Death and Disease Were No Strangers At Its Door: The Ladd School, 1918
In the throes of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, while Rhode Islanders brace for what government officials claim will be a “painful two weeks” ahead, we might be reminded of the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic that dragged on for months and killed over 5,000 people in the city of Providence alone.
For such a monumental event in world and local history, researching the outbreak online proves no easy task, presenting a patchwork of modern essays and crudely scanned newspaper articles from over a century ago. Finding as much as a clearly defined death toll in Rhode Island is nearly impossible; but then, considering the state of medical science in those times, one would have to wonder how accurate it would be anyway.
Nevertheless, surely a narrative resides therein; and though I should applaud anyone whosoever will articulate it in this year’s wake, the headlines alone speak volumes already. Apparently, the state’s leading doctor argued against the shutting of local businesses and banning public gatherings, but the Governor chose to do so anyway. No matter; though the first major death tolls were reported in late September, theaters, saloons, dance halls, and churches were re-opened weeks later. By mid-October the epidemic was declared at its peak, and by month’s end, children began their return to school. But, in fact, the disease, and paranoia, persisted. By the end of the year, a quarter of children in the capitol city remained absent from classes, and another wave of the epidemic reared its ugly head while influenza deaths continued to climb, however slowly, well into early 1919 as another wintertime flu season took hold.
“Early-February saw the lowest case tallies in months …,” claims one essay from Michigan State University. “February 5 was the first day since the epidemic had started that no new cases were reported…. [And] attention turned away ….”
“The pandemic in Providence, just as elsewhere,” it concludes, “had not only destroyed the lives of those lost to it, but also to those who had to struggle through its aftermath.” ¹
Better I leave it to the historians to sort that all out.
Meanwhile, a historical footnote. While though information as to how the pandemic affected institutions such as the sate prison, insane asylum, and orphanage remains even more obscure yet, allow me to shed some light on the matter.
For the uninitiated, the Exeter School — now better known as the Ladd School — was, for close to 100 years, Rhode Island’s first, and only, public institution for people with developmental disabilities; a “feeble-minded school”, in the parlance of the day. Founded in 1908, situated on the border of the most rural land in the state, it was hardly more than a burgeoning farm colony when its still-young superintendent, Dr. Joseph Ladd, found himself embattled in what may have been the most trying chapter of his life.
“At the present time, we have no facilities whatever for the isolation of cases of contagious diseases. We have been fortunate in having had no epidemic up to the present time, but this fortune surely cannot continue indefinitely….”
Dr. Ladd’s words to the Rhode Island State Penal and Charitable Commission could hardly have been more prescient than they were on New Year’s Day, 1918. Nine months later, nearly all 350 residents of his institution were infected with the flu. It wouldn’t be the first nor last visitation of pestilence upon the place; from tuberculosis to hepatitis, death and disease were no strangers at its door. It would, however, be another seventeen years before they built a hospital.
Though apocryphal the story may be, it’s told that the Spanish Influenza epidemic struck the Ladd School in mid-October when one of the children received a letter from their family’s infected home. The disease spread quickly, from the brick schoolhouse and girls’ dormitory on one end of the reservation to the boys’ colony of clapboard cottages on the other. Over the next month, hundreds fell ill, including many of the attendants; and the fever sometimes lasted for weeks. Even while as many as a dozen volunteers came in, from the Providence nursing school and the newly minted Westerly Sanitation Corps, Dr. Ladd himself tended to the inmates during the day and operated the laundry at night. “I went three days without sleep,” he told one journalist in 1963. “Had a temperature of 102 myself. I was the only doctor there.” ²
“We should have been in a very sad case indeed,” he once wrote, “had it not been for the kindness of those who volunteered their services to help us out … and when we consider the fact that practically as many deaths in the fighting forces of the United States have been due to the influenza as to the bullets of the enemy we must admit that quite as much bravery and devotion to duty have been shown by our employees as by the boys who went across the water.” ³
When all was said and done, the disease had run its course, and by Thanksgiving sixteen Ladd School residents had perished from the Spanish flu; more than ever died, or would ever die, at the institution in a single year. Most were women and children; a third of them orphans, or charges of the state.
They were Israel, aged 5; Fannie and Louise, aged 6; Rosa, 7 years old; Joseph, aged 10; Annie and Mary, aged 12; Fannie, aged 14; James and Evelyn, 16; Nellie, just 21; Annie and Margaret, 22; Emily, aged 25; and Alice, in the 28th year of her life.
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[1] University of Michigan Center for the History of Medicine, Michigan Publishing. Influenza Encyclopedia
www.influenzaarchive.org
[2] Popkin, George. “Help for ‘Eternally Innocent’ His Life.” The Providence Journal Bulletin, 29 November, 1963, pp.1,20
[3] Rhode Island State Penal and Charitable Commission (1919). Exeter School Report.
