Between August 14 and August 19, 1908, the Pennsylvania Training School for Feeble-minded Children at Elwyn admitted seven new “inmates,” part of the yearly influx of new arrivals before the school year began. They ranged in age from seven to twenty and received diagnoses at the highest (“high grade imbecile”) and lowest (“excitable idiot”) ends of the classification scale used by Elwyn’s superintendent, Dr. Martin Barr. During their time at Elwyn some of them learned woodworking, floor scrubbing, laundry, or chicken keeping. Their unpaid labor was crucial to the maintenance of Elwyn’s budget and staffing levels, both of which were stretched impossibly thin. Other “inmates” were deemed “helpless.”
The Ghosts of Great Lakes
In 1918 in the northern suburban fringe of Chicago, an insidious illness killed twice the number of naval personnel in two months than combat did during the entire First World War. The so-called Spanish influenza epidemic swept through Great Lakes Naval Training Station “like the Black Plague,” recalled Martin Birkham, a YMCA volunteer at the training station.[1] The hard choices made at Great Lakes should haunt us today.
Flu in the Arctic Text
Influenza arrives in AK. “While Spanish Influenza will not come to Alaska as quickly as it spread across the continent, it will be here in time,” said Dr. L.O. Sloane, public health officer, this morning. -The Alaska Daily Empire, Oct. 5, 1918. The Empire’s Readers did not have to wait long. By Oct. 14, the paper reported 4 cases in Juneau. On Oct. 20, 36 people arrived in Nome on the steamship Victoria. Though mail bags were fumigated, the sickness was carried across western & northern Alaska, likely following postal & mining trails. The impact was immediate. This was especially true for Indigenous communities.
Flu in the Arctic: Influenza in Alaska, 1918
Influenza arrives in AK. “While Spanish Influenza will not come to Alaska as quickly as it spread across the continent, it will be here in time,” said Dr. L.O. Sloane, public health officer, this morning. -The Alaska Daily Empire, Oct. 5, 1918. The Empire’s Readers did not have to wait long. By Oct. 14, the paper reported 4 cases in Juneau. On Oct. 20, 36 people arrived in Nome on the steamship Victoria. Though mail bags were fumigated, the sickness was carried across western & northern Alaska, likely following postal & mining trails. The impact was immediate. This was especially true for Indigenous communities.