Remembering the Spanish Flu

Friday, 20 March 2020

The last of the great plagues to inflict humanity, the Spanish Flu claimed at least 50 million people. Some estimates put the overall infection rate at 500 million, around one third of the world's population at the time.

OPINION: My grandfather Alfred Humphrey Hindmarsh was the Labour MP for Wellington South when he died of the Spanish Flu in 1918.

Fourteen of his parliamentary colleagues succumbed to it as well. His wife died a couple of years later of pneumonia, leaving my father, then only eight, an orphan to be cared for by his 14-year old sister. I came across one of my father's letters to her recently, where he called his teenage sister 'Mum'.

We can read all the statistics we want, but I suspect real pandemic trauma still runs subconsciously deep in some families.

That Spanish Flu was a massive tragedy on top of our war losses. WWI killed 18,000 New Zealand soldiers, but that took four full years. In just six weeks, from early November to mid-December 1918, at least 9000 New Zealanders died from that influenza.

The last of the great plagues to inflict humanity, worldwide that pandemic claimed at least 50 million people. Some estimates put the overall infection rate at 500 million, around one third of the world's population at the time.

New Zealand had just been through the war, suffering huge losses of life. And then the country had to deal with more death due to the Spanish Flu.

Crazy it got called the Spanish Flu. Wartime censorship meant news of the outbreak amongst allied troops in France did not get out. It wasn't until the epidemic got to neutral Spain and made King Alfonso VIII gravely ill that the press there had a field day, giving the impression to the world that it started there.

That Spanish Flu, an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin, originated in northern China, brought to Europe by the mobilisation in sealed boxcars of 96,000 Chinese labourers to work in behind the British and French lines on the Western Front. Mutating to became super deadly during the spring of 1918, it got spread by sailors and sea passengers to ports all around the world.

It came in three waves, striking young and healthy people alike, pitting their strong immune systems against them in a way that was different from previous epidemics.

Many people thought it was a return of the bubonic plague because the combo of severe influenza and pneumonia turned many of the victims' bodies black. It could hit with terrifying speed. Five hours from showing the first symptoms, one could be dead.

A doctor inoculates a patient against the virus during the epidemic in 1918.

It's believed that the deadliest wave was brought into this country by passengers aboard the RMS Niagara, which berthed in Auckland on October 12, 1918, after sailing from Vancouver and San Francisco. Amongst them was Prime Minister William Massey, returning from a war conference. He was accused of pulling strings to avoid usual quarantine procedures.

The New Zealand passenger cargo ship Talune took the influenza to Samoa. Seriously ill passengers were allowed ashore without quarantine and the virus spread quickly throughout the islands.

Between one-fifth and a quarter of the population died as a result, the highest rate anywhere in the world. Maori too here suffered a death rate eight times the general population.

Life in New Zealand completely ground to a halt by mid November as the pandemic peaked. Workplaces, schools and public facilities shut down, and all events were cancelled or put off, including Auckland's Armistice celebration planned for November 11.

Streets everywhere became deserted apart from ambulances or volunteers door-knocking to find the worst-affected cases.

At the height of the epidemic, the streets we empty with the exception of ambulances or volunteers door-knocking to find the worst-affected cases.

Temporary influenza wards were set up in schools and church halls, even under racecourse grandstands in Hastings, Reefton and Gore. Soup kitchens had to be hastily set up to feed the feeble, with Boy Scouts and Girl Guides recruited in to help distribute food and medicine to stricken households.

So many people died at the same time that undertakers could not cope. Councils stepped in to commandeer trucks and vans to take coffins to the cemeteries where teams of men were flat out digging graves.

For a fortnight in Auckland, special 'coffin trains' took the dead twice a day from the city to Waikumete Cemetery to help clear the backlog.

The country lost 18,000 men and women between 1914-1918. In less than two months from November to December 1918, we lost a further 9000 to the Spanish Flu.

Fatalities were not evenly distributed. Military camps and some small towns, such as Nightcaps in Southland, and Denniston on the West Coast, had startlingly high numbers of deaths, suffering the 'Maori rate'. First hit Auckland recorded a final count of 1128 Pakeha deaths, a death rate of 7.6 per 1000. Wellington lost 773 residents, at a rate of 8 per 1000. Christchurch lost 458 at a rate of 4.9, while Dunedin's 273 was the lowest city rate at 3.9 per 1000.

Some towns such as Cambridge, Tauranga, New Plymouth, Westport and Timaru had low death rates, possibly because they had gained more immunity from the mild first wave, while others such as Hastings, Dannevirke, Hawera, Masterton, Amberley, Kaiapoi, Temuka, Oamaru, Winton and Invercargill had high death rates.

Nelson province faired reasonably well. Nelson City (pop then 8774) lost 29 to the flu, a 3.3 person death rate per 1000. Waimea County (pop 9384) only lost 11, a death rate of 1.1 per 1000. Motueka (pop 1474), lost 4 or 2.7 per 1,000, while Murchison (pop 1251) lost 6, a 4.7 rate. Takaka County (pop 1858) lost 3, a 1.6 rate, while Collingwood County (pop 1251) recorded absolutely none at all.

In the wake of the pandemic, the government set up a royal commission which resulted in what was seen as model legislation to prevent it happening again, the 1920 Public Health Act.

Some of the motorcycles and side-cars used as relief cars in conveying nurses, helpers and food-carriers in Christchurch during the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.

Among the many memorials set up to victims was one to Dr Margaret Cruickshank, our country's first female doctor, who lost her life to the disease ceaselessly helping others.

It could be said that by world standards, New Zealand coped remarkably well with the 1918 flu. Neighbours helped each other and communities rallied to help the stricken. The war years' mobilisation had not been in vain.

I can't help but think the privileged younger generation today have all grown up feeling immune from turmoil, got everything they ever wanted.

I now watch ones with imminent OE travel plans, reeling in absolute disbelief that something could disrupt their travel plans. The world is suddenly a different place, but it's important to realise we have been there before.

The silver lining may be that we rediscover our resilience, fortitude and compassion for others.