With the approach of November 1918, the people of New Jersey were staring into the faces of two of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, war and pestilence. In the far-off trenches of the Western front, thousands of men were dying daily as the Allies were making their final push “over-the-top” toward the German border. On this side of the Atlantic Ocean, people were dying at an even faster pace than on the battlefield due to a disease called the “Spanish influenza.”

According to the University of Michigan, Center for the History of Medicine, the situation in Newark was bad.