6/28/2023 0 Comments Death Sentences by Michael Zimecki![]() ![]() The body count continued to mount in inverse proportion to the city’s declining adherence to the state-mandated quarantine. Public schools and churches were permitted to stay open. Wartime steel and munitions production made officials reluctant to shut down and isolate. Chief among them, perhaps, was Pittsburgh’s horrendous air quality, the result of coke production and the burning of bituminous coal, which left the city’s residents predisposed to respiratory ailments. During the worst days here, someone new caught the flu almost every minute and someone died in every ten.Īccording to historian James Higgins, several factors contributed to the deadliness of the city’s outbreak. The mortality rate was higher than in any other city in the country. Pittsburgh fared horribly during the Great Influenza Epidemic. ![]() Maybe we can do a better job than we did in 1918. Or, as the Quebecois maîtres brasseurs say, La Fin du Monde. Bars and liquor stores are closed, a veritable tragedy for a place that has more drinking establishments per capita than anywhere else in the nation. Well, I’m in Pittsburgh, and it’s happening now. Mark Twain once said that he wanted to be in Pittsburgh when the world ends because nothing happens there until ten years later. Sixth Avenue, Pittsburgh, 1908-1909 New York Public Library ![]()
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