, a lucrative position where he earned a small fortune. James' only son William would inherit both wealth and influence, but James insisted that this privilege should be employed to fight for African-American rights.

In 1899, William Monroe Trotter married Geraldine Pindell, known by friends and family as Deenie. She was passionate about civil rights as her husband.

A year after his marriage, Trotter decided to fulfill the mission laid upon him by his father by publishing a newspaper, The Guardian. The weekly was dedicated to exposing racial issues across the United States.

In 1905, Trotter, along with W.E.B. DuBois and several other black leaders, founded The Niagara Movement to advocate for civil rights and counter the message of the Tuskegee Machine. The organization collapsed within two years, largely because Trotter was so difficult to work with.

In 1909, DuBois joined other activists to establish the NAACP with much the same aims. Trotter rejected the group, which he saw as dominated by white donors and leaders and too timid to tackle real issues. In response, he founded his own organization, which in time would take the name the National Equal Rights League, or NERL.

The 1915 film The Birth of a Nation prompted immediate reaction from both the NAACP and Trotter's NERL. But those reactions took different forms. The NAACP focused on legal challenges and attempts to disprove the historical accuracy of the movie. The NERL organized public protests intended to demonstrate the depth of African-American opposition to whites.

Among the protests Trotter organized was this one in Boston Common. The photo is extremely poor quality, but you can get a sense of the size of the crowd.

At another Trotter-organized event, 11 protestors were arrested for disturbing the peace. Trotter was among them.

At the end of the Great War, a dozen or so other delegates were elected to present an appeal for equal rights and justice to the Peace Conference. Among them were Trotter and Madam C J Walker. Walker has an incredible story--she built her business selling cosmetics and hair care products to African-American women into one of wealthiest and most successful in the country.

At the same time Trotter was trying to get to Paris to present his appeal, W.E.B. Du Bois was organization the Pan-African Congress, which included representatives from African nations and the African diaspora.

When Trotter returned home from Paris, Red Summer had begun. Trotter focused on creating a new organization that would help African-Americans defend themselves, using force against force.

The ABB ceased to be a secret in 1921 when the armed response of African-Americans during the Tulsa Race Massacre horrified white Americans. The ABB was accused of conspiracy with all of the usual suspects of the era, including the Reds and the Wobblies. In this case, the Reds, were, in fact, a factor. Within a few years, the ABB had been absorbed by the American Communist Party.

As these images show, whole blocks of Tulsa were burned to the ground, including the entire Greenwood Neighborhood, known as the "Negro Wall Street." It's unknown how many people died in Tulsa

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter by Kerri K. Greenidge — Greenidge's book was my essential guide during this episode. I highly recommend the book. Trotter fought far more battles than I had time to describe, and Greenidge does a fantastic job of placing his life in the context of the time and place.
• "The Legacy of a Radical Black Newspaperman" by Casey Cep, The New Yorker
• Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
• "Woodrow Wilson was extremely racist — even by the standards of his time" by Dylan Matthews, Vox
• "The Crisis," NAACP, January 1915 — This issue of "The Crisis" contains Trotter's description of his 1915 encounter with Woodrow Wilson, as well as several responses. The article begins on pages 119. It's also worth look at the other articles for insight into the time.
• "The Birth of a Nation: How the fight to censor D.W. Griffith’s film shaped American history." by Dorian Lynskey, Slate
• "The Black Activist Who Fought Against D. W. Griffith’s 'The Birth of a Nation'" by Richard Brody, The New Yorker
• W.E.B. Du Bois, "Close Ranks," Editorial from "The Crisis"
• A Letter From Camp Devens | American Experience — At the height of the flu pandemic, one of the doctors at Boston's Camp Devens wrote a letter to a friend and fellow physician describing his experience. Deenie Trotter was a regular visitor at the camp, where she visited with soldiers, until she died of influenza in October 1919.
• Africa and World War I | World War I | DW
• The First World War and its consequences in Africa | UNESCO
• Home | Thugs and Miracles — Ben's podcast is a huge amount of fun and a great look at the wild and wacky kings and queens of France. Highly recommend you check it out!

Colonel Charles Hagadorn was a respected officer who had served in the Philippines, Northern Mexico, and Panama as well as at West Point as a drawing instructor. His suicide was reported across the United States.

Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois was like many of the army camps thrown together after the United States declared war on Germany. The camp's experience with the Spanish Flu was not unusual; many camps were devasted by the pandemic. In this photo, soldiers at the camp play baseball, probably during the months either before or after the flu, since during the crisis all hands were needed to care for the sick and tend to the dead.

This photo depicts typical hospital conditions in army camps. It was taken at Camp Funston in Kansas, which some researchers believe was where the flu virus originated. Unusually virulent cases of flu had been reported in Kansas, and the camp saw some of the first cases in the United States. That did not stop the camp from sending soldiers to other camps across the country and to Europe.

Despite the fact that cases of flu had been reported among navy personnel in Philadelphia, the city went ahead with its massive Liberty Loan parade in September 1918. The streets were packed with several hundred thousand people. Within days, tens of thousands fell ill.

As the crisis continued, the Archbishop threw open churches for use as hospitals, ordered seminary students to help bury the dead, and allowed cloistered nuns to serve as nurses.

Toward the end of the pandemic, the city had to recruit workers to dig mass graves for the dead.

Cities tried to implement measures to limit the spread of the disease. Spitting on the street was a frequent target.

Islands and remote communities tried to impose quarantines to keep out the sickness. Many of these, as in Prince Edward Island, Canada and Australia, proved ineffective. However, Gunnison, Colorado's strict restrictions kept the flu out of the community.

Despite the dire situation, many governments tried to downplay the seriousness of the flu. They considered it important to maintain morale and avoid panic. The Albuquerque Morning Journal argued that fear took more lives than the disease.

The flu was a global disaster, although I have found it difficult to find photos that give a real sense of its scope. This image is from Tokyo and shows schoolgirls wearing gauze masks in an attempt to prevent spreading or catching the disease. Masks were worn around the world during the flu outbreak.

I mentioned in the episode the terrible losses in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Native villages across Alaska were hit particularly hard by the flu, and thousands of orphans were left in the aftermath of the pandemic. This photo shows a group of these orphans at the Kanakanak government orphanage.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, seen here in a photo from 1915, was one of many political and social leaders who became seriously ill with the flu.

Katherine Anne Porter, pictured here about 1912, nearly died in the influenza epidemic and was one of few writers of the era to chronicle her experience.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that no matter how terrible the crisis, someone will try to make money off of it. The Victor Victrola dealer of Billings, Montana, for example, informed the public they could still enjoy music even while concert halls and movie theaters were closed if they bought their own record player.

• Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

Support The Year That Was

Links:

• Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney — Spinney's book focuses on the spread of the globe across the world and how it changed the society's where it struck. Vivid and detailed--a great read.
• The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John M. Barry — Barry's book concentrates on the medical response to the influenza pandemic as well as considers possible origins of the H1N1 virus. Another well-written and compelling book.
• "Ireland and the great flu epidemic of 1918" by John Dorney, The Irish Story — This article details the impact of the flu within Ireland and specifically discusses the role of the women's nationalist movement Cumann na mBan.
• "How the Spanish flu of 1918 Changed India" by Laura Spinney, The Caravan — Spinney also wrote this article for The Caravan magazine that looks specifically at the effect of the pandemic on India.
• DeBoice, Benjamin S. - Interview and Memoir : The Oral History Collection of the University of Illinois at Springfield — Benjamin DeBoice's description of his nightmare train journey to Georgia makes for fascinating reading. His full oral history transcript is available from the Illinois Digital Archives.
• Oral Histories · Going Viral: Impact and Implications of the 1918 Flu Pandemic · UNC Libraries — The interview with Nannie and James Pharis is also fascinating reading for insight into the flu pandemic. Scroll about halfway down the page; you can both read a transcript and listen to the audio. Several other oral histories about the flu are also available from this page; they are all fascinating.