THE SCOURGE
Whenever I think of the influenza epidemic in New York City there
flashes before me a series of mental pictures, pictures so indelibly
stamped on my mind that I believe they will go with me to the grave. In
each of them, in all of them, I see myself walking through the slums of
the great city as through the Valley of the shadow of Death.
But unlike the valley through which Christian passed I could not make
out even the narrowest of safe pathways. So far as my vision extended my
next step might plunge me into the ditch wherein the blind lead the
blind, or into some bottomless quag. And always over me, over the whole
of each of these pictures, Death spread his black wings.
In none of these pictures do I see myself ill with influenza. Yet I had
it. According to my diary I remained in bed one day, took five capsules,
and had one meal brought to me by a young music-teacher who occupied the
room under mine in Miss O’Brien’s Greenwich Village rooming-house. This
young woman had a music class in New Jersey, from which after a lesson
she returned with a slight cold. Within twenty-four hours she had an
unmistakable case of the “flu.”
Being the only other woman roomer—Hildegarde Hook having failed to make
her tea-room go had gone to live in her basement—it fell to my lot to
see that the music-teacher did not starve. Mornings before going to work
I would go to Sixth Avenue and buy food and medicines to last her during
the day, and evenings on my return from work I would again go shopping,
getting what was necessary to make her night comfortable.
Just when she was able to crawl out of her bed I crawled into mine.
Besides a few outstanding facts, all the details of my attack of
influenza have been rubbed from my memory.
But nothing can ever erase, or I believe make less vivid, my memory of
Bellevue Hospital during those terrible heart-breaking months—packed
beyond its doors newly admitted patients had to wait in passageways on
stretchers resting on chairs or other makeshift props. No sick person
may be turned away from the doors of New York’s great city hospital;
room must be found for them however crowded the wards, however
overworked the nurses and the doctors. How those nurses and doctors
worked during the influenza! how everybody connected with Bellevue
worked! To remain on duty, going without sleep and snatching a few
mouthfuls of food when opportunity offered, was not considered worth
mentioning—so many nurses and doctors did more.
While the pressure on Bellevue’s staff of social service workers was
very great, far above normal, it was not so continuous. Though their
days did stretch into the nights they did finally get home for a few
hours’ rest and sleep. There are persons who claim that Miss Wadley, the
head of the social service department, did not leave her desk during the
entire epidemic;—that day and night she sat there at the telephone,
listening to pleadings from parents that she send assistance to sick
ones left at home, or to the demands of persons half-mad with anxiety
that she locate for them some one dear to them who had failed to return
home.
For that—the unexplained disappearance of persons—was one of the hideous
features of the epidemic in the tenement districts. The workers of a
family, scourged on by the additional necessity of having sickness in
their home circle, would start out of a morning when they themselves
felt ready to drop. During the day, while at work, they would drop and
be taken to a hospital. Even had their employers, or fellow employees,
the inclination to notify the family of the stricken one, they would not
be able to do so, because in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they did
not know their home address.
Because I was not a trained nurse Miss Wadley set me to work running
down missing parents, and putting children orphaned during the epidemic
out to board. It was while looking up the parents of Francisco LaCastro
that I was first brought face to face with the puzzling dread caused by
a person dropping out of sight. Miss Wadley was notified by the hospital
that Francisco, though able to leave the hospital, had not been called
for by his parents. She turned the case over to me. According to
Francisco’s entrance-card, he was three years old, and lived at a
certain number on Sullivan Street.
Accustomed to tenement conditions, on reaching the address I set about
looking for the janitor. After much knocking, the door was opened by a
tiny girl. Yes, her mother was janitor—here the tiny mite began to sob.
From her sobs I learned that a policeman in a hospital wagon had carried
her mother off. Furthermore, that her father had been in a hospital, but
was out and had gone to work. Also that three children older and two
younger than herself were still in the hospital.
One of many peculiar features of tenement-dwellers is that few of them
know the names of their neighbors, even when on intimate terms. A
janitor knows the names of the persons occupying flats in her house
because, on receiving rent, she has to give a receipt. This house on
Sullivan Street was occupied exclusively by Italians. Though I called at
every one of the twenty-four flats no one could tell me anything about
the LaCastro family.
On the fifth floor my knock at one of the doors was not answered.
Deciding that this must be the flat occupied by Francisco’s parents, I
made a second trip through the house looking for some one who could tell
me anything about the persons who lived in it. After many questions I
finally learned that the silent flat had been occupied by the family of
a man who brought home bread each night, “grand bread.”
Nobody could tell me what had become of the man or his wife, only that
two of his children had been taken away by their grandmother. Where did
this grandmother live? Then recalling that a notification had been sent
by Bellevue to Francisco’s parents, I went after the postman.
Fortunately, I found him on the block. He gave me an address on Bleecker
Street.
I found the grandmother, an ancient Spanish dame, and with the aid of a
five-year-old neighbor learned that she was treasuring six, to her
unreadable, communications from Bellevue. Five of these were
black-bordered, and announced the death of her daughter and four of that
daughter’s children. Francisco was the only member of her daughter’s
family left.
“But your daughter’s husband, Francisco’s father, what has become of
him?” I asked.
When this was translated to her she shrugged her shoulders. When I asked
my five-year-old interpreter what the old woman’s shrug meant I received
another shrug for my pains. Near my wits’ end I hit on the plan of
taking both ancient dame and interpreter to the bake-shop on the street
floor of the house.
“Sure, I can speak to ’em,” the young Russian woman behind the counter
assured me. “I speak ten languages and about as many gibberishes.”
Through this woman I learned that Francisco’s father had gone to work
the same as usual one day about two weeks back, and had never again been
heard from. He was a baker’s helper, that everybody knew, but not one of
them could tell, or even make a guess, where he worked. Only one of his
children had been taken to the hospital before he disappeared. Again
that shrug.
The next instant there came a wild jumble of sounds. As ignorant as I
was of Spanish I recognized that the old woman who was filling the door
of the bake-shop was cursing that other old woman, Francisco’s
grandmother. It was the other grandmother, the mother of Francisco’s
father.
She called down vengeance from heaven to punish the detractors of her
son. He had not left home, deserted his family because a new baby was
expected, nor because his eldest boy had been taken to Bellevue and the
other children were ailing. Then wringing her hands she bewailed the
loss of her son; she had worked, she had brought him to America, and now
he had been murdered by some unknown enemy. How was she to find her boy?
This last wail being directed to me, the only American in the crowd of
about one hundred collected about the entrance of the bake-shop, I asked
the Russian woman to tell her about Francisco. On being made to
understand she snatched the handful of Bellevue notices from the fingers
of her son’s mother-in-law. Though a poor woman with no money in bank,
she hurled back at her rival, she would take care of her own flesh and
blood, she would go at once for Francisco.
Without the formality of getting either hat or coat she boarded the next
surface-car. On returning to Bellevue I learned that Francisco had been
turned over to his grandmother. Writing out a history of the case I
marked it closed.
Some ten days later, between eight and nine o’clock of an evening, there
walked into the reception-room of the social service department a man so
thin and pale that but for the blackness of his clothes and the brown of
his hair he might have been almost invisible. He asked to see his wife
and four children, all in Bellevue.
Had he spoken to the man in the entrance office? Yes, and been sent to
the social service department. That meant trouble—the straightening out
of some tangle or, perhaps, breaking the news of a death.
Those of us workers in earshot stopped what we had been doing to listen.
When the man gave his name, LaCastro, I realized that it was my task,
and stepped forward.
Did he know that his mother had taken Francisco home? I asked. A wan
smile and a flicker of light in his lustreless eyes as he told me he was
glad to hear that. The friend who had gone out from the New York
Hospital ahead of him had come back to tell him that his wife and all
his children had been taken to Bellevue.
Yes, that was some time ago, soon after he came to himself in the
hospital. He wasn’t feeling very well when he left home that morning,
and later when he fainted at his work the boss had him taken direct to
the New York Hospital. Would I please tell him in which ward he would
find his wife and four children.
I read him a part of Francisco’s history, giving the date of each death.
After a brief silence he asked if—if he might see them? Would he find
them in the morgue? Feeling sure that he would be allowed, I started
back to telephone, to find out if he must go around to the Twenty-ninth
Street entrance.
He called me back. There was a flicker of the same light in his eyes
that had shown when told that his mother had taken Francisco. Where was
his baby? His wife was about to be confined. There must be a baby.
That meant going more deeply into the case. After telephoning back and
forth I was told:
“Lived less than two hours.” On giving him this additional blow I turned
again to telephone the morgue.
“LaCastro?” the voice at the other end of the wire questioned. A short
wait followed. “LaCastro, mother and baby, buried together, and four
children. Yes, all buried the same day.”
The expression of that man, not his face alone, but the whole man,
remains stamped on my memory as typical of the tenement-dweller before
the war—his meek acceptance of conditions, his humility as he thanked
me. Sometimes I have wondered if Lazarus may not have thanked the dogs
that licked his sores with the same expression, Lazarus starving, with
feasting and plenty surrounding him.
Another hunt on which Miss Wadley sent me had a somewhat different
ending. In this case the missing person was a baby of about eleven
months. The mother, after seeing her husband and five older children
taken to hospitals with influenza, had finally succumbed herself. Now,
after being in Bellevue some twelve hours, she missed her baby. What had
become of her baby? It was up to me to find out.
There came a time when I all but gave up hope of finding out. It was
near the middle of the day, after I had run down everything that had the
slightest semblance of a clew. It was in a tenement below Brooklyn
Bridge, one of those tall, narrow tenements, jammed between other tall,
narrow tenements. Dark and smelly, with crooked stone steps and slimy
stone walls. The flat in which the family lived was on the next to the
top floor, and by much searching I discovered a woman who knew them, and
who also could speak enough English to tell me all she knew. Having
begun with this woman, after four hours’ fruitless search I came back to
her.
Sure, she would show me the flat in which the Kouschmitzky family lived.
She had been there when the ambulance came for the mother, and the
officer had handed her the key. Having failed to learn anything by other
means I thought there might be a chance of getting her to remember some
fact, some clew overlooked or forgotten, by taking her into the flat.
We had hardly set foot in the rooms before her baby on the top floor
began to yell. Mother-like she was out and running up the stairs before
I caught my breath. Realizing that there was nothing for it but to wait,
I dragged a chair to the one window showing a light nearest daylight,
and sat down.
I was so tired that I must have dozed off for a second or two. Something
aroused me, and listening I became conscious of a faint sound, something
in the room stirring. The door of the flat was shut, the sound was
between me and it. My heart in my mouth, I rose noiselessly to my feet
and stood listening, listening hard.
The sound was more distinct though still faint. It was as though
something, something soft was being dragged across the floor. Listening
breathlessly I located the sound and turned my eyes toward the bed.
The dirtiest baby I had ever seen came crawling out. No floor-cloth was
ever dirtier than that youngster’s clothes. And it was as full of
chuckles and coos as its clothes were of dust. Never a cry nor a whine.
It cooed when I spoke to it, chuckled when I took it up. When the
neighbor came racing back and gave it a sup of her baby’s milk it
gurgled with delight.
If my memories of the influenza epidemic could all end as my search for
that baby did! There would be no long line of coffins before a church in
the tenement districts waiting for burial. Neither could I call to mind
a closed door, leading to the front room, the one room in the flat in
which there was outside air.
The mother had died in Bellevue, two small children were still there.
The two older girls—both had been working before stricken down by the
“flu”—refused to go to the hospital, stubbornly remaining at home. It
was my second visit—made not because it was part of my work, but on my
own initiative, in the hope of persuading them to go to a hospital.
Failing in this, I asked:
“Why don’t you girls go into the front room? The windows open on the
avenue; you’d get outside air. That court is no wider than a well.” I
waited. Both girls cast down their eyes. Then I added: “I can get the
woman next door to help me move your beds.” I made a move toward the
entrance-door.
The elder of the two sisters threw out her hand. There was an expression
of desperation in the gesture that brought me quickly to a halt.
“Father’s in there,” she said, in a soundless sort of tone.
“Your father?” I questioned, and for a moment fancied she had gone mad,
for I distinctly recalled that they had told me of their father’s death,
how he had insisted on going to their mother’s funeral and, catching
more cold, had died that night. “Your father?” I repeated.
“It was Bridges, the undertaker,” the younger girl whispered. “He laid
father out, and—and when he found that—that we didn’t have enough money
to pay for a funeral, he said—he said he wouldn’t do no more.”
After all, is it more heartless to refuse to put a dead person in his
grave when money is lacking to pay for a funeral than it is to put
living persons out of their home when money is lacking to pay the rent?
Many, many families were dispossessed in the tenement districts of New
York during and immediately after the influenza epidemic. There was a
great to-do made about undertakers taking advantage of people’s
misfortunes. How about tenement landlords? I have seen enough of
tenement conditions to know that the landlords, as a class, are better
off in this world’s goods than the tenement undertakers as a class.
I am grateful that as an inspector of dog licenses for the American
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals I saw the tenements of
New York under more normal conditions. Though I remained in this work
more than two years, and came to know my district about as well as the
average New Yorker knows his back yard, there are houses the door-sills
of which I dreaded to cross: the house in which I found a dying mother
trying to suckle a dead baby; that in which I struggled with another
mother, driven mad by fear for her children when her husband lost his
job as a street-car conductor; and yet another in which I witnessed the
return of a father from prison to his shattered home—his flat stripped
of all that could be sold or pawned, his two children in Bellevue, and
his wife and newborn baby on a bed loaned by a neighbor, both dying.
Did Dante picture a blacker hell than the slums of New York City during
the influenza epidemic? In all those months of dread, suffering,
despair, and death never once in those tenement districts did I meet or
hear of a Protestant minister of the Gospel.