Vaccine vignettes -- Tacoma in the 1920s

Tacoma schoolchildren show off their vaccinations in 1922. credit: Washington State Historical Society

 

Washington state had smallpox outbreaks into the 1940s, and from the 19th century on, they were accompanied by controversy over vaccines. During outbreaks, schoolchildren were required to be vaccinated to attend. Some families refused, including Murray's parents. Perhaps predictably for the founding ministers of The Church of the Healing Christ, they did not believe in vaccination and Murray as a teenager had never received one. Since Rosa and her family were parishioners, neither had she. Granted, there were a lot fewer shots available back then. Smallpox and diphtheria were the main ones in the '20s, though many other less proven vaccines were available.

Murray's parents and his school mate Thurston Griggs's family were on opposite sides of the vaccine disputes.

Murray to Thurston, March 7, 1991

I remember your father as a figure of authority in the community, always DOCTOR Griggs, and somehow a person in opposition to what Our Family stood for. I suspect this memory may stem from a time when my father ran for school board in opposition to a school decision requiring vaccination. My father lost. I was held out of attending Jason Lee for some weeks in the late 1920s because I wasn't vaccinated. (I remember getting in a lot of reading, probably of Edgar Rice Burroughs) I also remember the astonishment of the doctor in 1942 when Rosa ... and I were getting shots before going to South America when he found we had not been vaccinated at all. We were given a powerful panoply of vaccines and then the draft board would only let us go to Mexico. ("You must not get water between us" -- at a time before the Pan-Am highway reached beyond San Cristobal de las Casas.)

Thurston's father was a vaccine proponent, to the point of giving out "cold vaccine injections" during the 1918 flu pandemic, despite that fact that no actual flu (or cold) shot existed then. Thurston's older brother Joseph Jr., who became a physician himself, wrote about his early experiences going on calls with his father. Joe was 10 when he started driving him around town.

When the great flu epidemics of 1918-19 occurred. Dad was severely overworked. He believed that giving a series of cold vaccine injections might prevent the flu, so we were all given shots. When Dad finally got home for supper, he would find our living room full of families from the neighborhood, catching him for their shots. Many kids made such a fuss about the approaching needle that Dad would often have one of us come out and take a shot in front of everybody, and show that it didn't hurt enough to make a fuss about.  

Schools were closed during the flu epidemic, and the hospitals were overflowing. Church basements were commandeered or volunteered as emergency hospitals. Dad asked me if I would like to learn to drive the car and be his chauffeur for his calls so that he could get some rest between visits. I already knew our city of about 70,000 population because I had a job delivering curtains for a curtain laundry and drugs for a pharmacy. Dad would tell me the next address and then he would fall asleep sitting in the back seat of the Model T Ford sedan. Upon arrival, I awakened him and he made his call. When he came out the procedure was repeated.

Once they got their first shots in 1942, my folks never looked back. Since we traveled a lot, I got vaccinated for exotics (to us) such as yellow fever as well as the standard regimes of the '50 and '60s.