An epidemic without enmity: explaining the missing ethnic tensions in New Haven's 1918 influenza epidemic.

Urban History Review, March, 2008 by Irwin, Julia F.

Although much of the historiography of urban public health documents scapegoating of immigrant and working-class civilians during onsets of epidemic disease, the 1918 influenza epidemic in New Haven, Connecticut, suggests a very different story. A large number of industrial working-class Italians made up a significant proportion of the city's population. During the epidemic, Italians succumbed to influenza at nearly twice the rate of other residents. But, contrary to historiographic expectations, the New Haven story is one narrated by piercing silences and a distinct lack of hostility towards the immigrant community. These silences must be understood as a product of the period's political and social context. Influenza struck New Haven during the closing months of the First World...

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