Syosset, Woodbury & The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

For the roughly 750 humble citizens of Syosset and Woodbury, the mid-1910’s were a time of extraordinary change. Syosset had just formed its own volunteer fire company, the first automobiles were appearing on Jackson Avenue and Jericho Turnpike, and residents were excitedly discovering the conveniences of electricity and telephone service. For now, life was good.

Each day, the rhythm of handsaws and hammers echoed through the villages as craftsmen converted acres of unproductive farmland into extravagant country homes for young Manhattan aristocrats, many of them financiers who, by 1915, were generating enormous incomes by funding an overseas war for which there was no end in sight. Ironically, many lamented having to cancel European vacations for their own safety during the conflict, completely unaware of the deadly battle that was about to break out right on their own doorsteps.

The War Before The War

For the first three years of what would become World War I, the United States managed to remain neutral and keep its troops out of combat. However, a series of events in 1917 led, first, to a build-up of America’s military and, next, to the country’s full-blown involvement on battlefields throughout the European continent. Soon, thousands of young Americans, including many from Syosset and Woodbury, found themselves stationed at military bases hundreds or thousands of miles from home.

Over the next nineteen months, almost 54,000 American soldiers would die fighting the Central Powers alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria. Even more astounding, however, is the number of young, healthy American soldiers – sixty-three-thousand-plus - who would lose their lives to a far more daunting enemy, one that would brutally assault soldiers and civilians around the globe in a relentless campaign that outlasted the war itself.

“The Spanish Flu”

Although there is no definitive explanation for the origin of the massive worldwide Influenza outbreak that occurred more than a century ago, most historians point to the following chain of events:

In March of 1918, a private at a large military base in Kansas reported to the barracks hospital with a sore throat, fever, and headache. Within three hours, more than one hundred of his fellow soldiers had developed the same symptoms; within two weeks, this flu-like illness, which had first revealed itself among Kansas farmers in January of the same year, had landed more than 1,000 soldiers in the base hospital and had confined thousands to their beds. Forty-eight of the afflicted soldiers ultimately succumbed to this mysterious ailment. The rest were dispatched to other stateside training camps, where severe outbreaks quickly occurred and affected tens of thousands of recruits, many of whom were due to be shipped overseas.

As they made their way across the United States bound for combat training in France, soldiers spread their germs on trains and then on ships as they sailed the Atlantic. Arriving at the battlefront, they huddled in trenches with allies from the U.K. and France and further circulated the illness. Those who remained stateside continued to contaminate bases and infect their families when they went home to visit. By the Spring of 1918, this deadly new strain of the H1N1 Influenza virus had swept across the United States and Europe, affecting both military and civilian populations, young and old indiscriminately. By the War Department's most conservative estimate, Influenza (and the severe pneumonia that typically followed) sickened more than one million recruits and killed almost 30,000 before they even reached the front line in Europe.

To maintain positive morale among troops on the European front, the United States, Britain, and France made a pact to censor all reporting of the outbreak that was sickening and killing hundreds, if not thousands, of soldiers every day. On the contrary, Spain, which had maintained its neutrality in the war and was not bound by the secrecy agreement, began openly and accurately reporting cases inside its borders. Consequently, the rest of the world began to view Spain as a hotspot for the deadly, fast-spreading illness, which the U.S. and European media conveniently dubbed “The Spanish Flu.”

Although Influenza (aka “The Grip”) had been a common ailment in the Syosset-Woodbury region for many years, cases of the so-called “Spanish Flu” suddenly exploded in the area in October of 1918, when neighbor after neighbor fell mysteriously ill and several died within weeks of their first symptoms. The Long Islander newspaper reported that “Never before in the best recollections of the oldest residents has this village had such an epidemic of grip and pneumonia. About half our population have been or are down with either, and the physicians are on the go day and night endeavoring to relieve the suffering community.”

Medical scientists of the time were baffled by the seemingly indestructible potency of the Spanish Flu, while political leaders and their appointees opted to play down its severity, denying that the mounting number of hospitalizations and deaths were related to this new strain of Influenza and insisting that the disease was confined and would soon be eradicated. Hospitals across the country, perhaps overly confident that the “new” flu was just as treatable as the “old” flu, failed to assemble supplies and prepare for mass hospitalizations. President Wilson, fully engulfed in the war, offered no comment or words of reassurance. By the end of the war, he, too, would be infected.

On October 4, 1918, as treatment areas in the local hospitals began to swell with fever-drenched Spanish Flu sufferers, The Long Islander pleaded with readers in the Huntington, Cold Spring Harbor, Woodbury, and Syosset areas to help the local Red Cross obtain critically needed facial masks, sheets, and towels, which caregivers were quickly depleting. Readers were also urged to avoid crowded meeting places and to “live in the open” as much as possible.

By mid-October, with scores of students sick and many prominent residents falling ill or dying, the Syosset and Woodbury schools dismissed their students for an initial period of two weeks. This came as a welcomed development for local farmers, who seized the opportunity to replace workers who had been drafted into the army with children who were on an unexpected school holiday. Shortly afterward, the local newspapers warned parents that “In these strenuous times, as the school authorities have done their duty in closing the schools for the benefit of the health of our children, it is up to the parents to do their share by keeping their children off the public streets!”

Other institutions and organizations were slow to follow the schools’ lead. Without instantaneous news reporting and social media, the “country folk” of Syosset-Woodbury had no way of knowing that, in October of 1918 alone, nearly 195,000 of their fellow Americans had been wiped out by the flu. The Community Church of Syosset and the Woodbury Methodist Church, both centers of social activity, finally closed their doors on November 1, the same day Town of Oyster Bay officials issued orders prohibiting children under the age of sixteen from attending “any theater, moving picture show, or other place of public entertainment.” For the time being, the large majority of community gatherings in Syosset and Woodbury came to a screeching halt.

The news, however, must not have reached the Syosset Fire Company, which, during the peak of the local pandemic, held a benefit dance in its Muttontown Road firehouse. Within a week or two, several company members, including Henry Lang (owner of a busy hotel and saloon at the triangle of Jackson Avenue and Cold Spring Road), Gus Kleiss (Syosset’s blacksmith), and Albert Bayles (the company’s founder), were diagnosed with the flu. Other prominent Syosset residents, including Floyd Jarvis (ticket agent at the Syosset railroad station) and members of the Underhill and Mann families, also took to their beds. Given their daily social interaction through business activities alone, these individuals may have been inadvertently responsible for many new infections that quickly spread throughout the community.

The War Comes To A Close

The end of World War I in Europe on November 11, 1918 certainly deserved a celebration, and local residents could not resist. Syosset and Woodbury’s schools and churches re-opened their doors and, on November 15, while the pandemic was still only weeks old and fresh cases were revealing themselves every day, a large crowd gathered in downtown Syosset for a victory parade, after which participants lit a huge bonfire, burned a rag doll of German Kaiser Wilhelm II, and joined hands to sing the National Anthem. One week later, scores of parade attendees and other residents fell ill with Influenza. The residents of Syosset and Woodbury, apparently, just weren’t “getting it” (although lots of them were, in fact, GETTING it).

Sadly, this story trudges on for at least another year, with brief glimpses of hope quashed time and again by fresh outbreaks that occurred each time infected soldiers returned from the warfront or children inadvertently brought the bug back to the classroom. In January of 1919, the Syosset School took a proactive step to prevent additional outbreaks by replacing the unhygienic compost-style depository in its outhouse (essentially a hole in the ground that collected students’ bodily waste) with what officials touted as a “sanitary toilet,” a precursor to the flush toilets of today. The new plumbing’s effectiveness is unknown; however, we do know that the Influenza nightmare continued for the people of Syosset and Woodbury.

By the time the pandemic finally subsided in late 1919, the “Spanish Flu” had killed at least fifty million people worldwide and half a million in the United States alone. While the actual number of mortalities in the Syosset-Woodbury area is unknown, local news articles from 1918 and 1919 document a staggering number of deaths and long-term illnesses right within this small area. The Influenza pandemic also caused an increase in other serious respiratory ailments including tuberculosis, which afflicted many Syosset-Woodbury residents for years to come.

The Bright Side…And A Warning

Somehow, Syosset and Woodbury - along with the rest of the nation – emerged from the 1918-1919 pandemic to enjoy a decade of unprecedented wealth and happy times. Farmers got back to business, shopkeepers welcomed their returning customers, schoolchildren once again frolicked on the playground, and neighbors embraced each other at Sunday church services. To paraphrase a popular 1920’s song, Happy Days Were Here Again!

Yet, this very dark chapter of Syosset-Woodbury history illustrates what can happen when people become complacent in their attitudes and behavior or place too much faith in their leaders to make tragedies go away. Scientists and epidemiologists across the board agree that citizens and government share equal blame for failing to act quickly and responsibly when the 1918 flu first appeared, a misstep that may have caused the deaths of numerous grandparents, great grandparents, or other relatives, who, if they were alive today, would probably be nagging you (in authentic 1918 lingo) to “get your keister inside, wash your hands, and stop being a bonehead!”

Trust them.

Tom Montalbano is a lifelong resident of Syosset and author of four books about the community. His latest release, An Early History Of Woodbury, is available at Amazon.com, The Book Revue of Huntington, and the Woodbury Country Deli.