By Rit Carter
On Saturday, Sept. 21, 1918, New Departure Manufacturing held its third annual company Sheep Barbeque at Rockwell Park. At 11:45 a.m., the fire whistle’s shrill boomed throughout the factory’s buildings, signifying the parade’s formation along North Main St. and the surrounding artery roads.
Within the parade’s seven divisions were colorful costumes, floats, and banners. Among them were The New Departure Band, Colt’s State Guard Band, and The New Departure Clown Band. A late attraction added was the newly formed New Departure Fife and Drum Corps.
Despite an early morning rain and gray skies, at noon, 2,000 employees paraded through the city’s center to Rockwell Park. Captured for posterity, “moving pictures” of the parade are later shown at the Bristol Theatre.
The Sheep Barbeque was an extraordinary corporate event put on by the company. Two-hundred-sixty-foot trenches, three-feet wide, were dug, and the sheep roasted over charcoal for eight hours, a process which started before daybreak. The assortment of foods, which included corn, potatoes, and pumpkin pie, was served by a waitstaff of over 200. Media from outside the state came to Bristol and reported on New England’s largest barbeque.
Employees, families, and friends engaged in food, music, and sporting contests. Among the events: 100-yard dash, the shot put, sack races, candle races, pole climbing, and catching a greased pig.
Following dinner, the attention focused on the company baseball championship game between Plant A and Plant C at Muzzy Field.
On the bump for Plant A was Doc Williams.
Toeing the rubber for Plant C was Tommy Sipples.
The game, scheduled for 7 innings, went 11 with the deciding run being a steal of home, providing Plant C with a 2-1 victory.
One day prior, though, in his quiet and humble office on Prospect Street, not far from Rockwell Park, Bristol’s Health Officer, 54-year-old Dr. H.D. Brennan, is hard at work. Dr. Brennan, Bristol’s first health officer, carefully reviews the State Board of Health’s paperwork he received notifying Bristol of its first two Spanish influenza cases.
In 48 hours, two Bristol residents will die from Spanish flu, including one employee from New Departure, and within a week of that death, the spouse of another will be dead as well. In less than 40 days from the barbeque, somewhere between 88 and 105 Bristol residents will perish due to the Spanish flu, including six New Departure employees and eight New Departure spouses.
A Quick Recap
In the spring of 2020, the TBE published two parts of a four-part series regarding the 1918 pandemic and Bristol.
In the subsequent months, we engaged in securing additional information about the pandemic’s effects on Bristol. We sought data that would show patterns. Specifically, we looked for the following:
- What businesses experienced the most deaths?
- What sections of town incurred the most deaths?
- What were the age ranges of the youngest and oldest to die?
Using information from local newspapers and public databases, we have pieced some of that information together for October, the deadliest month in Bristol.
The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was lethal and unforgiving. Victims experienced a sore throat, chills, fever up to 104, and coughing like any other flu. But sometimes, not always, within hours, the condition worsened.
Severe pneumonia developed, dark spots appeared on the cheeks, and the infected would turn blue, and then the lungs filled with a foamy fluid, and they would drown, suffocating from a lack of oxygen. It was a horrible and grizzly death.
The incubation period is the time from exposure to onset of disease. Unlike COVID-19, where the incubation period is 2-14 days, it was a day or two for the Spanish flu.
October brought 88 reported deaths, but based on our research, there were over 100. Some deaths were not identified as Bristol deaths because the victims died while receiving care in another town. And there were the usual clerical errors. One example is my great grandmother (she died in late October). Her last name is Kaczmarczyk, and she was ID’d in the newspaper as Chatchwacki.
September saw but two deaths. By mid-October, the death count was 30 a week. Soon the obituaries, which may have had one or two a week, were crowded.
And the Bristol Briefs, a gossip column in the Bristol Press which highlighted goings-on of the local rabble, had 20-30 items daily regarding residents staying home because they contracted the grippe (the term at the time) or Spanish flu.
What Does Age Got To Do With It?
The oldest death attributed to a Bristol resident was 60, while the youngest registered was two months. However, at least three reports of infant deaths are associated with mothers who died of influenza or pneumonia.
According to an article by Alice Reid, Ph.D., and published in The National Center for Biotechnology Information, the Spanish flu was harsh on pregnant women, resulting in increased stillbirths, premature babies, and infant deaths.
An expecting mother’s vulnerability to the disease may be attributed to changes to the blood circulation and reduced functionality of the lungs
On Oct. 10, Esther Gosselin, 25, and her son, born the previous day, died.
Amelia Rindfleisch, 25, died Oct. 20 with her infant daughter.
Annie Bakola (Bokola), a resident of Sixth Ave, died Oct. 29 with her infant child.
We identified at least seven deaths associated with children between the ages of 2 and 15 months. And seven children between the ages of 4 and 16.
The Spanish flu hit young adults and those in their prime of life hardest. Usually, pandemics reserve the attacks for the elderly, but in 1918 that was not the case. Today some researchers theorize that similar flu strains in the early 1880s may have provided immunity. Consequently, the mortality rate was high among children under age five and adults from 20 to 40. Bristol’s stats for October bore that out:
| Age Range | Deaths |
| 0-19 | 19 |
| 20-29 | 31 |
| 30-39 | 31 |
| 40-49 | 4 |
| 50+ | 3 |
| Age not identified | 17 |
Tight living and working quarters fueled the pandemic, and no parts of the community were immune.
Ten Bristol police officers were stricken with the Spanish flu, with two succumbing to the disease.
Edward Cullem, a 38-year-old police detective and a 12-year veteran noted for his even temperament, died Oct. 10. Officer Cullem complained of cold symptoms, and three days later, he was gone.
Henry Brown was a supernumerary and did security at New Departure. Officer Brown was on the force for three years and died on Oct. 17. His sister, 30-year-old Grace, would die in November.
Officer Thomas Duncan suffered from severe pneumonia during the pandemic and survived. However, most tragically, he and his wife, on successive days, lost their 10-month-old daughter Marie and 5-year-old daughter Margaret.
Other members of the police department that took ill in October:
Officer John Blassi
Officer Aldie Brault
Officer James E. Doyle
Officer John C. Mc Laughlin
Officer James Rourke
Officer Joseph F. Sirup
Supernumerary Anton Spielman
James T. Mather, the prosecuting attorney, was sidelined to his High St. home for contracting the grippe (the term commonly used at the time for influenza).
Health Director H.D. Brennan was confined to his home twice during the pandemic.
City Clerk-Stenographer Ella L. Downs, Marie Sonstrom from the Board of Education, and the city’s dog catcher took ill as well.
Neighborhoods
Many of Bristol’s neighborhoods in the late 1910s identified themselves by ethnicity. Immigrants settled into communities where they shared language, experiences, customs and culture.
Bristol’s neighborhoods included multi-family dwellings in the city’s western and southern portions, where working-class immigrants more likely suffered the most. The structures were often tightly spaced with large families.
My great grandmother, an immigrant from a small village in Poland called Wolkowe, died from the Spanish flu. Her family and another resided on Anderson Ave. in Forestville, which had seven properties, versus Divinity St. in the West End, which had 49.
Although they did not reside in the what would have been considered the Polish section of town, their situation was indicative of the conditions many of the working poor faced in Bristol. They had six kids with two adults, while my Great Uncle Frank’s family had nine kids and two adults on the second floor. That’s 19 people under one roof.
There were five rooms on each floor. Girls slept in one bedroom, and the boys in another. Parents had their bedrooms, with a kitchen and a parlor. That’s it.
| Street | Deaths |
| N. Main St. | 7 |
| Divinity St., West and Burlington Ave. | 4 |
| Gaylord, Laurel, Seymour, South, | 3 |
| Curtiss, Dwight, Kenney, King, Lincoln, Matthews, Park, Pine, Pond, Sherman, Sixth, South Elm, Summer St., Valley, Williams Ave. | 2 |
Factories, Factories Everywhere
Another area we attempted to direct our attention were factories.
Manufacturing and industry were the pulses of Bristol’s economic fortunes. Undoubtedly, with over 2,000 residents being sick, factories aided in spreading the disease to a population over 20,000 due to poor ventilation, dirty conditions and tight workspaces. Workers routinely worked elbow to elbow and eyeball to eyeball.
In fact, the disease spread so quickly that by October 3, Wallace Barnes Co, had 95 employees related to Spanish flu.
Our records show 105 Bristol residents died in October, 57 being women. Most women, due to societal norms, were not employed during this era. This, along with the obituaries and databases not consistently recording the decedents’ employment information, reduced the sample size. Additionally, we removed children due to age.
| Factory | Deaths |
| New Departure* | 6 |
| E. Ingraham | 3 |
| Bristol Brass Co. | 2 |
| Wallace Barnes | 3 |
| Sessions | 2 |
| Horton Manufacturing | 2 |
1918 was a harsh year for New Departure. In addition to losing six employees due to the pandemic in October, eight New Departure employees lost their spouses to the disease that same month, and 20 of their workers were killed, wounded, or missing in action during World War I.
More than 2,000 Bristol residents fell ill during the pandemic, and it is a miracle more did not die.
Closing
Now that Thanksgiving is behind us and a grating winter ahead filled with stories of increased hospitalizations and a rising death toll, if the ghosts of the 1918 pandemic could talk, what would they tell us?
Would they instruct us not to ignore public health measures designed to protect the citizens? Or, would they advise us to protect each other because it is all we have.
Lacking access to medical information and the coping distractions we have today in the form of entertainment by the mere push of a few buttons, the pandemic of 1918 was a lonely experience. However, from the darkness came some light. The need for a hospital became apparent, and by 1925, a hundred-bed hospital was built and treating patients.
On a quiet and gloomy morning in late November, before Bristol crackled back to life after a long night, I walked in the footsteps of our forebears in the most affected areas of the West End and Downtown streets. Some of the homes and buildings remain, so it is not difficult to imagine the fear and distress within those walls during the fall of 1918. Several history books chronicle Bristol since 1918, but little ink expelled telling Bristol’s Spanish flu story, despite the great loss of life in a short window of time. Therefore, our final installment will give voice to those made silent and focus on the victims.
Editor’s Note: If readers have historical information about their family or Bristol they would like to contribute for the fourth installment in the form of letters, photographs or stories, please contact The Bristol Edition at rcarter@bristoledition.org.
