[URBAN NOTE] "Beatrice White, the girl who killed half a million flies for Toronto"

[rfmcdonald]

The Toronto Star's Katie Daubs had an excellent article this weekend on the life of Beatrice White, a young woman from an early 20th century slum in Toronto who gained fame for killing a half-million flies but then died in obscurity, forgotten and in poverty. It is a sad story on multiple levels.

Beatrice White poses in the starkness of an empty lot, surrounded by fly traps in 1912. She is a smirking teenager, her Edwardian pompadour topped with a big bow, the traps around her swarming with flies. This was the summer when the common housefly was perceived as both a vessel of disease and a get-rich-quick scheme, and Beatrice was the “it” girl, famous for her gruesome contribution to the city’s well-being.

It may seem unusual to send children and teenagers on a slaughtering spree, but the “Swat the fly” contest was a joint crusade by Toronto’s medical health department and the Toronto Daily Star to help rid the city of illness spread by flies.

“The only way for the city to be uniformly safe is to carry on a vigorous war of extermination,” the Star reported that July, adding some bait of its own: $200 in prizes to be split by the top participants.

By the end of the six-week contest, White had killed more than half a million flies. Now, she is a footnote in Toronto history, an obscure folk hero who appears to be buried in a common grave.