1918 Influenza pandemic felt directly in U.S., military, Laconia

Part 5 of a series.

LACONIA — The “Spanish Flu” pandemic of 102 years ago had begun to be felt directly by Laconians in November 1918. 

Deaths of local soldiers and sailors in military service — at training camps and on board ships — had begun to be reported. 

Back in September, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a soldier stationed at Camp Devens in Massachusetts had been sent to the hospital and misdiagnosed with meningitis. 

The next day, “more than a dozen more were sent to the Devens’ hospital. At its worst point during the pandemic, 1,543 soldiers at Devens alone were diagnosed with the flu in a single day.” 

Camp Devens was just 35 miles from Boston which was, at the time, one of the nation’s five most populous cities. From there it spread into cities. 

As the CDC notes, “The numbers were staggering. In a single day in Philadelphia, 759 people died from flu-related illnesses.” 

Putting the scope of the pandemic in perspective, World War I “claimed an estimated 16 million lives.” The influenza “that swept the world in 1918 killed an estimated 50 million people.” 

Young adults, “usually unaffected by these types of infectious diseases, were among the hardest hit groups along with the elderly and young children.” 

The flu “afflicted over 25 percent of the U.S. population. In one year, the average life expectancy in the United States dropped by 12 years,” the CDC noted. 

By mid-November, The Laconia Democrat reported that the city had “been especially fortunate in the great war, inasmuch as we have had approximately half a thousand men in the service in the various branches, and our casualty list has been remarkably light.” 

Two Laconia boys had been killed, Earl McGrath of Lakeport, and “Jack” Holland, a Laconia native, who was however credited to Massachusetts as he resided there at the time of his enlistment. 

Of course, other Laconia soldiers and sailors had “been wounded and gassed, a few taken prisoner by the Germans and several have died of disease, but taken as a whole Laconia has been lucky, considering the large number of our boys who did their bit in the world war,” the article continued. 

A week later, word was received that Janet McIntosh, a former nurse at the Laconia Hospital, had died, Oct. 31, at the Post Hospital, Rock Island Arsenal, Ill., where she had been doing military duty prior to going overseas, for which she had enlisted in January 1918. 

Nurse McIntosh had succumbed to influenza and was given a military funeral prior to burial in Canada. 

In the midst of the pandemic, the war ended in Europe with the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918.

By the first week of December, The Democrat noted that there were 380 locals in service — the numbers fluctuated with the reporting — and the troops were starting to come home.

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Note: Information about the 1918 pandemic was taken from “The Deadliest Flu: The Complete Story of the Discovery and Reconstruction of the 1918 Pandemic Virus,” available on-line at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://tinyurl.com/stqg3tr) and from the CDC’s “1918 Pandemic Influenza Historic Timeline” (https://tinyurl.com/y83bp7od). 

The local references were taken from the microfilm files of The Laconia Democrat at the Laconia Public Library.