ELKTON — Since we started researching the pandemic of 1918 two-years ago, we have spent many hours online and in archives studying death certificates, undertaker registers, and health department reports. After examining the curated sources for an area, we visit the cemeteries while collecting additional information and remembering those who perished in that perilous time when there was no vaccine to protect people from the virus.
Thus, on a dark, dreary day at the start of spring, while strolling through the Immaculate Conception Parish Cemetery in Elkton searching for victims, we paused at the headstone for Nurse Rose Cecilia Suter. The twenty-nine-year-old healthcare provider graduated from the Union Hospital School of nursing in 1916. With a diploma in hand, the healthcare professional soon took a job at the Kelly Institute, a Baltimore hospital.
While caring for infected patients there, she became an influenza victim. Rose Suter died on Dec 7, 1918. Her mother, six brothers, and a half-brother survived her. About a quarter of the United States population caught the virus, 675,000 died, and life expectancy dropped by 12-years. With no vaccine to protect against the pathogen, people were urged to isolate, quarantine, practice good personal hygiene, and limit social interaction. That was all they had.
For more on the the pandemic of 1918, see the Delmarva Spanish Flu Archive.