Twelve days before Christmas 2021, Kim and I were wrapped up against the cold, up to our ankles in mud and taking photographs of yet another cross country race. Meanwhile, the media were doing their best to whip up a storm about the new COVID variant, Omicron. It was spreading like wildfire, but everyone I knew who’d had it described it as a mild cold. Most only knew they had it at all because they’d taken a routine test. Some had no symptoms other than a positive test result. Even so, there was plenty of hype about cancelling Christmas and locking the country down again.
It felt like scaremongering to me, and my mind turned to the things I’d learned from researching the Spanish Flu while I was writing Plagued. The press weren’t exactly trustworthy back then either, but for different reasons. Rather than play things up, they played things down. The first reports in English newspapers, in May 1918, suggested it was a Spanish problem and nothing much to worry about.
29 May 1918 the Hull Daily Mail ~Practically all Spain is affected by the mysterious epidemic resembling influenza which is raging and causing many deaths. So many workers in Government offices are down with it that public business is greatly hampered. Many private firms have had to close for want of staff. Two-thirds of the tramway staff are laid up, and the service has had to be greatly curtailed.
30 May 1918 the Hartlepool Northern Daily Mail ~ The epidemic which has broken out in Spain is not of a serious character. The illness presents the symptoms of influenza, with slight gastric disturbance.
Of course, it was not a Spanish problem at all, but as Spain, a neutral country, was the only one really reporting on the flu epidemic the name stuck. The H1N1 virus that killed around five hundred million people, would be forever linked with Spain.
By June 1918, the first cases had made it to British shores, but they barely got a mention in the newspapers and doctors played the problem down. Some even blamed the disease on hypochondria, brought on by news reports from Spain. By July, it was getting hard to hide and some newspapers did report on it.
5 July, the Derbyshire Advertiser and Journal ~ There is a large number of persons down with Spanish influenza at Derby, and many of the large works in the district are being greatly inconvenienced in consequence. The victims include munition workers, tramway employees, clerks and others, and several schools have been closed in consequence of the epidemic. Doctors are experiencing a very busy time.
Rather than offer any sensible advice to their readers though, the press speculated as to the cause of the illness. Some were fairly astute. Others not so much.
29 June 1918 the Portadown News ~ soldiers coming home on leave may have brought it from the front. Others blame the war bread for the outbreak, and many, with more show of reason, attribute it to the general food scarcity and the short commons to which all have had to submit, with the consequent reduction of vitality, which weakens resistance to any epidemic.
10 July 1918 the Yorkshire Evening Post ~ In Spain, it is stated, people say the influenza epidemic came from Heaven as a punishment to those who persisted in singing a particularly ribald song. When anybody was seized he was reminded of the fact by his friends: ‘Ah, you have sung the song!’ they said.
It was around this time that adverts began to appear in newspapers, heavily disguised as editorial, or official advice.
A touch of opportunistic profiteering in an attempt to make money from the virus, was as rife then as it is now.
Obviously, none of these quack remedies did anything but make the companies selling them rich, but, at the end of August, when the second wave hit, things began to look desperate. Even so, the newspapers concentrated on reporting what was happening in other countries, whilst ignoring the deaths on their own doorstep.
September 1918 the Birmingham Mail ~ Sweden ~ At present quite 50,000 persons are suffering from the disease, and during the last two weeks about 700 people have died through it. Whole cities are suffering, and in many places it has been found impossible to save the harvest.
October 1918 the Aberdeen Press and Journal ~ Hungary ~ Over 100,000 cases of Spanish influenza in Buda Pest, and there have been a great number of deaths.
8 October 1918 the Liverpool Echo ~ 180,000 new cases’ were reported in the German Army.
Finally, in November, the English deaths could no longer be ignored.
13 November 1918 The Westminster Gazette ~ 7,560 deaths in England and Wales during the previous week. Particularly badly hit were West Ham, with 223 deaths, Sheffield with 402, Dublin with 204 and Leeds with 247.
New theories about the disease included the idea that it was spread along routes of communication such as roads and railways. Some doctors suggested that drinking spirts in large quantities was a preventative measure, and blamed the spread on restrictions on alcohol under the Defence of the Realm act. One theory that proved to be prophetic came from a prominent Stockholm doctor. He believed there would be a series of ‘after epidemics’ in the coming year.
The third wave came in January 1919, but still the British newspapers concentrated on other countries..
January 1919 The Scotsman ~ Spanish influenza is raging violently among the Allied soldiers encamped near Copenhagen.
February 1919 the Lancashire Evening Post ~ Spanish influenza has seized Vienna in its terrible grip.
28 February 1919 Leeds Mercury ~ Vienna ~ A special all-night service of electric ‘coffin cars’ has been inaugurated in Vienna. These are ordinary tramcars which have been converted into hearses, each holding 32 coffins. These coffin cars collect the dead from the houses and convey them direct to the cemeteries.
The flu continued to ebb and flow until April 1920. The lack of accurate reporting may have contributed to the number of deaths. It certainly made accurate estimates of the numbers of dead impossible. Many death certificates, including that of my aunt Freda, citied other illness like pneumonia and diphtheria, when the real cause had been the flu. It seems strange that so many could die, more than all the soldiers killed in the Great War, but so little be written about it.
As I stood in the mud and wind, somewhere near Lyndhurst, surrounded by people in Santa hats, desperately trying to capture runners crossing the finish line, I thought about all the things I’d discovered. The 1918 pandemic lasted two years before it finally petered out. A hundred years on, I had the feeling this pandemic was on it’s last legs too. Another lockdown was probably coming, but it seemed to be driven more by the press, political posturing and profiteering possibilities than Omicron. Whether it was actually necessary and whether the public would comply was another matter.
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