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 20th 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 19th, 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?
