100 Years Ago: War Relief Bazaar Closes

One hundred years ago today the doors closed on the Seattle Girls War Relief Bazaar. As previously described the purpose of the Bazaar was to raise the necessary funds to outfit Base Hospital 50. The long-awaited authorization from the Red Cross received in October 1917, included the stipulation that Seattle raise all the money for the necessary equipment for the unit.

The Bazaar was held in downtown Seattle in the Arena and the Hippodrome. The Arena was the home of the Seattle Metropolitans, a professional ice hockey team based which played in the Pacific Coast Hockey Association from 1915 to 1924. The Metropolitans won the Stanley Cup in 1917. The Hippodrome located across the street was a popular dance hall. Neither building is standing today. The streets in-between were closed while the Bazaar was open providing additional entertainment including No Man's Land, a replica of the wartime trenches in use in France, and a carnival game area known as the Sammies Sector.

Seattle Daily Times, Wednesday, December 12, 1917, pg. 21.

The Bazaar opened on Monday, December 17, following a parade led by organizers on horseback through downtown and ran through Saturday, December 22, 1917.

Each day had a theme to encourage Seattleites to attend including:

• Monday: Girls Night 
• Tuesday: Army & Navy Day 
• Wednesday: Fraternal Night 
• Thursday: University Night 
• Friday: Art Students' Day 
• Saturday: Children's Day¹

In addition to the daily parade, the program included food conservation demonstrations, bayoneting, dramatic readings, dances, war movies and a wide variety of concerts from diverse groups such as the Victoria Pipe Band and the Whangdoodle Quartet. The Arena was described as a veritable fairyland as the result of the combined efforts of Seattle architect Carl Gould and local artist Irene Ewing.

The Arena was outfitted with many booths designed to inspire attendees to part with their money by purchasing donated knitted clothing, baked goods and more. The Daughters of the American Revolution devoted their booth to the re-creation of an 18th-century tableau. University of Washington instructor Mary F. Rausch developed a popular cookbook featuring recipes enabling families to comply with the wheatless, meatless rationing.

When all the proceeds had been tallied, the bazaar had raised over $120,000 dollars and was declared an unmitigated success. Fifty thousand dollars was turned over to the Seattle Chapter of the Red Cross to equip Base Hospital 50 and the remainder was designated to support dependents of soldiers and sailors from King and Kitsap counties. Just six months later many of the same women would join forces to organize the Seattle Girls Victory Carnival!

---

References:

1. "Program of Week's Events," Seattle Sunday Times, December 16, 1917, pg. 4.

Collecting Moss for Uncle Sam

The Seattle Star, 3 April 1918, pg 4.

The Red Cross was a relatively small organization – just 107 chapters in 1914 – before the United States entered the Great War. With the outbreak of war, however, the organization experienced phenomenal growth. The number of local chapters grew to 3,864 by 1918 and membership increased from 17,000 to over 20 million adult and 11 million Junior Red Cross members.

A unique activity coordinated by the Red Cross during this period was the collection of sphagnum moss for wound packing. Sphagnum moss played an important part during World War I as a substitute for cotton gauze dressings. Dried moss can absorb up to twenty times its volume of liquid, including blood, and is superior to cotton dressing material for staunching wounds. Moss retains liquids better and distributes liquids more uniformly. It was cooler, softer, and less irritating than cotton, and could be produced more rapidly and more cheaply. Dried moss also has effective antibacterial properties due to its acidity. 

The Seattle Times, 16 June 1918, pg. 3.

Moss was certainly in great supply in the damp Pacific Northwest, which contributed 60% of the sphagnum moss collected for use during the war. University of Washington botany professor and Red Cross Northwest Division director John W. Hotson began identifying moss gathering locations in Washington in March 1918, when the American Red Cross authorized the use of the moss for bandages.

Red Cross volunteers around the Pacific Northwest organized work parties to bring in moss for making into bandages. Between October 1917 and November 1918, 595,540 moss bandages were made by Red Cross volunteers in Washington, Oregon, and Maine. Moss drives took place in South Bend, Long Beach, Ilwaco and Chinook gathering 90,000 pounds of moss which was spread out to dry before being sent to Seattle to be sewn into bandages.

The Sunday Seattle Times, 14 October 1917, pg 5.

In Seattle, and other cities around the Pacific Northwest, university students and women's clubs made bandages out of the dried moss. Women did most of the work of preparing the moss and putting together the bandages, often in addition to working at home or in a workplace all day. At the University of Washington women received course credit for making bandages. Some girls were tasked with picking over the moss while other more experienced girls made the bandages. As the war continued high school students were enlisted to help with picking over the moss so the university girls could devote their time entirely to the making of the bandages.

The doctors and the nurses

Look North with eager eyes,

And call on us to send them

The dressing that they prize

No other in its equal -

In modest bulk it goes,

Until it meets the gaping wound

Where the red life blood flows,

The spreading, swelling in its might

It checks the fatal loss,

And kills the germ, and heals the hurt

The kindly Sphagnum Moss.

Mrs A. M. Smith (1917). A member of the Edinburgh War Dressings Supply organisation.

---

Learn more about sphagnum moss:

1. Hotson, John William. Sphagnum as Surgical Dressing. Seattle, WA : Northwest Division of the American Red Cross, 1918.
2. The Home Guard. University of Washington Tyee, 1918, pp. 22-23.
3. Sphagnum Moss - Voices of War and Peace.
4. Sphagnum moss and the 1914–18 war - The Pharmaceutical Journal blog, 26 March 2009.
5. Wound dressing in World War I - The kindly Sphagnum Moss - Field Bryology, No. 110, November 2013.
6. How Humble Moss Healed the Wounds of Thousands in World War I 28 April 2017.

Seattle Girls War Relief Bazaar

Museum of History and Industry

"Biggest thing that ever happened to Seattle"¹

That bold claim was published in response to the success of the Seattle Girls War Relief Bazaar, organized to raise the necessary funds to outfit Base Hospital 50.

The telegram Dr. Eagleson received in late October 1917 authorizing Base Hospital 50 also included the news Seattle was not only responsible for organizing the unit, but funding it. The equipment was to be "up to date in every respect."² "Society maids and self-supporting office workers and clerks" worked together to plan the bazaar which was the brainchild of Seattle shipping magnate Frank Waterhouse.³

Held the week before Christmas, the Seattle Girls' War Work Association, chaired by Miss Gladys Waterhouse and Miss Katherine Kittinger, organized the bazaar. Volunteers solicited goods and services from Seattle leaders and businesses — everything from cigars to Ford cars — to sell at the bazaar. More than 12,500 volunteers — from University of Washington sorority sisters, to Dames of the Daughters of the American Revolution — worked together to arrange all the details for the event which would attract over 10,000 Seattleites a day.

Library of Congress

The bazaar was designed and constructed by venerable Seattle architect Carl F. Gould and described as "cleverly conceived and well executed." Miss Irene Ewing was credited with arranging decorations deserving of "particular attention."⁴ The bazaar was held at the Seattle Arena and Hippodrome. Neither are still standing.

A jewelry drive was also held and "debutantes and working girls united in the bonds of Sammies Sisterhood" donated their gold and silver to be sold to help fund the war effort.⁵ The Moran Brothers, local shipbuilders, made a major donation of $16,000, and Waterhouse donated $10,000.

Come Thru, an original composition by Bertha Sophie Tremper, was adopted as the official song of the bazaar. Printed by Seattle's Craig Music Press, copies sold at the bazaar for fifteen cents. "Every miser helps the Kaiser" was a catchy refrain taken from the song billed as great for fairs and bazaars for its melodious rhythm.⁶  Miss Anita Miller won first prize in a contest for the best poster to advertise the Bazaar.⁷

When all the proceeds had been tallied, the bazaar had raised over $110,000 dollars. Fifty thousand dollars was turned over to the Seattle Chapter of the Red Cross to equip Base Hospital 50 and the remainder was designated to support dependents of soldiers and sailors from King and Kitsap counties.

---

1. News-letters to boys in France. Pacific Builder and Engineer. January 25, 1918. Vol. 24, pg. 13.
2. University Base Hospital. Northwest Medicine. December 1917. Vol. 16(12):381.
3. Seattle Working Girls Plan Meeting War Relief Bazaar. The Eugene Guard. September 29, 1917, pg. 2.
4. News-letters to boys in France. Pacific Builder and Engineer. January 25, 1918. Vol. 24, pg. 13.
5. Seattle Girls Give Up Jewels, The Spokesman-Review. November 23, 1917, pg. 15.
6. "Come Thru". Music and Musicians: Devoted Principally to the Interests of the Northwest. Vol. 3(12), 1918, pg. 10.
7. Poster Helps to Win Big Fund for Red Cross. The Poster. 1918. Vol. 9, pg 52.