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Imagine you arrived at the ANA convention and everyone else had gone home or stayed there to begin with. This is precisely what happened in Philadelphia in October 1918. Cancelled at the last minute, a number of attendees arrived in a city shut down by the Spanish flu. The best account is given by Philadelphia dealer and convention chairman S. H. Chapman, who reported in the November 1918 Numismatist that the convention, scheduled for October 5-9, was cancelled by the city on October 3. Chapman did his best to notify attendees, who might have numbered around a hundred. Some could not be reached in time, and a small group arrived in Philadelphia expecting a convention.

Attendees made the best of a bad thing, and Chapman reported small social gatherings at the convention hotel. The tradition of a convention photograph was continued. Included in the photo were the Chapman brothers of Philadelphia, Mr. and Mrs. Howard R. Newcomb, and a handful of others, about a dozen total. A few of the attendees likely attended S. H. Chapman’s sale of the H. O. Granberg collection, which took place as scheduled, despite the Board of Health warning against “public assemblages.” Presumably many of the bids had already been received by mail.

The convention photograph was not published in The Numismatist, and the only example we could find appeared in the George Kolbe #91 sale, 6/2003, lot 670, there described as “sepia photograph; approximately 10 x 15.5cm.” Taking ANA convention photographs usually required a wide-angle lens, but the photographer’s job was considerably simplified in 1918. Can a reader provide an image?

Link to The Numismatist on the ANA site: https://www.money.org/subscriber-all-access 

Link to The Numismatist on Newman Portal: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/publisherdetail/510969

Although Washington University in St. Louis, which administers Newman Portal, has sent students home for the semester, Newman Portal activity continues apace. The campus remains open for staff and faculty, and, while we rely on students to operate scanning equipment, we do have a full-time staff member in St. Louis (Kelli West) to continue handling contributions of hardcopy materials. We also have good options for outsourcing scanning work if necessary. In the meantime, we encourage electronic submissions (documents and images) and can process these virtually. Among the electronic contributors in the last week were Q. David Bowers, Roger Burdette, Richard Lussier, Gerry Tebben, and others. There is no substitute for in-person gatherings of coin collectors, but there is no shortage of research to do on our own, and we hope Newman Portal will help facilitate this as a virtual library.

Eric Newman once related his experience with the Spanish flu epidemic. Newman, 6 years old at the time, was with his father and sister in New York. The father, a doctor, felt the need to send the two children home to St. Louis. They were cached in a train car, which Dr. Samuel Newman scrubbed down with formaldehyde. The children were instructed not to leave their room until the train arrived in St. Louis. Eric and his sister Ivy, who was four years older, dutifully obeyed, and arrived in St. Louis no worse for wear, despite having inhaled a toxic substance for the better part of a day.

Update [3/23/2020] Newman Portal has now gone 100% remote with all non-essential university functions transitioned to work-at-home. We will continue to build Newman Portal but are accepting electronic contributions only at this time.