The Supervisors are Carrying the Bag: The Nurses' Emergency Council, Settlement Houses, and the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in New York City

This article examines the combined efforts of the Nurses’ Emergency Council (NEC), settlement houses, and the Department of Health during the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in New York City. To coordinate public health nursing, the NEC united the settlements and municipal agencies into an umbrella organization that was chaired by Lillian Wald of the Henry Street Settlement. Together, the NEC and the Health Department recruited a corps of nurses to treat influenza patients, primarily in their homes. Historical accounts of the 1918 Pandemic often emphasize the incompetence of American cities in dealing with influenza’s spread. New York’s Health Commissioner Royal Copeland, for example, is portrayed as a political hack without the adequate knowledge to successfully manage an epidemic. However, if we shift our focus from Copeland to a micro-history of the NEC, what emerges is a city with the institutional experience well suited to respond to a health emergency. The NEC rose to the challenge of coordinating a vast network of visiting nurses that helped keep New York’s death rate among the lowest on the East Coast.