The 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic-Auditorium Houses New Patients
From: Oakland Tribune, 22 October 1918, Page 4, Column 3
AUDITORIUM HOUSES NEW FLU PATIENTS
The Municipal Auditorium was converted over night into a hospital to care for emergency cases in fighting the Spanish influenza epidemic. Sixty-seven beds for patients had been moved in and supplies in the way of sheets and beds were provided this morning by the Red Cross. Stoves were being erected and a room for nurses was fitted up. A room for volunteer workers to change their clothes has also been provided.
The conversion of the Auditorium into a hospital is declared by physicians who are volunteering their services to help fight the epidemic to have been accomplished with remarkable expedition. The hospital wards are the rooms along the south side of the building. These were used partly as offices and partly for storage purposes, and were piled high with chairs, and furniture, largely covered with dust.
The city prison chain gang was put to work last night and in a few hours had the rooms cleared. Women volunteers from the city jail, imprisoned as vagrants, set to work with scrub brush and mop, and within a short time the rooms were clean and sanitary.
The number of deaths and the condition as to virulence of the influenza have been much greater among the poorer classes in the community. In these cases, there has been greater difficulty in getting immediate medical attention and nurses, and it will be largely from these districts that the patients for the Auditorium emergency hospital will be drawn.
[etc.]
Deaths from Spanish influenza reported since yesterday are as follows:
Hazel Peterson, 449 Fifty-first street; Florence Ferro, 528 Henry street; Gosti Perata, 685 Fortieth street; Benjamin Cornell, 323 Filbert street; Louis Pichette, 673 Twenty-third street; Joseph Rouhabon, 838 Twenty-eighth street; Hermina Boyer, 1063 Eighteenth street; Mathilde Hopken, 2236 Tenth avenue; August Holk, 2005 Webster street; Anne Fillmore, 168 Santa Rosa avenue; Harry Cooney, Henry Cooney, 2654 Harrison street; William Hennessey, 196 Tenth street; Margaret Peacock, 5819 McCall street; James Westdahl, 1133 East Thirty-third street; Abbie O'Leary, 2125 Curtis street; Fred Miramontes, 1109 Twelfth avenue; Ida Mac Auley, Oakland; Robert Conniff, 1538 Eighth street; George Clement, 1040 Peralta street; Alvira Mendes, 1606 Fifth street.
