Pandemics Archives - Petaluma Historian

Lessons from the 1918 Pandemic

(l to r) Bernice, Roy, Vernon, and Doris Casarotti at the family farm on Magnolia Avenue, Petaluma, 1918. Their uncle, Henry Casarotti, died from the influenza on November 19, 1918. (Courtesy of Kris Rossi)

The Friday before Christmas of 1918, Gladys Goodwin came down with a cold while commuting home on the electric train from Sebastopol, where she worked as a secretary for the Western Apple Vinegar Company. Disembarking at the Petaluma train depot, she walked the two blocks to her family’s home at East D and Edith streets. It was the last time she would leave the house. Within days her cold developed into pneumonia, and in a week she was dead, a victim of the influenza pandemic.

It had been two months since the pandemic hit Petaluma, and just one month since the mandatory mask order and social distancing restrictions shuttering all theaters, dance halls, libraries, schools, and churches, had been lifted. Like many others, with the steep decline in the infection rate, Gladys Goodwin was looking forward to a relatively normal Christmas, especially in the aftermath of Armistice Day, which had marked the official end of World War I on November 11th.

According to records kept by the California Board of Health, the two-month influenza outbreak had been devasting to Sonoma County, with 18,635 report cases and 258 related deaths. Twenty-four of those deaths occurred in Petaluma, whose population stood at 7,550. California as a whole reported 230,845 cases and 13,340 deaths. Pneumonia, which became the largest secondary infection of the influenza, killed another 5,285. Together, the two diseases resulted in a 37 percent increase in the state’s mortality rate in 1918.

Gladys Goodwin, 1893-1918 (courtesy of Suzanne Miller)

Gladys Goodwin was a bright, attractive, 25-year old with a sunny disposition. Born in Petaluma, she was one of 12 children of Captain Billy Goodwin, who piloted scow schooners up and down the Petaluma River, and his wife Jennie. After local officials lifted social distancing restrictions just before Thanksgiving, she undoubtedly joined others afflicted with cabin fever in packing the city’s movie houses, theaters, parks, and churches.

It turned out to be a temporary reprieve. A second wave of influenza came at Christmas, claiming Goodwin as one of its first victims. It spiked in January with 69,053 cases in California, leading to 3,500 deaths. Petaluma health officials reinstated social distancing protocols, rescinding them once the second infection wave plunged at the end of February. Then came a third, relatively minor wave in April, forcing the closure of Petaluma schools for the remainder of the school year.

By the time summer arrived, California had experienced another 99,058 cases of influenza and pneumonia since January, resulting in 5,465 deaths, 24 of them in Petaluma. Gladys Goodwin was among those most vulnerable, as Californians most ravaged by the influenza were in the 25-to-34 age group. Their deaths dramatically lowered the state’s average life expectancy from 52 years in 1917 to 40.6 years in 1918.

State health officials reported feeling impotent in the face of the rapidly spreading infection, resulting in confusion and a lack of proper utilization of the scanty means of control they had available. Their efforts were further complicated by “slackers” practicing civil disobedience or merely adopting a lax attitude toward social distancing and wearing masks.

Health officials also deplored the useless and misguided efforts to check the pandemic, including the use of dubious tonics, whiskey prescribed by doctors, and snake oil concoctions. California historian Brendan Riley cited accounts of mothers telling their children to stuff salt up their noses and wear bags of camphor around their necks, and of a four-year-old girl in Oregon said to have recovered after being dosed by her mother with onion syrup and then covered in raw onions for three days.

The winter of 1920 brought with it a fourth and final wave of the disease. Although its mortality rate was half that of the previous winter’s wave, Petaluma was harder hit than other cities its size, reporting 319 cases and five deaths by February of 1920. The city health board issued another ban on social gatherings, once again closing theaters, dance halls, schools, and churches. But by the time the wave subsided, local influenza deaths in 1920 totaled 17.

Petaluma General Hospital, 619 Sixth Street, established 1912 (Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library)

Although a vaccine was discovered that reduced pneumonia as a secondary infection, no vaccine for the influenza itself was ever found. Instead, the pandemic eventually trailed off. Between 1918 and 1920, California experienced 20,801 influenza deaths, and another 10,424 related pneumonia deaths. Petaluma’s combined total was 66.

Like most small town hospitals at the time, Petaluma General at Sixth and I streets lacked intensive care doctors who really understood how to treat the very sickest patients. In the case of Gladys Goodwin, the rapid pace at which her infection was such that she never made it to the hospital. She died at her family’s home on East D Street.

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A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier.

SOURCES:

Twenty-sixth Biennial Report of the State Board of Health of California, For the Fiscal Years from July 1, 1918 to June 30, 1920, California State Printing Office, 1921.

Twenty-seventh Biennial Report of the State Board of Health of California, For the Fiscal Years from July 1, 1920 to June 30, 1922, California State Printing Office, 1923.

Petaluma Argus: “Petaluma Theaters Close Until Further Notice,” October 19, 1918; “Mask Order is Issued,” October 22, 1918; “An Appeal to the Women of Petaluma,” October 28, 1918; “Still Reasons for Concern On Endemic Says County Doctor,” October 30, 1918; “Masks Afford Much Merriment,” November 6, 1918; “Mask Slackers Are Fined,” November 9, 1918; “You Can Take Off Your Mask,” November 22, 1918; “The Programs at the Theaters,” November 25, 1918; “Says Cold Weather Brings Return of Influenza,” January 10, 1919; “School Closes for a Week,” April, 13, 1919; “Board Decides to Keep Schools Closed,” April 19, 1919; “Ban Will Soon Be Lifted,” February 24, 1920; “Somebody Will Get into Trouble,” February 24, 1920.

Petaluma Courier: “Many Cases of Influenza,” October 15, 1918; “Death at Lytton Home,” October 17, 1918; “Discuss Closing of Theaters,” October 19, 1918; “Precaution Taken by Board of Health,” October 20, 1918; “Funeral of J. Biaggi,” October 30, 1918; “Everyone Must Wear Masks in Petaluma,” November 2, 1918; “Petaluma’s Joyful Peace Parade,” November 12, 1918; “Many Masks Were Burned by Crowds,” November 23, 1918; “Health Board in Session,” February 14, 1920; “Ban Will be Lifted,” February 27, 1920.

Santa Rosa Republican: “Keeping Influenza Down,” February 3, 1919; “Influenza Ban May Not Lift Monday in Petaluma,” February 26, 1920.

Brendan Riley, “Old Reports Show Pandemic Impact in Solano
County,” Vallejo Times-Herald, May 10, 2020.

Gaye LeBaron column, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 28, 2020.

Jeff Elliott, Someone You Know Died Today, and Likewise Tomorrow,” Santa Rosa History, October 7, 2018, santarosahistory.com

Petaluma’s 1918-1920 Pandemic Battle

Staff of G.P. McNear’s Grain Hay & Grain Mill at B and Main streets, November 18, 1918. Top row, left to right: Miss M. George , Miss V. Elfring, Miss A. Turner, M. Madeira, Miss N. Doss, Mrs. C. Parr, Mrs. F. Frasier, Mrs. C. Barkin, Miss M. Wessela, Mr. C. N. Behrens, Mr. M. L. Hunt, Mr. Hiram Hopkins, Mr. A. H. Askill, Mr. Elmer Starke.

In June of 1918, the government deployed Petaluma’s mayor, a saddle maker named A.W. Horwege, to Portland, Oregon, to run a large saddle plant for the U.S. Cavalry fighting in World War I. Chosen to fill his remaining term was city councilman Dr. Harry S. Gossage, a prominent local surgeon. Aside from a minor deficit in the city’s budget, Gossage’s mayoral challenges appeared relatively routine.

The main news that summer was that American forces fighting in Europe had achieved their first major victory, marking a turning point in the war. However, on the horizon signs of a larger threat loomed, one, it turned out, Mayor Gossage was uniquely qualified for.

It began with word from Spain that a deadly influenza was spreading across the continent. American media, mistakenly assuming the disease had originated in Spain, tagged it the Spanish Flu. The influenza soon spread to U.S. military bases, and by midsummer Petaluma newspapers were running obituaries of local enlisted men stationed in army camps out East and in the Midwest.

In mid-September, as allied forces began their final offense of the war in Europe, a San Francisco man returning from a visit to Chicago brought back the disease. Although he was immediately quarantined in a hospital, by the first week of October influenza had spread to a couple hundred people in San Francisco. A week later, the pandemic reached Sonoma County, where it claimed its first victim, Helen Groul, a young girl living at the Salvation Army orphanage in Lytton, north of Healdsburg. She was among 153 children at the orphanage stricken with influenza.

As local newspapers began running obituaries of former Petaluma residents killed by the disease in other parts of the Bay Area, Dr. Gossage, who also chaired the city’s board of health, held a special meeting of the city council on the epidemic. Although no cases of influenza had been reported in Petaluma, the mayor raised the issue of a general closure to get ahead of it.

Many feared such an order would do more harm than good, inducing panic and crippling the economy, and ultimately proving ineffective. Others argued it was probably too late to take such action, as Santa Rosa already had sixty reported cases, and California overall 19,000 cases.

On October 19th, California’s State Board of Health ordered the closure of all theaters, dance halls, and schools, along with a ban on public gatherings. Churches were exempted, although it was strongly recommended they either cancel services or hold them in the open air, which is what St. Vincent’s Catholic Church did two days later.

Despite the closures and gatherings ban, the centerpiece of the state’s crusade against the influenza was the face mask. Initially, a mandatory mask order was issued only to health care workers and members of households where there were cases of influenza.

But within days of the closure order, nearly everyone on the streets of Petaluma was wearing a mask. “Sewsters” at the Red Cross were busy making them for anyone who wanted one, with prices capped at ten cents each ($2 in today’s currency) to hinder profiteering. People were advised to boil their masks once a day for sanitary purposes, and detailed instructions were issued in the newspapers for those who wished to sew their own masks.

The influenza arrived in Petaluma the third week of October, quickly claiming the life of Joseph Biaggi, a Swiss-Italian farmworker, as its first casualty. On November 1st, Mayor Gossage issued a mandatory mask order for anyone venturing outside, as well as to merchants and their clerks, and people working in offices.

Petaluma Courier, October 25, 1918; photo above of employees of George P. McNear’s Feed Mill, B Street and Petlauma Boulevard South, 1918, including Ada Fay Turner, top row, third from left (Petaluma Historical Museum & Library)

Wearing a mask immediately became of a symbol of wartime patriotism. The Red Cross bluntly declared that “the man or woman or child who will not wear a mask now is a dangerous slacker.” It worked for most residents, but there were still many slackers who flaunted the order by wearing their masks beneath their noses or else around their neck while smoking. Petaluma police began arresting and fining slackers $1 for the first offense, and $5 for the second ($20 and $100 in today’s currency).

Due to a shortage of nurses—many of them were away, serving in the war effort—the health system was quickly overwhelmed, as was the telephone system, which doctors, nurses, and druggists depended upon for communicating with patients. Things became worse when a number of women operators at the local switchboard came down with the flu. The Petaluma Argus issued an appeal to women to refrain from “gossiping on the line,” so as to reserve the phone system for those critically ill.

The declaration of Armistice Day on November 11th, marking the end of World War I, sent a record number of people wearing masks into the streets of Petaluma for a celebratory parade. Two weeks later, as the local epidemic subsided, Mayor Gossage suspended the mandatory mask order, authorizing the opening of schools, theaters, dance halls, and churches just in time for Thanksgiving. The next day, a large crowd gathered on Main Street near the town clock and celebrated by burning their masks in a large metal tub.

Armistice Day Parade, November 11, 1918, at corner of B Street and Petaluma Boulevard South (Petaluma Historical Museum & Library)

The reprieve proved to be only temporary. A second wave of influenza came roaring back at Christmas, with 243 new cases and 35 deaths reported in San Francisco.

People were again warned to avoid crowds, and for a few weeks Santa Rosa reinstated its mask order. A third but relatively milder wave followed in April of 1919, forcing the closure of Petaluma schools for the remainder of the school year.

By that time, 305,856 cases of influenza had been reported in California, and 20,904 deaths, making for a ratio of 68 deaths per thousand cases. 175 of the deaths had occurred in Sonoma County. The Petaluma Box Factory, which made wooden boxes and crates for the shipping of fruit and eggs—including in 1918 a government order for half a million wood fruit baskets to be sent to war-torn France— was issued a government commission to make emergency caskets.

Tom Garside (far right) and fellow carpenters at Petaluma Box Factory, H and First streets, commissioned to make emergency caskets in 1919. (photo courtesy of Deneane Glazier Ashcraft)

In May, with the influenza appearing to be over, an exhausted Dr. Gossage, who had balanced his mayoral duties with those of treating his patients, announced he would not run for reelection that summer, but instead devote his time to his family and medical practice.

The following winter however, the cold weather brought a fourth and final wave of the disease. Although its mortality rate was half that of the previous winter’s influenza, Petaluma was hit harder than other cities its size, reporting 319 cases and 5 deaths by February of 1920. The city health board issued another ban on gatherings and closed all theaters, dance halls, schools, and churches.

To the board’s dismay, slackers continued to hold dinners, card parties, and social gatherings in defiance of the ban, apparently not willing to let the many tragedies the town had experienced over the past year infringe on their sense of independence.

SOURCES:

Petaluma Argus: “Dr. Gossage Resumes his Practice,” May 11, 1918; “H.S. Gossage Chosen Mayor to Succeed A. W. Horwege Who Has Resigned,” June 4, 1918; “Petaluma Theaters Close Until Further Notice,” October 19, 1918; “Mask Order is Issued,” October 22, 1918; “An Appeal to the Women of Petaluma,” October 28, 1918; “Still Reasons for Concern On Endemic Says County Doctor,” October 30, 1918; “Masks Afford Much Merriment,” November 6, 1918; “Mask Slackers Are Fined,” November 9, 1918; “You Can Take Off Your Mask,” November 22, 1918; “The Programs at the Theaters,” November 25, 1918; “Says Cold Weather Brings Return of Influenza,” January 10, 1919; “School Closes for a Week,” April, 13, 1919; “Board Decides to Keep Schools Closed,” April 19, 1919; “Ban Will Soon Be Lifted,” February 24, 1920; “Somebody Will Get into Trouble,” February 24, 1920.

Petaluma Courier: “Many Cases of Influenza,” October 15, 1918; “Death at Lytton Home,” October 17, 1918; “Discuss Closing of Theaters,” October 19, 1918; “Precaution Taken by Board of Health,” October 20, 1918; “Funeral of J. Biaggi,” October 30, 1918; “Everyone Must Wear Masks in Petaluma,” November 2, 1918; “Petaluma’s Joyful Peace Parade,” November 12, 1918; “Many Masks Were Burned by Crowds,” November 23, 1918; “Health Board in Session,” February 14, 1920; “Ban Will be Lifted,” February 27, 1920.

Santa Rosa Republican: “Keeping Influenza Down,” February 3, 1919; “Influenza Ban May Not Lift Monday in Petaluma,” February 26, 1920.

Gaye LeBaron column, Santa Rosa Press Democrat, March 28, 2020.

Jeff Elliott, Someone You Know Died Today, and Likewise Tomorrow,” Santa Rosa History, October 7, 2018, santarosahistory.com

“Over 300,000 Case of Influenza in California,” Riverside Daily Press, June 11, 1919.
“San Francisco 1918 Pandemic History”
https://www.influenzaarchive.org/cities/city-sanfrancisco.html#

The Petaluma Adobe’s First Pandemic

by Arthur Dawson & John Sheehy

In March of 1828, three years after leaving Missouri, mountain man James Pattie found himself locked in a Mexican prison cell in San Diego. He and his father were charged with being illegal immigrants. As the months ticked by, Alta California’s first smallpox epidemic began sweeping through the territory. James’ father also died that year while incarcerated, though of other causes. To his son’s good fortune, he left behind a valuable inheritance—a vial of smallpox vaccine.

Learning that Pattie knew how to administer the serum, California Governor Echeandia offered to release him on condition that he vaccinate the inhabitants of California. Accepting the offer, Pattie began traveling from mission to mission, treating thousands of Hispanic settlers and indigenous people on the way. His original supply was augmented by vaccine the Mexicans acquired from Russian ships calling at San Diego and Monterey. From San Francisco he made his way across the bay and overland to the Russian settlement at Fort Ross, where he also administered the vaccine. On his return to San Francisco, Pattie was officially freed. There is no mention in his first-hand account of visiting either the San Rafael or Sonoma missions.

Up until Pattie’s time, California had escaped serious epidemics. This was partly due to its remoteness. The onset of human pandemics has been attributed to the shift from hunting and gathering societies to more settled agricultural communities and cities. Living in closer quarters set the stage for outbreaks of tuberculosis, influenza, measles and other infectious diseases, which over the course of human history have killed as many as a billion people. Like coronavirus, smallpox is an airborne disease that spreads quickly. Coughing, sneezing, and sharing clothing can all lead to infection. In the Old World, smallpox killed three out of ten people it infected and left the rest scarred and sometimes blind.

As Europeans settled the New World, their diseases readily infected the native people, who had no previous exposure or immunity. Over fifty million perished of smallpox and other diseases after European contact; about ninety percent of the original population of the Americas. In the 1790s, back in England, British doctor Edward Jenner tested the idea that milkmaids infected with cowpox, a milder disease, were immune to smallpox. He proved it by inoculating a 9-year-old boy with cowpox and then exposing him to smallpox with no ill effect.
Although the Spanish did their best to screen those they sent to settle

California, international travel remained a primary avenue for the spread of disease. The smallpox outbreak of 1828 was introduced by a foreign vessel that docked in San Francisco. Seven years later, smallpox appeared in Sitka, Alaska, the capital of Russian America, likely arriving on a ship from across the Pacific.

What followed fits a pattern that has been noted since Roman times—epidemics begin in ports of entry and spread from there. Within a year, it had reached hundreds of miles north over much of modern-day Alaska and south into British territory around Puget Sound. The British managed to vaccinate people ahead of the outbreak and stalled the spread of the virus in the summer of 1837. Whatever efforts the Russians made, on the other hand, were not successful in containing it.

Smallpox soon arrived by Russian ship at Fort Ross. By then, California missions had been disbanded by the Mexican government. General Vallejo had taken possession of the Sonoma mission property and established a military presence. In late 1837, before the virus was detected, he sent a cavalry unit led by corporal Ignacio Miramontes and accompanied by Indian auxiliaries, to Fort Ross to bring back supplies for the troops at Sonoma.

Whole villages were struck down without a single survivor. Platon Vallejo, the General’s son and a doctor, described how: “long trenches were dug, none too deep; great numbers of bodies were hastily thrown in and the earth, with equal haste, replaced.” In other cases the dead were cremated. Sometimes the toll was beyond the abilities of the living to handle at all. For years after, the bones of thousands “often left unburied, bleached the hills” of Sonoma and Napa Counties. Chief Solano, Vallejo’s friend, estimated that his tribe, which had numbered in many thousands, was reduced to just 200 survivors. The death toll may have exceeded ninety percent, on par with other places in the Americas.

The epidemic in the North Bay continued into 1839. Pattie’s efforts ten years earlier seem to have given some protection to those tribes to the south. According to Platon, most Mexicans were vaccinated and did not suffer the same fate as the indigenous people. Chief Solano, one of the few natives vaccinated by Vallejo, survived. No one knows why Vallejo never vaccinated his native laborers or native soldiers. Was it prejudice or a lack of vaccine or expertise? As with the coronavirus, an inability to grasp the situation before it was too late, may have also played a role.

Today, we’re all hoping for a modern James Pattie to deliver a vaccine for the current pandemic. After hearing stories from New York and Italy, we can appreciate the terror of those earlier times. Pestilence no longer sounds like an old-fashioned word. But perhaps we can also take heart from the fact that, nearly two centuries after the smallpox pandemic of 1838, Sonoma County’s native peoples are still here. In spite of everything, they have quietly achieved a cultural renewal in recent years—an encouraging sign of how deeply hope and resilience dwell within the human spirit.

A version of this story appeared in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, April 5, 2020.

Petaluma’s First Pandemic

Chinatown, 3rd St between C & D, ca. 1900

On the evening of March 20, 1900, Ellen Button was on her way to teach at the Chinese Mission School when she spotted one of her students, Wong Qued, emerging from the Mutual Relief Building on the corner of Western Avenue and Kentucky Street. No sooner had Qued stepped onto the sidewalk than two men walked up, grabbed him, and to Button’s horror, threw him into the street. Qued was not the only student of Button’s attacked. Dong Tong, a strawberry grower, was chased for blocks and then stoned.

The attacks were sparked by news that the federal government had placed San Francisco’s Chinatown under quarantine after a newly arrived pandemic killed a Chinese laborer and infected dozens of others. Joseph Kinyoun, a federal bacteriologist, identified it as the same plague that was isolated in Hong Kong six years earlier. Transmitted by rat fleas, it made its way into San Francisco via a rat-infested ship from Australia.

Fearful that the news would negatively impact California’s economy, California’s governor, Henry Gage, vilified Kinyoun for fabricating the virus. Supportive newspapers and business leaders echoed the governor’s denial, as did state medical officials, many of whom considered bacteriology a lot of mumbo jumbo.

After a federal medical commission confirmed Kinyoun’s findings, Governor Gage, who was in the pocket of the powerful Southern Pacific Railroad, continued to deny the pandemic’s existence, silencing state medical authorities with a gag order, accusing federal authorities of injecting the virus into cadavers, and cynically joining Chinatown residents in suing the federal government to lift the quarantine on the basis of having violated their civil rights— a case they won.

As rumors of the pandemic circulated, fearmongering of the Chinese spread to Petaluma, which had its own Chinatown clustered along Petaluma Boulevard South between C and D streets. The Petaluma Courier sought to reignite racial prejudices by dubbing the virus the “yellow plague.”

On June 18^th, Ellen Button hosted a 25^th anniversary celebration of the Chinese Mission School at the Congregational Church on Fourth and B streets. Two blocks away, a group of drunken men set out to clean up Chinatown, engaging the Chinese there in a “battle royal.” Shortly afterward, the windows of the Chinese laundry on Washington Street were smashed in.

Widespread hostility toward the Chinese had been common in Sonoma County for decades, culminating in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which restricted further Chinese immigration. Four years later, dissatisfied that the act was serving as more of a sieve than a barrier, Petalumans formed an Anti-Chinese League, one of many in the county, seeking to drive the Chinese out of town by boycotting their businesses and labor.

The effort intensified after a former Petaluma couple, Captain Jesse Wickersham and his wife Sarah, were found murdered on their ranch outside of Cloverdale, allegedly by their Chinese cook. Stirred up by newspaper editorials depicting the Chinese as being possessed of “pestilential vapors, threatening disease, and death,” two thousand people rallied in Petaluma for the boycott. A sudden exodus of Chinese from Sonoma County followed, creating a labor shortage, especially on the farms and vineyards, which whites would not fill. By summer, the boycott had fizzled, and the Chinese began returning to the county in larger numbers than before.

Sonoma County Chinese family, early 1900s

Still, an underlying racist divide remained. The Chinese Mission School, one of 16 in the state co-founded by Petaluma pastor William C. Pond, sat a block away from Chinatown’s joss-house, or Taoist-Buddhist temple. Offering evening instruction in English and Christianity, the school’s primary purpose, as Button made clear, was not to help acclimate the Chinese but rather to send them, as Christian evangelists, back to the “heathens” in their native land.

Due to Governor Gage’s obstruction of federal efforts to mitigate the virus, the pandemic worsened in 1901 and 1902, infecting a growing number of white victims, and leading other states to pass quarantines and economic boycotts of California goods. It was only after the election in 1902 of a new governor—a German-trained physician—that an intensified control program was implemented, bringing the pandemic to an end.

Although the 1900-1904 pandemic pales in comparison to the impact of today’s COVID-19, the parallels are clear. The global spread of a disease tends to increase prejudice as societies circle their wagons in fear. That’s especially true when leaders conceal or suppress the facts, delay mitigation in order to protect economic interests or assign discriminatory names to the virus for political gain. The fact is, pandemics don’t discriminate: only scared, ill-informed people do.

A version of this article appeared in the petaluma Argus-Courier, April 2, 2020.