I found this in Muskogee a couple of days ago.
On the front is written: Hazel
I suppose Hazel could be one of the women in the photograph but because the writer says she will also be sending along another picture for Mag, I think it’s more likely that Hazel identifies who this picture was meant to go to.
On the reverse it says ...
Our school is closed on the account of diptheria there was a death Sat. and one Sunday. We are not quarantined but no children are allowed on the street. I’ll tell you it is a mighty gloomy time. I don’t know when we will have any more school.
I’ll send Mag a picture with yours as I don’t know her address, give it to her when she comes up. Tell her to write once in a while. I don’t know when Charles will come home.
The card is not signed. There is no address and no postmark. In the stamp box on the reverse is the word “AZO.“ I thought it might mean Arizona. I was wrong.
What it meant was the postcard was printed on Kodak Professional Azo paper and the 4 triangles pointing up dated the postcard to 1904 - 1918.
After I studied the postcard for awhile, I started to wonder if someone reading the same words and seeing the same image would infer the same things or would they see it all differently?
There are so many ways this story could spin.
The writer refers to school twice, saying, “Our school is closed on account of diptheria” and “I don’t know when we will have any more school.” The ladies look a bit old to be students.
Could my writer have been a teacher at the school closed after two deaths?
Until the late 20s, diphtheria was one of the leading causes of death among children. A highly contagious disease, it is spread by coughing, breathing, direct contact or contaminated food. There's a brief incubation of 2 - 4 days. Symptoms include a sore throat, fever, swollen necks glands, and difficulty in swallowing and breathing. Often there is a membrane that forms in the throat, as it grows it can interfere with swallowing. If it extends to the windpipe, it blocks the airway causing suffocation.
Children are said to have died “horribly and suddenly,” literally strangling to death.
At that time most state health boards left the control of diphtheria outbreaks to local public health departments and individual practicing physicians.
Who, more often then not, argued against the closing of schools.
One M.D wrote in 1916, "My conclusions are that in a threatened outbreak of this disease, the city schools should not be closed, but if put under proper medical supervision they may be kept open and instead of spreading, will help stamp out the disease."
Other arguments against closing were of a financial nature.
In the end many schools had to close anyway.
Kansas was one state I ran across that had a more definitive approach …
Kansas (1915) - Should the disease show a tendency to become epidemic, the public and private schools must be closed, and, in extreme cases, church services suspended and public assemblages of people at shows, circuses, theaters, fairs or other gatherings prohibited.
The writer’s words indicate that wherever she was, the outbreak was being taken seriously. Her tone is somber as she writes, “I'll tell you it is a mighty gloomy time.”
And that they are not quarantined but no children are allowed on the street.
She ends her missive with “I don’t know when Charles will come home.”
And who is Charles? Her husband? and if so why doesn't she know when he will come home? Is it not knowing when the outbreak will end or is it because he’s a soldier, off fighting in a war?
Diphtheria outbreaks appear to have been especially prevalent during 1916 - 1917.
The stamp box dates the postcard to 1904 - 1918.
I'm not going to try dating by clothing. I’m hoping that's one of those skills that gets better with practice and I just haven’t had enough practice.
For now I’m going to give it a tentative date of 1917 and maybe one day I'll run across mention of Hazel, Mag and a man named Charles, who might have been a soldier in WWI.
And might have had a wife who was a teacher.
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