Influenza and Undertakers in the Upper Valley

There are plenty of articles on the internet about the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918 in Vermont and New Hampshire, but with the exception of the blog “In Times Past” (thank you, Larry Coffin (www.larrycoffin.blogspot.com ), I couldn't find much about how this horrible disease affected the Upper Valley. I decided to do some research on deaths from influenza in four towns that have not been featured here: Plainfield, Lebanon, Norwich and Hartford.

In Plainfield, there was an uptick of deaths that seemed to be caused by influenza, but it was an uptick only. In a span of 6 years, 1918 actually had the lowest number of deaths from 1914 to 1922. 1919 had the highest number of deaths, but not by a significant amount. In 1915, 20 people died in Plainfield. In 1916, 18 people died; in 1917, 24 people died; in 1918, 14 people died; in 1919, 24 people died, in 1920, 18; in 1921, 18; and in 1922, 17 people died. Only 2 people died of influenza in 1918, 4 in 1919 and 2 in 1920. I think there were probably a number of deaths, especially in the very rural more isolated areas, that went unreported.

As I studied the death reports, I noticed some interesting trends. In 1915, not a single resident of Plainfield died at Mary Hitchcock hospital. By 1922, there were many people who died in the hospital. I also noticed that when people died, the undertaker who was in charge of the body was named in each death report, indicating that by the early 20^th century, the custom definitely was to have the undertaker come and remove the body.

The embalming and undertaking industry started during the Civil War. Embalming techniques had been around for a while. Medical schools embalmed corpses they intended to use for dissection and instruction in the classroom. (For a story about medical schools and corpses see my November 19^th, 2014 posting http://connecticutrivervalley.blogspot.com/2014/11/teaching-medicine-at-dartmouth.html ) When a Civil War soldier from a wealthy family was killed, his family paid to have his body embalmed and shipped home so that they could “see him one last time”. This started the custom of having bodies preserved, so that families could see see their dead beloved “one last time”.

As embalming and open caskets became more popular, funerals moved from the home to the funeral parlor. In earlier times, people died at home, were prepared for burial at home, and went from home to the burial at the graveyard. With more people dying in hospitals, the dead person went from the hospital to the place of embalming.

Embalming bodies was a controversial new custom. Many people thought it was pagan, although there is some precedent set in the new testament about annointing a body with various herbs and wrapping it in linen. The people who did the embalming often were involved in making caskets, and convinced grieving families to spend a lot of money on fancy caskets, preying on their vulnerability during a time of grief. They were accused of taking advantage of Irish and Italian mourning customs by charging poor immigrant families more than they could afford for lavish funerals.

To combat mounting charges of unprofessional conduct and exploitation, the chemical companies that manufactured embalming fluids and equipment conducted schools for licensing embalmers, who were renamed undertakers. These schools licensed undertakers, in an effort to provide some legitimacy to the new profession. Undertakers set aside a portion of their homes, decorated in solem décor, called funeral parlors. The funeral industry countered charges of paganism by saying that open casket funerals were psychologically beneficial to mourners by providing unrefutable finality, in that a corpse in an open casket was solid proof that the person was truly dead.

The undertaker for most of these deaths was C.E. Marston of Lebanon, which indicates that the undertaker travelled from Lebanon to Plainfield to get the dead body and bring it to Lebanon and prepare it for the funeral. C.E. Marston is listed under the Lebanon section of the New Hampshire register of businesses of 1893 as an undertaker and a seller of carpets and draperies. Marston also built coffinsl Most undertakers did not have enough business as undertakers, so they had another business on the side, especially in a small town like Lebanon. Conversely, many people who had specialty businesses took up undertaking as an income supplement because their primary business was not providing a living.. When I was a child, the undertaker in my town had a paint and wallpaper store right next to the funeral parlor.

In July of 1900, C.E. Marston was listed in the New England Telephone Directory, along with a handful of other businesses and private residences in Lebanon. There were also 13 public pay telephones in the Lebanon area. You wonder, who did C.E. Marston call? Who did people call on the pay phones, if so few residences in the Lebanon area had phones?