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.

 

Miss Kershaw's raspberries -- "a taste I can conjure in the dead of winter"

 

I have an exuberant stand of golden raspberries in the alley behind my house, all mixed up with burgundy clematis. People strolling down the alley often stop for a snack and I have given starts to several neighbors. The berries are fragile, not suitable for packing and shipping, so you won't see them in stores. And they have a story:

When they were in their 70s, Thurston Griggs and Murray, who had been junior high and high school classmates in Tacoma, started corresponding.

Murray to Thurston Griggs

July 28 '91

Dear Thurston...

Do you remember Jessie Kershaw, Miss Kershaw, who taught dancing in the studio above Roberts Brothers store at Division and I? Tennis champion of Tacoma around 1901? President of the Tacoma Humane Society, who used to picket rodeos? Had a house full of cats and cat crap and a pair of old hunting dogs, Guy and Scamp, who fought as a team, one grabbing the other dog's right front paw, the other going for the throat? Probably not; certainly not all that. Those are my memories of her because she lived two doors north of us on Eye street in a big gray house with horse chestnuts on the parking strip, a hitching posts, too, still in place, and a Secret Garden of a yard with the first, and biggest Japanese cutleaf maple of my memory and two shiny barked cherry trees, one Bing, the other Royal Anne, which we could pick and give her half, or raid when we knew she was out walking the dogs. Along the alley behind the house she had a row of raspberry bushes, very bushy, so that by crouching we could pick them without being seen from her kitchen window. Most of them were yellow raspberries, which have a distinctive taste, a taste I can conjure in the dead of winter. A taste I used to think about when walking the snowdrifts in Massacre Alley on Attu. I told Mrs. Kershaw about that when I came home after the war and when she heard that Rosa and I had bought our place at Trout Lake she came over to Dad's house with a dozen rooted plants and gave them to me, saying "I just want you to have the pleasure of watching little boys steal them."

I'm just in from our backyard where the raspberries are growing behind the vegetable patch and in front of the acre or so of second growth doug fir, alder and cottonwood that has grown up since this place was logged about 1910. The bushes haven't been cared for, except for putting grass clippings on the bed in the fall, and they don't get a proper amount of sun, what with the trees and the fact that we are on the north slope of North Hill which is the equivalent of Al Capp's Lower Slobovia, but they are still bearing after all this time and are one of the few things that taste as good as I remember things tasting 70 years ago. 

best,

Murray

Miss Kershaw's given name was actually Dorothy. (In her private life she was Mrs. Mylne Keena.) Her mother had been a drama and dance instructor at Annie Wright Seminary in Tacoma, which helps explain both her own career as a dance instructor and her place in the traditionalist wing of Tacoma society. Well-brought-up young Tacomans of the 1920s put on their patent leather shoes, climbed the stairs to her studio upstairs in the Roberts Brothers building, and learned to waltz.

Although his mom (whose stepfather had been Chief Justice of the Nebraska Supreme Court) might have liked the idea, Murray was not one of Miss Kershaw's students. Thurston was, however, and he hated it:

"Miss Kershaw was a nemesis to me because I was consigned to her dancing class, and those were the most readily expendable days of my childhood. How I resented that! For one thing, my older brother had rebelled completely; he said it was 'sissy stuff' and no red-blooded western man needed that frilly affectation. But our folks were intent on bringing us up as gentlemen and ladies in the Eastern tradition. We had to wear white gloves; patent leather special-purpose shoes (that hurt); special clothes; special combing of the hair; preliminary bathing. We lined up on opposite sides of that prison on top of Roberts Brothers, boys on one side and girls on the other, and, after a demonstration of how to do it, we were to choose partners. Oh, it was painful! I used to wait as long as possible before choosing, because I didn't want any partner anyway. Besides, I didn't want to convey the impression that I might have a favorite. Beth Pascoe seemed to have the same attitude as me, so often I would find her last to be chosen and I would pick her, so that we could suffer together. I'll swear that she used to groan and mutter, and I used to interpret that not so much as a response to me personally as to the entire process. We had to hold our hands just so; stand just so far apart. Then of course we had to watch the couples who performed best, presumably in adulation of their skill. Miss Kershaw was so "pat" with it all, that it seemed to me she was doing it in her sleep. Eventually I feigned illness so frequently that my mother gave up...

 

 

Libeling George Washington

I wrote this story in 2016 for HistoryLink.org, a free online encyclopedia of Washington state history. It fascinated me then and seems relevant now. Paul Haffer was 19 when he wrote a mildly stated letter to the editor of the Tacoma Times for Washington's Birthday. He said that the man had flaws, including being an "owner and exploiter of negro slaves," and warned that making imperfect people into idols is a dangerous pastime. Thanks to a Washington state law prohibiting the libeling of dead people, his little act of free speech led to his trial, conviction, and jail time. It also sparked a national conversation at the time about how we view our heroes.

The people who found his letter criminal rarely mentioned slavery. They were more upset that Haffer said that the Father of Our Country had a hot temper and swore a lot.

I hope I am not falling into idol worship when I take pleasure in knowing that Haffer and I attended the same high school, 50 years apart. Go Sumner Spartans!

Young Tacoman's conviction for libeling George Washington is upheld by state Supreme Court on December 29, 1916. 

https://historylink.org/File/11242

On December 29, 1916, the Washington State Supreme Court affirms the misdemeanor conviction of Paul Haffer (1894-1949) for criminal libel. The victim of his offense is George Washington (1732-1799), dead these 117 years. Haffer, a Tacoma resident and committed socialist campaigner, told the Pierce County Superior Court during his trial that he had nothing against the first president when he described him in a letter to the Tacoma Tribune as a slave owner, heavy drinker, and user of profanity. Haffer said he simply didn't think citizens should idolize Washington, or anyone. Despite nationwide publicity and ridicule of the state law prohibiting exposing dead people to obloquy, Haffer's conviction is upheld on appeal by the Supreme Court.

Joab versus Haffer

Haffer's letter, published in the February 18, 1916, issue of the Tacoma Tribune, described George Washington as an "owner and exploiter of negro slaves. ... a profane and blasphemous man and an inveterate drinker" (The Northwest Worker). Haffer suggested that citizens should "take the tales of nobility of these so called great men with the proverbial grain of salt. This is not written in a spirit of slander or with the idea of antagonizing anyone except mindless hero-worshippers, but with the idea of, perhaps, getting a few to draw aside the painted curtain of the school histories and gaze upon the actors in their true light" (The Northwest Worker).

The libel case based on the letter was brought by another forthright Tacoman, Colonel Albert E. Joab (1857-1930), who had served as Commissary General at Camp Murray (later Fort Lewis) in the 1890s. Joab was also an attorney and familiar with Washington state statutes. He unearthed a little-known 1909 law that prohibited "exposing the memory of one deceased to hatred, contempt, ridicule or obloquy" (The Northwest Worker). Joab didn't mind exposing living people to obloquy, however. The next year, he made the papers for getting himself punched in the nose by an 81-year-old grocery-store proprietor for saying nasty things about President Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) ("Defender of Washington ...").

Nevertheless, Joab was more complex politically than his knee-jerk patriotism might suggest. The same year that he prosecuted Haffer, the national NAACP magazine The Crisis reported that Joab was presented with a loving cup by a "committee of colored people" in thanks for his assisting with a protest against the racist film The Birth of a Nation ("Social Progress"). Earlier, in 1904, he had joined other prominent Tacomans in signing a resolution against the "barbarous massacre" of Jews in Kishinev, a Russian pogrom that inspired international protests (Adler, 199).

The libel case against Haffer was tried in the court of public opinion before it reached a courtroom. Municipal Court Judge Graham said he didn't want it in his courtroom and would not allow the defense to present any evidence in his courtroom ("Tough for George ..."). In the meantime both Major E. M. Brown (d. 1916), a Spanish American War veteran and prominent doctor, and Hamilton Gronen (1874-1968), chief engineer for Tacoma, made public statements praising Joab and excoriating Haffer, while local socialists got busy raising funds for court costs.

Haffer challenged Joab to a public debate on George Washington's life and times. Joab said he would gladly do so after the trial.

Trial and Verdict

At a preliminary hearing in Superior Court, Haffer's attorney, P. L. Pendleton, moved for dismissal on the grounds that Washington had no living relatives who had standing to bring a libel case. Deputy Prosecutor James W. Selden (1872-1948) countered that "we are all relatives. His peculiar relation to the history of this country has made him the father of us all" ("Proves We're Related"). Although a Mrs. Rasmussen stood up to contradict that statement, shouting "I ain't no daughter of Washington's," the judge allowed the trial to go forward ("Proves We're Related"). On April 28, the trial finally started in Pierce County Superior Court, Judge Ernest M. Card (1877-1952) presiding. George Washington's portrait was taken out of the courtroom for the duration.

Colonel Joab, wearing his military cape and assisting the prosecution, called Haffer an anarchist and a blackguard and then expanded his description to "a striped hyena, a grave robber, a slimy shark and a wharf rat," while Pendleton in turn called Joab "a middle-aged man with a schoolboy's mind indulging in a schoolboy quarrel with a schoolboy" ("Ridicules Col. Joab's Charges").

Once all the evidence and arguments were presented, the jury took only an hour and a half to convict Haffer. Following the May 3 verdict, Joab thanked each man on the jury for his patriotism as he left the courtroom.

Question in the Press but Upheld on Appeal

The Tacoma Times published an interview with Haffer the day after the verdict. The apparently star-struck reporter described the convicted defendant's "well developed pair of arms and broad shoulders topped by a mass of yellow, unruly, bristling hair and a smile ..." (Sutherland). Haffer assured the Times there was "no malice in my heart when I wrote that article. I wished to correct the fallacy of hero worshipping," adding that he had a passion for deep reading and writing and that he hoped to promote socialism, "the educational kind," with his work (Sutherland).

Three days after the verdict the Times wrote, "The whole proceeding has been silly. The prosecuting attorney and the superior court never should have tolerated the use of our judicial machinery for so absurd an action" ("Another Freak Court Episode to Live Down"). Papers around the country followed the story with varying degrees of sarcasm. The Chicago Herald said:

"Aside from patriotism, the loyal Tacoman has a good reason for objecting to aspersions on the character of Washington. Tacoma is in a state named after the Father of His Country. It follows that referring to him despitefully is a slur on Tacoma, on the state in which it is located, and is almost tantamount to asserting that the climate, soil, crops and agricultural and industrial opportunities of that great and growing commonwealth are not superior to those to be found anywhere else" (quoted in American Socialist).

Haffer posted bail and appealed the verdict. He also considered suing Joab for libel, specifically for calling him a "blackguard" and "anarchist." Despite the pleas of the Tacoma Times and other Washington papers, Haffer's conviction was upheld by the Washington Supreme Court in a unanimous decision issued on December 29, 1916.

Only One Other Case

Haffer was pardoned by Governor Ernest Lister (1870-1919) in May 1917 after several months in jail. However, he was only free for three weeks before being arrested for "slacking" (not registering for the draft). Again convicted and sentenced, Haffer was drafted out of jail in June 1918 and served at Camp Lewis until the end of World War I.

Only one other case is known to have been prosecuted for libeling a dead person in Washington. In 1921 a Ferry County deputy sheriff and Farmer Labor Party activist, J. S. Bedler, and the editor of the Republic News-Miner, A. L. Van Dahl (1884-1954), were convicted and fined, although not jailed. Bedler had written an article that Van Dahl published referring to the recently deceased Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) as a "blood-thirsty maniac" ("Fined for Libeling Roosevelt").

Henry Victor Morgan -- Whitman, Chickens, and a New Age Vision

My grandfather Henry Victor Morgan died when I was two. I met him, but I didn't know him. I do know that he was a big fan of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman (whom Murray called "dad's shaggy hero"). Henry Victor, or HVM, was born in 1865, so Emerson and Whitman, although not age mates, were both still active when he was a young man. He thought of them as living influences rather than historical figures. He was friends with Ezra Meeker, of Oregon Trail fame, which brings home how compressed the history of white people is in this part of the world.

HVM's and Adda's church at Division and North J in Tacoma            

HVM was a prolific writer, poet, and lecturer, mostly on metaphysical topics that I find hard to follow. He preached at his home church in Tacoma, the Church of the Healing Christ (now the Center for Spiritual Living, and reached an international audience through his monthly magazine, The Master Christian. 

 

Every now and then he wrote something I can latch on to.This is part of an diary entry that came into the hands of my friend and HVM appreciator, Jeff Margolis. I don't know if my grandfather ever published it.                                                                                                             

Dorothy Hyatt, Kathryn McGee, and Murray Morgan -- "the right to follow conscience"

In 1967 during the Vietnam War, Howard Scott lost his teaching position when it became known that he had been a conscientious objector during World War II and that he was involved in alternative service counseling with draft age men.

Howard Scott with the violin he made in prison: Chris Willard

Scott was a lifelong pacifist who registered as a conscientious objector prior to World War II. Assigned to alternative service as a firefighter at a Civilian Public Service camp, he left that position in protest of the Japanese internment following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was redrafted, arrested, and served a year and a half at McNeil Island Penitentiary. After some years as a Snohomish County dairy farmer after the war, he returned to college and earned a teaching certificate. Scott, his wife, Ruane, and their four children moved to Pierce County 1960s and both parents taught at schools in Puyallup and Tacoma.

Kathryn McGee, a close friend of the Scotts in Tacoma, recalled in 2000 that "the school board and some citizens complained to Judge E. A. Morrison that Howard should be fired ... I didn't know what to do to to help, and then I called Murray and told him of the incident, of our long friendship with the Scotts, and of Howard's dedicated beliefs as a Quaker and a pacifist. The next day I heard that Murray had, in his radio program, spoken of Howard and defended him. Words could never say how I valued Murray's trust that Howard was (and is) a man of conviction."

Murray's defense was not successful. As McGee wrote, "school boards are notorious, if not downright infamous for not wanting to displease any of the public." He did strike a nerve with Dorothy Hyatt, a conservative activist in Puyallup, which prompted this exchange of letters

(Howard and Ruanes' lives are summarized in Margaret Riddle's excellent essay at HistoryLink.org: https://historylink.org/File/20485)

Fred and Dottie Haley to Morgans, September 1964 -- "miasmic gasses arising"

We got this in Vienna, having paddled our kayaks down the Danube from Ulm, Germany. The idea had been to recreate Murray and Rosa's honeymoon paddle down the Danube for their 25th anniversary, this time making it all the way to the Black Sea. Originally, my folks had worked out the complications of paddling through several Cold War European borders by hooking up with a group sponsored by the National Geographic. Murray's cancer diagnosis and surgery meant they left without us, so we decided to go as far as we could on our own. We made it to Bratislava, about 40 miles downriver from Vienna. 

 

Fred doesn't mention that he had crossed the country the year before to attend the March on Washington. His civil rights activism sparked a boycott, not successful, of his family business -- Brown & Haley Candy. Just as it took me many a year to return to Safeway after the grape boycott, I wonder if there are still people who forgo Almond Roca out of political habit. 
 

Dear Murray and Rosa: 

Your letter from the TRBOVLJE somewhere at midpoint was a beaut, and I am glad as anything that Dottie answered it the next day because my flesh has been too weak; but nonetheless, I have been with you in spirit every mile of your journey, and now that we are getting reports from points along the way (and I couldn't agree with you more about Munich -- I have been there half a dozen times, both pre- and post-war ((I guess I mostly like salt sea ports of call)) and likewise fail to note its commanding charm), we are keeping track of you as yr gentle readers.

Dottie and I stopped, incidentally, in Ulm last spring and spent a happy hour in the cathedral. It is my favorite on the continent of Europe, including Notre Dame, though there are any number in England which surpass all the rest for my money.

...

What else to tell you? Well, we had a good afternoon up at David's (David Hellyer) cabin with a select part of the birthday group, and it was only slightly marred by some of David's well-intentioned but somewhat ferocious remarks on the subject of civil rights in general and the summer Mississippi project in particular, which put Dottie into tears! But Connie indicated she wasn't in complete sympathy with her old man, and the next day Dottie was still unrepentant though David was, it is reported. It's some kind of a blessing, isn't it, that we keep a measure of tolerance as respects the views of strangers, because the people who are close and dear are often quite as unenlightened.

Anyway, there's a lot of fear and trembling here and there about the election, the white backlash, etc. etc. You can feel yourselves lucky to escape some of the miasmic gasses arising from that general arena.

...

Fred and Dottie

Wilmott Ragsdale to Murray, from Madison, Wisconsin, 2 May 1964 -- "hooked on Tacoma"

In sping 1964, we were getting ready to take a freighter to Europe and then re-create Rosa and Murray's honeymoon kayak trip down the Danube. Murray fainted after getting the required vaccinations and  was diagnosed with cancer. After surgery removing most of his stomach, he was advised to wrap up his affairs. Taking Rags's advice, he booked another freighter berth and we made a shortened Danube trip, from Ulm in Germany to Bratislava in (then) Czechoslovakia, later that summer. Murray lived another 36 years.

Dear Murray, 

I just got your stoical and very funny letter from Tacoma General Hospital near Wright's Park, Tacoma. It is not that I expect trifles like possible cancer operations to stop you, but it is absolutely miserable to get held up by such a thing at any time and particularly just at this time. There are inevitably other times and better times to come, but. On the other hand can you get the next ship? There's nothing like a sea voyage for a convalescence.

The sea voyage for me is that thing that I always intend to make but never manage. It is the same right now. I have a sort of offer from UNESCO to be a "consultant" to some sort of new seminar system for Asian journalists in Manila. But this depends upon a loyalty check in the U.S. and the approval of the Philippine government. I got the forms for the loyalty check about two weeks ago and after searching out forgotten street numbers going back half my life finally got the forms off in one week. ... I gave your name as a reference--for loyalty--so you may get a call from the FBI. Please do not slug that agent. Please do tell him that you have often tried to nominate J. Edgar Hoover for president. But in any case there is never going to be time for the sea voyage since the job evidently begins late in June. It is supposed to be for six months and I don't know then whether we'll come straight back to Madison or can get something for the second semester.

...

Your mention of Terry Pettus makes me think a long way back when he was drama "critic" of the Tacoma Tribune and had a moustache and wore a camelhair coat. I've never seen him since. Bill Ames at the university journalism school has just done something like a book on the Seattle PI strike. He told me he talked with Terry and referred to him in terms something like, "a fine old gentleman," which took me aback. [Rags was younger than Pettus, but not by enough not to worry about being "a fine old gentleman" by association.] I do remember Terry's father on our Academic Freedom committee. I listed this committee among the non-religious and non-political of my organizations, and called it a "social action" group. That is, I listed it on the loyalty forms. It will stick out, of course, because it is the only organization in which I had to list myself as an officer.

I just heard a train whistle here and it made me think of hearing train whistles and mistaking them for boat whistles on the 11th Street Bridge. [Like Murray, Rags had worked as a tender on the 11th Street Bridge--now the Murray Morgan Bridge--in Tacoma.] From the bridge a train whistle always sounded a little strange to me, suggesting travel and other places. Hearing the same sound in Madison suggests nothing but a train in Madison. I have tried several times to figure out why Madison has so little excitement for me and Tacoma so much. Today was not untypical of Madison. I had lunch on the terrace by the lake and watched three shells of eights race. Beyond the shells, several dozen sailboats were moving, and the Rescue motorboat was streaking out to pick up a couple over-enthusiastic sailors. A little later, I saw the serious left-wing students parading around the capitol at the square, carrying signs "Go Home from South Vietnam Yankees." On the way home I stopped and fished for 15 minutes, etc. I keep saying: it is a wonderful place, really wonderful. Anybody would be delighted to be in the wonderful place. And of course, I am, I am. 

I don't know whether four years is such a long time for me to stay anyplace and that I have reached my limit, or that I was just hooked on Tacoma years ago and still am. But

why was I? I hear quite often that going back to the home town is dreadful--you can't go back, etc. But I have always liked to go back. I think I have figured out part of my feeling about Tacoma and the region. It is that I have a sense not only of the physical place, but also of what happened there in the past. All of my childhood I was aware that where I played--in Puget Sound gulch, or at Dash Point, the Indians had been there before me. And this was mixed up with fragments about Job Carr's cabin, and the sailing ships that docked at Old Town, and the mills with their sparks at night. In Wisconsin I have no sense at all of anybody having lived here or anything happening here. If I find that the effort I intend to shortly make to get to the University of Washington is not successful, I will begin to read Wisconsin history.

Maybe that will help, but I know it will not be the same. It was not only the vague historical impressions I wove into my awareness of Tacoma (I remember now that many of the impressions must have come from the Historical "Museum"--especially old paintings (one of Indians with a fire on the beach). It was also a kind of faking of Tacoma as a setting for what I read. I always imagined Wrights Park as Hyde Park. If I needed a doorway of the mansion in Kensington, I used the doorway of some big house maybe on Yakima Avenue, or of course for a mansion, the old Rust house. So part of my attachment to Tacoma was my sense of what had happened there on those beaches among those trees. But part of my feeling was for what never did happen there, but only in other faraway places or perhaps only in books. And the second feeling, the faked up one, was if anything stronger than the first. If knowing-sensing the history makes a place more real and meaningful, then does bringing in what isn't there at all, make it less real? The Tacoma that is real for me may not be real for anybody else. So I have always felt justified in acknowledging that my feeling rests on a neurosis that I indulge and never want to get rid of.