The Orphan Collector

by Ellen Marie Wiseman

it stood to reason that as long as everyone did what the Board of Health advised—kept their feet dry, stayed warm, ate more onions, and kept their bowels and windows open—they’d be fine.

posters went up that read “Spitting Equals Death,” and the police arrested anyone who disobeyed. Another poster showed a man in a suit standing next to the outline of a clawed demon rising from what appeared to be a pool of saliva on the sidewalk, with the words “Halt the Epidemic! Stop Spitting, Everybody!”

a man on a bench was reading a newspaper with the headline: ALL CITIZENS ORDERED TO WEAR GAUZE MASKS IN PUBLIC. On the streetlamp above him, an advertisement for masks read: “Obey the laws and wear the gauze, protect your jaws from septic paws.”

In the window of a sporting goods store next door, an advertisement for phonographs read: “This machine is guaranteed to drive away Spanish flu. Stay at home. Keep away from crowds and theaters. Doctor’s Orders. Hear the new October records on your new phonograph and you’ll never know you had to stay in nights or miss gasless Sundays.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer scorned the closing of public places: What are the authorities trying to do? Scare everyone to death? What is to be gained by shutting up well-ventilated churches and theaters and letting people press into trolley cars? What then should a man do to prevent panic and fear? Live a calm life. Do not discuss influenza. Worry is useless. Talk of cheerful things instead of disease.

It was easy to understand why the man who lived upstairs, Mr. Werkner, had shot his wife and two children before putting a gun to his own head instead of letting the flu decide their fate. While the rest of the city waited in fear and bodies piled up outside the morgues and cemeteries, he had taken matters into his own hands.

After all, everyone knew migrants brought disease across the nation’s ports and borders—the Irish brought cholera, the Jews brought tuberculosis, the Italians brought polio, and the Chinese brought bubonic plaque.

“We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.”

ALL SHOWS AND CHURCHES ARE ORDERED CLOSED TO FIGHT THE EPIDEMIC. CASES IN THE STATE 100,000. STATE AND CITY HEALTH BOARDS MAY TAKE MORE DRASTIC STEPS—COMPLAIN THAT FAILURE OF PHYSICIANS TO REPORT CASES HANDICAPS THEM IN THEIR WORK—DEMAND FOR PHYSICIANS GREATLY EXCEEDS THE SUPPLY.

Thanksgiving masker, which meant dressing up like a ragamuffin to “scramble for pennies” in the street and go door to door “begging” for treats. It was all in good fun, especially since everyone on Shunk Alley had so little to share, and no one cared if they got treats or not. But she and Finn tossed newspaper confetti in the air and followed the other kids, some in papier-mâché masks or giant hands, others wearing mops on their heads or their parents’ oversize clothes.

she asked herself why God allowed such injustice. Why should some suffer based on matters of luck and circumstance and place of birth?

The third wave of the flu epidemic had finally subsided during the summer of 1919, nine months after the terror began. Everyone said the aftermath was chaos and record-keeping had been a muddled mess, with children unaccounted for and families separated or wiped out completely. Hundreds of children, too sick or too small to remember their names after being picked up by visiting nurses, had been given to other people or sent away, some by mistake.

As a result, more than half a million people, in a city of almost two million, contracted the virus over the next six months, and more than 16,000 perished during that period.

In 1918, St. Louis, Missouri, immediately closed schools, movie theaters, and banned public gatherings. Their death toll ended up being one-eighth of the losses in Philadelphia due to the Spanish flu. • Many people blamed the 1918 pandemic on Germans, claiming they were spreading poison clouds, or that Bayer, a German-owned company, had infected their aspirin. • To fight the Spanish flu, medical professionals advised patients to take up to thirty grams of aspirin per day, a dose now known to be toxic. It’s now believed that many of the October deaths were actually caused or hastened by aspirin poisoning. • In San Francisco, people without masks were fined five dollars and were called “mask slackers.” • The New York City health commissioner in 1918 tried to slow the transmission of the flu by ordering businesses to open and close on staggered shifts to avoid overcrowding on the subways.

Set against the backdrop of the deadly influenza pandemic of 1918, The Orphan Collector is both a way to remember the “Year of the Forgotten Death” and to reflect upon our current experiences. It’s the story of a young German immigrant, Pia Lange, struggling to keep her family together at a time when more Americans were dying in our nation’s streets and homes than on the battlefields of World War I. It’s also about a grieving mother, Bernice Groves, who uses her hatred of immigrants as an excuse to tear families apart when they’re at their most vulnerable. I hope you will be drawn to Pia’s resiliency, courage, and determination in the face of impossible odds, even when shame and fear threaten to swallow her whole. I also hope Bernice’s story will remind readers that empathy for others, no matter their race, nationality, or religion, is always the right choice.