October 1918. Philadelphia threw a parade. Six days later, it ran out of coffins. And on Halloween night, a 13-year-old girl dressed as Liberty never came home.
This is the true story of the deadliest month in the city’s history, told only from the pages of the Evening Public Ledger: prisoners digging graves under guard, a thousand bodies waiting to be buried, a rabbi who had to build his own son’s coffin, and the Halloween night when the city finally came back outside.
Every fact in this film was reported in Philadelphia newspapers in 1918. Scenes are illustrated to show what the papers described.
CHAPTERS
0:00 Halloween night, 1918
1:08 The parade
2:00 Falling like leaves
3:10 Under guard
3:48 A thousand bodies
4:59 The rabbi
6:18 Profiteers in death
7:15 The doors open
7:54 Wartime Halloween
8:32 Dickinson Street
10:08 What the papers never answered
SOURCES
All pages from the Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 1918, via the Library of Congress, Chronicling America: https://www.loc.gov/collections/chronicling-america/
Sept 28, p.1: “City Begins Fourth Loan Drive Today”
Oct 4, p.1: “Saloons Shut at 7 Tonight by Grip Order”; “Lack of Coffins Halts Grip Victims’ Burials”
Oct 10, p.1: “3357 New Grip Cases; 656 Drop in 24 Hours”
Oct 12, p.1: “Rabbi Compelled to Cart Own Son’s Body to Grave”; “Five Nurses Die”
Oct 12, p.2: “Thousand Bodies Unburied in City”; “Double Funerals Show Terrible Toll of Grip”; “Makes Son’s Coffin” (photos)
Oct 15, p.1: the city health director’s statement that the situation is “well in hand”
Oct 17, p.1: “7010 Die of Grip in Pennsylvania Since October”
Oct 28, p.2: “No Orgies Here When Bars Open”; “City’s Epidemic Chart”
Oct 31, p.3: “Many Arrests Made as Saloons Open”; “City to Don Camouflage in Wartime Halloween”
Nov 1, p.2: “Hold 2 in Killing of Girl Mummer”
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