Sergeant Ernest H. Thornhill

Also kept at

Died on November 30, 1918, aged 30.

His life

Sergeant Ernest Thornhill died as a result of contracting the Spanish Influenza while assisting victims getting to the hospital.

He was taken to the City Hospital where he died as a result of complications four days after developing symptoms.

Sergeant Thornhill's wife and infant daughter died the next day due to complications of Spanish Influenza and childbirth.

Sergeant Thornhill served with the Louisville Police Department for eight months.

Survived by

He was survived by his two sons, both under the age of three.

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic

January 1, 1918

The influenza of 1918 came in waves, the worst of them in the autumn of that year, and it killed the young and strong as readily as the old. Before it was over it had killed more people than the First World War.

Police officers worked it without vaccines, without antibiotics and often without masks: enforcing quarantines, carrying the sick, standing posts in cities where the dead outpaced the undertakers. They caught it doing the job, and there was no treatment to give them.

They are the first named here.

Everyone taken by The 1918 Influenza Pandemic →

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Everyone taken by The 1918 Influenza Pandemic →