Boardwalk Empire: Emily Has Polio

In retrospect, there were some clues that the illness little Emily Schroeder would be stricken with would be polio. In “Peg of Old,” just before Margaret and Owen hook up, he mentions that the weather is really hot and says he wouldn’t wish it on a Hottentot (meaning, in the vernacular, an African tribesman, presumably used to very hot weather). In “Two Boats and a Lifeguard,” when Emily began to feel unwell, it was mentioned that she “ran herself ragged” on the beach.

The hot summer, a state of exhaustion … conditions that could make someone susceptible to the polio virus, but not a reason in 1921 to immediately suspect it.

Still, any mother who has stood by helplessly and watched her child get a needle even half the size of the one used for little Emily’s spinal tap knows how Margaret felt. Any Catholic mother knows why she felt the wrath of God had descended upon her child as she piteously cried, “mavournin, forgive me for what I’ve brought upon you.” Parents dealt with a great deal of guilt when polio struck, but Margaret has to remember what she was doing with Owen while her child was out running herself ragged on the beach.

Even children in the 1960s, getting their oral Sabin vaccines at school, continued to be admonished by parents or grandparents not to step in or splash about in puddles.

In 1921, however, there were relatively few cases of the dreaded disease in New Jersey and it was rarely fatal. It affected its victims differently, some even recovered without any damage, but when the legs were affected, atrophy of the limbs was not uncommon. Patients were fitted with leg braces. Others were confined to wheelchairs. Other diseases such as influenza and tuberculosis claimed many more lives than polio. There was a great polio epidemic on the East Coast in 1916 and it did affect New Jersey. See Covenant of Care: Newark Beth Israel and the Jewish Hospital in America (2007).

Future President Franklin Delano Roosevelt contracted polio in the summer of 1921. He was 39 years old at the time and his symptoms first appeared in August. “I first had a chill in the evening which lasted practically all night, ” he wrote, “The following morning the muscles of the right knee appeard weak and by afternoon I was unable to support my weight on my right leg. That evening the left knee began to weaken also and by the following morning I was unable to stand up…”

Irish Whiskey and Tommy Guns

a Horvitz Strike