How American Struggled to Bury Bodies During the 1918 Flu Pandemic-- Part 3: Boston and Philadelphia

Gravediggers at Boston's New Calvary Cemetery were spotted dumping corpses out of coffins could be used again.  The War Industries Board  ordered casket makers to manufacture only plain caskets and immediately cease production on "all fancy trimmed and couch and split panel varieties.  It limited caskets sizes for adults  to five feet, nine inches and six feet, 3 inches.

The worst horrors were seen in Philadelphia, where the number of deaths approached 1,000 a day at the pandemic's peak.  Entire neighborhoods were  draped in crepe that was mounted on front doors to mark deaths inside.

Civic leaders  recruited the J.G. Brill Company, a streetcar manufacturer, to construct thousands of  rudimentary boxes in which to bury the dead, while desperately needed coffins arrived in the city under armed guard.

Five hundred bodies crowded the city morgue, which had a capacity for only  36 corpses.    The city scrambled to open  six supplementary morgues and placed bodies in cold storage plants.  Some Philadelphia  residents were  unceremoniously tossed into mass graves  that had been hollowed out by steam shovels.