Mokena No Stranger to Infectious Disease

  We live in a time when the dire threat of communicable disease is looming over us, and playing a very real role in our lives. The effects of COVID-19 are visible everywhere in Mokena, from the countless business closed, the shuttered public buildings, and even the safety tape that wraps our playgrounds. My last column in the Messenger focused on the most significant other occurrence of something similar in the long history of our community, namely the height of the dreaded Spanish Flu pandemic in the fall of 1918. However, the village has been no stranger to disease over the years.  Before and after the last pandemic, Mokena was also the scene of vicious outbreaks of such illnesses as measles and scarlet fever. Standing guard in these times of uncertainty, was Mokena’s erstwhile board of health.

   In the spring of 1883, the young village, freshly incorporated three years earlier, was wrestling with a serious case of measles. One of the early acts of the community’s new government was to create a small board of health, which at this time was presided over by Dr. William Becker and filled out by saloon keeper Charles Schiek and blacksmith Robert Turner. The board convened on May 23^rd to address the measles outbreak in the household of Charles Werthmüller. While they tried to isolate the case in this home, Werthmüller leveled a complaint against fellow Mokenian Dick McGovney, a 21-year-old who resided with his family on a farm just south of town. Whether his broaching of the subject was valid, or if it was simply a ploy to divert attention from his own family will never be known at this late date, but Werthmüller’s assertion that McGovney’s young siblings were still going to class was serious enough for the board to investigate. 

   On a damage control mission, the board of health paid a visit to the regal two-story school that stood on the east end of town, and had some face time with 13-year-old Ada McGovney, Dick’s younger sister. Ada confirmed that her brother had been sick, but was feeling better that day and would probably be out and about. Erring on the side of caution, the board asked the school’s principal to survey his students for measles in their families, and if there happened to be any, to have them stay home until further notice. 

     Various other disturbances occurred over the years, a notable one being a flare up of scarlet fever that reared its head in town in 1891. At the end of that November, town medicine man Dr. Edmund Lynch made it known to the board of health that scarlet fever was in the house of Christian Sippel, a Front Street store keeper. Accordingly, the gentlemen of the board, F.W. Hinrichsen, Nick Marti and Arthur McGovney, asked the Sippels to keep their infected family members indoors, and also hung a quarantine sign on their premises, warning outsiders from entering.

   Within a day of the sign being put up, Christian Sippel had it taken down. The village constable immediately hung a new sign, and this time delivered the board’s frustrated orders that this time, no one was to leave the house. Town lamplighter Louis Ridder was also hired by the board to check on the Sippels twice a day, and to bring them food and water. For his trouble and risk, he was given a dollar a day, or around thirty dollars in today’s money.

   About a week later, the next chapter in the scarlet fever drama unfolded when the Sippels’ housemaid became too afraid of the malady to continue living with them. After conferring, the board agreed to let the young lady (who name has been long lost to history) instead stay with her grandmother, only with the strict stipulations that upon leaving the Sippels, she would change her work clothes and then “wash her whole body with carbolized water.” She was also ordered not to leave her grandmother’s for ten full days. 

This historic structure on Front Street housed the store and residence of the  Christian Sippel family in 1891.

   Tragically, the scarlet fever outbreak of 1891 exacted a human toll. On December 10^th, Gertrud Elise Sippel, the two-year-old daughter of Christian and Catherine Sippel, succumbed to the after effects of the disease. The next day, before her earthly remains were laid to rest in St. John’s Cemetery, the board of health met in regards to young Gertrud’s funeral. With a heavy heart, it was decided not to allow a public one, citing that it was “better for the community” when the risk of transmission still existed with the Sippel family members. Shortly thereafter, on December 15^th, after having thoroughly inspected the premises, the board declared the danger to the community over, and allowed Christian Sippel to open his store again. 

   As we have seen in both of these cases, along with the much more severe Spanish Flu pandemic of a little more than a 100 years ago, Mokena survived these tests of perserverance and emerged resiliently. With a little help from the fighting spirit of our forefathers, we will again in 2020.