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From the Archives: Commitment to Student Wellness Evident in Tower Hill's Early Years
By Teresa Messmore, Director of Communications and Marketing
This article appeared in the Fall 2019 Issue of the Tower Hill Bulletin
Tower Hill's 1919 school catalog, a compact, 28-page booklet, covers curriculum to penmanship to vocal culture—with no section longer than the one on health regulations.
This article appeared in the Fall 2019 Issue of the Tower Hill Bulletin
Tower Hill's 1919 school catalog, a compact, 28-page booklet, covers curriculum to penmanship to vocal culture—with no section longer than the one on health regulations.
“To secure observance of state and municipal health regulations, and to safeguard the children’s physical welfare in every way possible, the following rules have been prepared,” the section opens. “They are commended especially to the careful attention of parents and family physicians, whose cooperation is essential for the protection of the health of the student body.”
The school reserved the right to request the absence of “a pupil who shows symptoms of any contagious disease,” starting with simple colds. Specific directions were detailed for students exposed to diphtheria, scarlet fever and measles, including the amount of time they had to stay away: three weeks, for example, after complete disappearance of the measles rash from the last case in the household.
The emphasis on public health, along with a nurse being on staff during school hours, underscores the context of the times. From 1918-1919 a strain of the H1N1 virus, known as Spanish Flu, killed an estimated 50 million people worldwide—one-fifth of the global population. In the United States, more than one-fourth of the population was afflicted.
Vaccines and antibiotics taken for granted today were nonexistent or in developmental stages at the time. Quarantine, hygiene and limiting large public gatherings were among the first lines of defense against the spread of disease. Newspaper clippings saved in Tower Hill’s archives document a “ban on children’s assemblage” in Wilmington during a 1922 outbreak of scarlet fever, which also prevented children from entering theaters and attending Sunday school.
“All that conversation at that time was spurred by the great influenza epidemic of 1918-1919, which attacked young people much more powerfully than it attacked older people,” said school archivist Ellis Wasson, Ph.D.
Tower Hill was fortunate to have a medical expert on the founding board of trustees to consult on such matters. Albert Robin, a Jewish immigrant who fled czarist Russia, became Delaware’s state bacteriologist and assisted the city of Wilmington’s Water Department in combating typhoid fever by helping to install a water purification plant. A brother of school founders Irénée and Lammot du Pont, William, died of typhoid fever in 1907, and Robin’s success with the plant along with his medical expertise appealed to the du Ponts. He became a friend and physician to the family and a founding trustee of Tower Hill, consulting on both educational and medical concerns.
Health and wellness more broadly were prominent features of the Country Day School movement, of which Tower Hill was a leader. Educators sought to provide the academic rigor and collegiality of a boarding school while allowing children to live at home with their families. Bucolic settings outside of industrial cities offered fresh air and ample space for athletic activities. At the more extreme end, the Rivers School near Boston took bundled-up children outdoors even in the winter for lessons in small huts with glass-free windows to maximize fresh air to help combat the spread of diseases such as tuberculosis. The inkwells froze.
Tower Hill Headmaster John D. Skilton appears to have championed a more moderate approach. A Wilmington Morning News article stated that during the 1922 scarlet fever scare that closed all schools in the city, Skilton suggested to the Board of Health that schools free from scarlet fever be allowed to open. In a matter of days, the ban was lifted.
