![]() The police grudgingly enforced it, cracking down on cigar smokers and passengers in cars. In January, Pasadena’s city commission passed a mask ordinance. “It wasn’t about a constitutional issue it was a money issue.”īy the end of 1918, the death toll from influenza had reached at least 244,681, mostly in the last four months, according to government statistics. “Things were violent and aggressive, but it was because people were losing money,” said Brian Dolan, a medical historian at the University of California, San Francisco. But a second wave was on the horizon.īy December, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors was again proposing a mask requirement, meeting with testy opposition.Īround the end of the year, a bomb was defused outside the office of San Francisco’s chief health officer, Dr. The sidewalks were strewn with gauze, the “relics of a torturous month,” The Chronicle said. Waiters, barkeeps and others bared their faces. As a police officer watched, it dawned on him that “his vigil over the masks was done.” He and others stomped on their masks in the street. The city celebrated, and church bells tolled.Ī “delinquent” bent on blowing his nose tore his mask off so quickly that it “nearly ruptured his ear,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported. San Francisco’s mask ordinance expired after four weeks at noon on Nov. “Suffragists wanted to make sure their leaders were familiar political figures,” Dr. Lange, an associate history professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology, said one reason could have been that they wanted to keep a highly visible profile. Suffragists fighting for the right to vote made a gesture that rejected covering their mouths at a time when their voices were crucial.Īt the annual convention of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association, in October 1918, they set chairs four feet apart, closed doors to the public and limited attendance to 100 delegates, the Chicago Daily Tribune reported.īut the women “showed their scorn” for masks, it said. She was in ordinary street clothes, and every now and then she raised her hand to her face and fussed with the mask.” In Illinois, the right to choose, and to reject. Kyle, said: “I saw a woman in a restaurant today with a mask on. Fleming said in a Los Angeles Times report.Īn ear, nose and throat specialist, Dr. “I have seen some persons wearing their masks for a while hanging about their necks, and then apply them to their faces, forgetting that they might have picked up germs while dangling about their clothes,” Dr. Opponents said masks were “mere dirt and dust traps and do more harm than good.” Some supported masks so theaters, churches and schools could operate. That was the headline for a report published in The Los Angeles Times when city officials met in November to decide whether to require residents to wear “germ scarers” or “flu-scarers.” In Los Angeles, ‘To Mask or Not to Mask.’ ![]() The inspector was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. ![]() He was charged with disturbing the peace, resisting an officer and assault. Wisser was injured, as were two bystanders. Within a week, the number of flu cases grew fivefold, and soon the disease was taking hold across the country, prompting some cities to impose quarantines and mask orders to contain it. ![]() The first infections were identified in March, at an Army base in Kansas, where 100 soldiers were infected. All the while, thousands of Americans were dying in a deadly pandemic. In 19, as bars, saloons, restaurants, theaters and schools were closed, masks became a scapegoat, a symbol of government overreach, inspiring protests, petitions and defiant bare-face gatherings. Then, as now, medical authorities urged the wearing of masks to help slow the spread of disease. But as they have now, the masks also stoked political division. More than a century ago, as the 1918 influenza pandemic raged in the United States, masks of gauze and cheesecloth became the facial front lines in the battle against the virus. They gave people a “pig-like snout.” Some people snipped holes in their masks to smoke cigars. The masks were called muzzles, germ shields and dirt traps.
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