One January day in 1919, Charles Nelson of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors presented a petition to the mayor. The Spanish flu was raging, but the city's Anti-Mask League had had enough. Nelson, in support of the petition, asked that Mayor James Rolph remove the city’s mask ordinance, which was an “infringement of our personal liberty” and “not in keeping with the spirit of a truly democratic people to compel people to wear the mask who do not believe in its efficacy but rather, that it is a menace to their health.”
This kind of language might sound familiar. And though the effectiveness of mask-wearing in 1919 is disputed, the shortcomings likely came from the material used and the way they were worn back then. People wore their masks on the back of their necks. Others poked holes in their masks for cigars and cigarettes. A conspiracy theory took root: Aspirin from Bayer was laced with influenza from Germany.
Then — just as now — masks didn’t threaten health. The flu wasn’t being spread by Germany. A vocal segment of society simply denied the facts before them.
