Influenza and Inequality: One Town's Tragic Response to the Great Epidemic of 1918

Chapter Four: The View from across the Tracks

chapter four 5 the view from across the tracks During the first week of the 1918 flu epidemic in Norwood, eight residents died, and all but one were immigrants or the children of immigrants . Before officials could respond, word spread quickly through the multiethnic enclave of South Norwood that a terrible scourge had arrived. Lithuanian nationals had begun to move into Norwood around 1900.1 According to the memoir of early Lithuanian immigrant Vincas Kudirka, just ten Lithuanians then lived in South Norwood, which was still a largely undeveloped area consisting of about fourteen houses, a small schoolhouse, and farmland. Those first Lithuanian residents began a chain migration as word spread that jobs and housing were available in the town. According to the state census of 1915, over five hundred Lithuanians had become residents. Most took low-paying, unskilled jobs primarily in the Morrill ink factory and the Bird & Sons roofing plant, both located in South Norwood, or in the tanneries and the press establishments, all within walking distance of their homes and boardinghouses. They were soon joined by immigrants from Poland.2 Although in some respects culturally similar to the Lithuanians, both having been dominated by tsarist Russia, the Polish immigrants established a distinctive subculture of their own. They lived along different South Norwood streets and created a separate enclave and unofficial mutual support network. The Lithuanian and Polish residents also helped make South Norwood’s business district bustle with commerce. The Polish Co-operative Store on Washington Street was a popular enterprise. Most Lithuanians purchased their staples at the grocery of B. A. Tumavicus or at the Lithuanian Co-operative Association grocery. Like most immigrant groups who came before them, the Lithua52 the view from across the tracks 53 nians formed a mutual benefit society to assist their fellow countrymen in times of sickness or death. Within a few years of its inception the association, called Ke ˛stutis after a famous Lithuanian hero, split apart when Lithuanian freethinkers, who were atheists with socialist leanings, gained control and expunged all religious references from the organization’s bylaws. The religious-minded Catholic Lithuanians reincorporated as the Lithuanian Benefit Society of St. George and, as their numbers grew, planned a Roman Catholic parish independent of St. Catherine’s. Meanwhile, across the street, the freethinkers, those known as the “Hall group,” founded a benevolent association of their own.3 Almost immediately the two societies squared off in competition to see whether a new place of worship or a social hall would be built first. Throughout 1913 the churchgoers would announce a fund-raising event, only to have a counter-event held for the Hall. In the summer of 1914, the freethinkers gained the upper hand, and a cornerstonelaying ceremony took place on St. George Avenue in July. The Ke ˛stutis Figure 15. Lithuanians supported the grocery and provisions store of Baltramejus (B.A.) Tumavicus located at 1208 Washington Street. In October 1918, Mary Tumavicus, twenty-four, who lived above the store, died at a Boston hospital from influenza. The Norwood Messenger noted that the family was “very well known and highly regarded in the southern section of town.” Private collection. 54 the view from across the tracks president, Anthony Neviackas, welcomed the large gathering and described the soon-to-be-completed facility, a substantial cement block and wooden structure that would hold a class room, reading room, library, and ladies’ room as well as a second-floor hall for meetings and dancing.4 The primary speaker for the ceremony, Fortunatus J. Bagoc̆ius, a popular lecturer and socialist attorney, spoke at length on the long history of persecution of their shared Lithuanian homeland, first by Germany and more recently by Russia. He praised the group’s desire to build a hall to “have a place to come together, to read the books, to discuss the news, a place for joy and recreation.” He thanked several distinguished uptown Norwood citizens for their contributions, and he vehemently denied certain rumors that had been circulated when construction began. “Some said that it was going to be a hall for the I.W.W., the Anarchists, and the Black Hand,” Bagoc̆ius shouted. “This is no I.W.W.”5 But many nativists in town had their suspicions. Four months later, on Thanksgiving Day in 1914, the dedication exercises were held on the hall’s own stage. Speakers included James Hartshorn, chairman of Norwood’s...