Edith Coffin (Colby) Mahoney
From the Massachusetts Historical Society
Between 1906 and 1920, Edith Coffin (Colby) Mahoney of Salem, Massachusetts, kept “three line-a-day diaries” featuring snippets from her busy schedule of socializing, shopping and managing the household. Most entries are fairly repetitive, offering a simple record of what Mahoney did and when, but, on September 22, 1918, she shifted focus to reflect the pandemic sweeping across the United States.
Fair & cold. Pa and Frank here to dinner just back from Jefferson Highlands. Rob played golf with Dr. Ferguson and Mr. Warren. Eugene F. went to the hospital Fri. with Spanish influenza. 1500 cases in Salem. Bradstreet Parker died of it yesterday. 21 yrs old.
Four days later, Mahoney reported that Eugene had succumbed to influenza. “Several thousand cases in the city with a great shortage of nurses and doctors,” she added. “Theatres, churches, gatherings of everykind stopped.”
Mahoney’s husband, Rob, was scheduled to serve as a pallbearer at Eugene’s September 28 funeral, but came down with the flu himself and landed “in bed all day with high fever, bound up head and aching eye balls.”
By September 29—a “beautiful, mild day,” according to Mahoney—Rob was “very much better,” complaining only of a “husky throat.” The broader picture, however, remained bleak. Another acquaintance, 37-year-old James Tierney, had also died of the flu, and as the journal’s author noted, “Dr says there is no sign of epidemic abating.”
Franklin Martin
From the National Library of Medicine, via research by Nancy Bristow
In January 1919, physician Franklin Martin fell ill while traveling home from a postwar tour of Europe. His record of this experience, written in a journal he kept for his wife, Isabelle, offers a colorful portrait of influenza’s physical toll.
Soon after feeling “chilly all day,” Martin developed a 105-degree fever.
About 12 o'clock I began to feel hot. I was so feverish I was afraid I would ignite the clothing. I had a cough that tore my very innards out when I could not suppress it. It was dark; I surely had pneumonia and I never was so forlorn and uncomfortable in my life. … Then I found that I was breaking into a deluge of perspiration and while I should have been more comfortable I was more miserable than ever.
Added the doctor, “When the light did finally come I was some specimen of misery—couldn't breathe without an excruciating cough and there was no hope in me.”
Martin’s writing differs from that of many men, says Bristow, in its expression of vulnerability. Typically, the historian explains, men exchanging correspondence with each other are “really making this effort to be very brave, … always apologizing for being sick and finding out how quickly they’ll be back at work, or [saying] that they’re never going to get sick, that they’re not going to be a victim of this.”