In some ways, it’s deja flu.

Quarantines. Event cancellations. People stockpiling food. Those are all happening in San Diego now because of the coronavirus, and they happened here in 1918, too, when the Spanish flu arrived.

That pandemic, believed to be the deadliest in history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, almost one-third of the population. It killed at least 50 million, including 675,000 in the United States, dwarfing the numbers of those who died in soon-to-conclude World War I.

The death toll in San Diego from the flu was 366, out of a population of about 75,000. That’s about 0.5 percent of the city. Today, that would amount to some 6,800 victims.


Almost 5,000 others got sick with “the grip,” as it was sometimes known then.

With the coronavirus in its early stages, no one knows what the final numbers will look like this time, and there are obvious differences between what happened then, especially in terms of medical knowledge. Doctors in 1918 understood that viruses existed, but knew little about how to test for them or create targeted vaccines to combat outbreaks.

There were no antibiotics to treat the secondary bacterial pneumonia that killed many of the victims. Doctors couldn’t explain why the flu ravaged fit and healthy people in their 20s, 30s and 40s more than it did children and the elderly.

Some even doubted that it would reach San Diego. One health official predicted influenza couldn’t take hold here. He thought the weather was too mild.


But the flu came anyway, and looking back offers reminders, if not lessons, about how human beings react under pressure from an unseen foe.

The first cases were reported on Sept. 26, 1918, in Balboa Park, where sailors were stationed. A day later, a dozen more cropped up at Camp Kearny, an Army base. The sick were put in quarantine.

Then came orders from the city shutting down for five weeks all schools, theaters, movie houses, gymnasiums, pool halls, libraries, churches — anywhere the public gathered. Neighboring cities issued similar edicts. People were told to wear gauze surgical masks when outside their homes.

Still the cases mounted. A dozen members of the crew building the San Diego Arizona Railway in the Carrizo Gorge were fatally stricken. “We do not wish to unduly alarm people, but we have a situation which must be recognized,” Dr. Ernest Chartres-Martin, San Diego’s health officer, told reporters. “The influenza has not been stopped, or even been curbed.”


Children absorbed what was going on around them. According to an account by local historian Richard Crawford, many of them began skipping rope to this rhyme:

I had a little bird

Its name was Enza

I opened the window


And in-flew-Enza

Containment strategies

Then, as now, “social distancing” was part of the containment strategy, although they didn’t call it that in 1918. Some cities took it less seriously than others, with disastrous results. Philadelphia refused to cancel a parade and soon found its hospitals overwhelmed. Within six weeks, more than 12,000 people were dead.

Circa 1917_Military personnel on truck at Camp Kearny during flu epidemic. (San Diego Historical Society)

San Diego restricted public gatherings but officials thought it was mostly an indoor problem. Get outside, residents were told, and the fresh air will keep you healthy. People went to the beaches. They held folk dances in parks, splashed in outdoor swimming pools. One doctor suggested car rides at least 3,500 feet up into the mountains.


Some physicians also recommended a post-meal spray of quinine bifulsate, more commonly an anti-malarial drug, which was thought to “preclude much danger from the malady,” according to Crawford’s account.

City officials eventually decided to spray the streets, too — with sheep dip, a liquid used by farmers to keep the animals free of insects. The Imperial County town of Brawley had reported success with it.

Inside homes, the Burton Electric Co. advertised a portable heater as “the only real flu chaser.” It cost $10. “Take no chances on catching the ‘flu’ — easy to catch, but hard to get rid of,” one ad read.

By late October of 1918, the flu’s spread in San Diego seemed to be slowing. “The total number of cases reported from the city and nearby camps and posts is now 535 with a total of 20 deaths,” the San Diego Union reported, while adding a dig at its neighbor to the north: “It is pointed out that one day in Los Angeles records more new cases and more deaths than the totals in San Diego since the disease first appeared.”


The newspaper, on its editorial page, scoffed at wearing masks in public. It suggested they were better suited for “highwaymen, burglars and holdup men” and expressed regret “that some of the young women in public employment are compelled to wear these masks. We miss their pretty faces.”

The Chamber of Commerce also downplayed the threat, arguing in a statement that “fear is the greatest contributing cause in prolongation of the influenza epidemic.” A letter writer to the Evening Tribune dismissed the whole thing as “influenza propaganda” and suggested doctors were just trying to drum up business.

Most of the restrictions on public gatherings were lifted by the middle of November. But then came another outbreak, 100 new cases. Officials turned the Mission Brewery building at the foot of Washington Street into an emergency isolation hospital.

City health officials pushed to re-instate closures, and got push-back from business owners. After the state moved forward with a quarantine order, the City Council passed its own in early December. Only those selling “the necessities” were allowed to stay open — grocery stores, banks, drug stores and meat markets.


Police gave warnings to a small number of businesses that flouted the rules. If they were still open the next day, their owners got arrested.

Flu cartoon published in The San Diego Union Dec. 7, 1918. (The San Diego Union)

Mandatory masks

The shut-down lasted less than one week. After it was lifted, the City Council ordered everyone to wear gauze masks while out in public.

Failing to don one carried the threat of 30 days in jail and a $100 fine. Hundreds were arrested and fined small amounts. “Unlucky members of the ‘I Won’t Wear ‘Em Club’ were brought before the court in seemingly never-ending fashion,” the Evening Tribune reported.


The masks had to be the thickness of four gauze bandages or six pieces of cheesecloth. Newspapers published sew-your-own instructions. The Union also ran a cartoon in early December of several men in masks — including one with it covering his eyes, not his mouth and nose — under the heading, “They Improve the Looks of Some People.” Another part of the drawing read, “Funny Looking Us” (FLU).

Not so funny: The continuing health toll.

Some of the deaths were heartbreaking in their capriciousness. A Fallbrook man named Harry Smelser came to San Diego for jury duty and caught the flu. His wife, Dot, traveled south to take care of him. She got sick, too. He recovered. She died.

Then, almost as suddenly as it started, the epidemic waned. On Christmas Eve, the mask order was lifted. There would be another wave of cases in 1919, but the worst was over, at least in San Diego.


Health officials thought they knew how to keep it that way, with an approach that feels familiar to anyone watching the current coronavirus spread. They recommended no traveling, especially to Los Angeles, and Camp Kearny ordered its soldiers not to head there on leave.

But what about people coming from L.A. to San Diego?

“Many of these persons come to San Diego where we have almost stayed the progress of the ailment,” the Union editorialized on Jan. 20, 1919. “Some of our health authorities are of the opinion that if it were not for this Los Angeles immigration this city would be practically free of the influenza germ.”

If only it were that easy. Then and now.