The biggest disaster in New Zealand: 100 years since the 1918 flu pandemic

The emeritus history professor at the University of Canterbury, Geoffrey Rice, is the author of Black Flu 1918: The Story of the worst public health disaster in New Zealand, Canterbury University Press, 2017. On the occasion of the centennial of the flu that has killed thousands of Kiwis, it tells the story of misery.

It took four years for the First World War to kill 18,000 New Zealand soldiers.

Yet in just six weeks, from early November to mid-December 1918, at least 9,000 New Zealand civilians and soldiers died of the flu and pneumonia during the so-called "Spanish flu" pandemic.

This was New Zealand's share of a global calamity. According to the most reliable estimates, the death toll is between 50 and 60 million, or about 3% of the world's population at that time.

We do not know anything about the great regions of Africa and Asia, and we may never know by mere lack of evidence. Sixty million deaths would be about three times the total number of casualties of the First World War, soldiers and civilians alike.

Many people thought that the 1918 flu marked the return of bubonic plague, as the cyanosis of severe influenza and pneumonia rendered the bodies of the victims black.

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It was a really weird pandemic. Influenza normally kills only the vulnerable, the very young and the frail elderly, or those whose lungs have been damaged by tuberculosis or other respiratory diseases. But this A / H1N1 virus (now known as "swine flu") has killed most young adults between 25 and 45 years old.

Children and adolescents seemed virtually immune to the 1918 flu, as were the older, middle-aged. The last explanation postulates that the cohort born during the previous influenza pandemic, the so-called "Russian" flu of 1889-1993, suffered from a compromised immune system that reacted excessively when it was confronted to another influenza virus in 1918. plausible hypothesis, but it does not explain all the strange and unusual traits of the 1918 flu.

Laura Spinney's recent book Pale Rider: the 1918 Spanish flu and how it changed the world describes the 1918 flu as a "protean" event, massive and complex, affecting different places in different ways. Some countries have suffered a slight defeat (notably Australia, thanks to a strict maritime quarantine), while others like India and Indonesia have lost millions of people.

Indigenous peoples have suffered the most. Western Samoa, then under the military control of New Zealand, lost 22% of their population, while American Samoa, protected by a maritime quarantine, have no case of influenza. Recent research by John Ryan McLane has revealed an even darker picture in Western Samoa. The loss of adults and the disturbances of agriculture caused a famine in 1919 and the population decreased by a third between 1917 and 1920.

The most striking finding was the great disparity between mortality rates of pakehas and Maori. New Zealanders of European descent died at a rate of about 6 per 1,000, while Maori died at a rate of 42 per 1,000, seven times the rate of Pakeha. While virtually all Pakeha deaths have been recorded, only about two-thirds of Maori deaths have been officially recorded.

Reports from rescue groups visiting Pa and Kainga suggest that many deaths have not been recorded. The monuments of Northland and Hawke's Bay Maori flu point in the same direction: less than half of the names are in the death records.

Resistance to conscription and the boycott of the 1916 census by the Maori in Waikato further complicate the situation, but it seems likely that Maori mortality in the 1918 flu was underestimated and is close to the 2500. This would bring their toll. mortality rate at 49 per 1000, or nearly five per cent, which is similar to the death rate among indigenous Fijians and eight times higher than the Pakeha mortality rate.

Why were the Maori so much more likely to die in the 1918 flu? There is no simple and unique answer. A combination of factors helped to create a perfect storm. The Maori population was still largely rural and many remote areas may have missed the immunity conferred by the first wave of pandemic.

The loss of land had impoverished many Maori communities, the collection of traditional food had been reduced, and standards of nutrition and housing were generally low. A community lifestyle, with a cluttered bed, facilitated the spread of the droplet infection. Many Maori had lungs damaged by generalized tuberculosis and smoking. Traditional medicinal plants were ineffective against pneumonia.

How did the flu get into New Zealand? At the time, it was generally believed that the Niagara Passenger Ship, which had just had a war conference, caused the flu with Prime Minister Massey. His political enemies accused him of pulling the strings to avoid quarantine.

But that turned out to be a wrong myth. Auckland was still under the influence of the first mild flu wave, which lasted from mid-September to mid-October. The most likely sources of new infection in October 1918 were returning troops with hundreds of sick and wounded soldiers from camps in southern England where the second wave of the pandemic was raging. Many were now asymptomatic carriers of the virus. They dispersed home, all over New Zealand, and fifteen weeks later, a severe flu erupted almost simultaneously across the country.

This coincided with the end of the war, and in many cities people gathered to celebrate the armistice, but unwittingly, spread the severe flu even more widely. Influenza was declared a notifiable disease on November 6th and schools, bars, billiard parlors and dance halls were closed. Soon, stores, offices and factories also close for lack of staff and customers.

The whole country seemed to be shutting down for a fortnight in mid-November and the streets were deserted, except for busy ambulances or volunteers ringing the door to find the most serious cases. Temporary influenza care rooms have been set up in schools and church halls – even under the racetrack stands of Hastings, Reefton and Gore – and soup kitchens have been hastily developed to feed the weak convalescents. . Scouts and guides helped distribute food and medicine to affected families.

So many people were dying at the same time that the funeral directors could no longer escape, and the city councils intervened to commandeer trucks and vans to bring coffins into the cemeteries, where Men dug graves. In Auckland, special trains carried coffin coffins from the city to Waikumete cemetery twice a day for fifteen days to clear the backlog. Some people think that the large open area of ​​unmarked graves at Waikumete is a mass grave. Not so. All victims were buried individually in numbered plots with officiating ministers. But these were mostly tombs of the poor, and no tombstone was ever erected.

Auckland has certainly had the first influenza pandemic event in New Zealand, but not the worst. The final figure was 1128 deaths from pakeha influenza in Auckland, a mortality rate of 7.6 per 1000. Wellington lost 773 residents, a rate of 8 per 1000. Christchurch lost 458 at a rate of 4 , 9, and Dunedin even less, 273 to 3.9 1000

The impact was extremely varied and uneven. Some cities such as Cambridge, Tauranga, New Plymouth, Nelson, Westport and Timaru had low mortality rates, probably because they were better immunized against the first wave, while others, like Hastings, Dannevirke, Hawera, Masterton, Amberley, Kaiapoi, etc. Temuka, Oamaru, Winton and Invercargill had high mortality rates.

Exceptionally high mortality rates have been recorded in some unlucky places: Huntly, Inglewood, Taumarunui, Taihape, Denniston, Owaka, Winton. Pakeha's worst death rate was at Nightcaps in Southland, where almost all adults were beaten and left untreated: their Maori mortality rate was 25 per 1000.

Fortunately, influenza outbreaks often peak and disappear almost as quickly. At the beginning of December 1918, there were no new cases of influenza in most places and the economic effects were negligible. But for thousands of families, life would never be the same again. More than 6,400 Pakeha children had lost one parent and 135 had lost both parents.

New Zealand withstood the 1918 flu well. Neighbors helped neighbors, and communities quickly organized to help the victims. We must remember, however, that four years of wartime propaganda brought New Zealand to the brink of "doing your duty."

To what extent would New Zealand face a similar crisis today? Although we have an excellent pandemic plan, a "whole of government" response and many of the lessons learned from 1918, New Zealand has changed and all sorts of things could go wrong.

The best advice is to be prepared and standalone, with stocks of face masks, aspirin and paracetamol, bed pans and spare sheets. And be nice to your neighbors. They could save your life in a future pandemic.

Excerpts from the next book by Geoffrey Rice, This terrible weather: Eyewitnesses from New Zealand on the 1918 influenza pandemic

Maurice O 'Callaghan, St John Ambulance Volunteer

One house I visited was at Gray Lynn, where we found a man who had been dead for three days. His body was in bed and his wife was lying in the same bed, not dead but driven from her mind by the fact that she was lying in bed with a dead husband and could not get up. We had to bury the husband and order the health authorities to have the woman placed in the Avondale psychiatric hospital.

Grace Stewart, from Papakura

My dad, my twin sisters and I got the flu. Another delicate sister looked after the twins while my mother was nursing my father and me, and she had never caught her. I was then about 17 years old. Until then I was very healthy and robust, I did not even know what it was like a migraine.

For my part, I have never regained my usual health … I have been in bed for six weeks. My fingers and nails became black. My tongue was covered with a kind of mushroom half an inch thick, which I scraped and then rinsed my mouth every morning. The pain in my whole body was unbearable. One of the twins had a very strong nosebleed and the doctor told him that it saved his life.

Jean Forrester, St John volunteer who helped the temporary hospital for the flu at Seddon Memorial Technical College in Auckland

I was there when my older brother died in Kilbryde, another emergency hospital … I was assigned to the Art Room on the first floor, which looked like a conference room . Throughout the day, we walked the steps to make the bed, mop up the patients, work between the beds and do whatever was needed. . . [One man] was delirious and constantly asking when it was four o'clock because he was going to die at that moment. Four hours came and went but he did not die at that time. He just could not accept the fact that he had not died and he had become so upset in his delusions that he was transferred to the psychiatric hospital.

Irma Pickett's father worked for the Auckland Harbor Board.

One day before I got sick, I was sent to the stores with a message. On my way home, I was very curious to go to the house to see a large van stop at Wellington St and men were coming out of the house which looked like treadmills, then I saw the feet stand up at one end.

Another time on the way back, I passed an old store and saw a pencil note stuck to the door saying, "For the love of God, help us." I told my mother who called the police. I later heard that a family of five was dead, some found on the floor. The bottom house had to be destroyed by firefighters

Another time, I was told not to go near Victoria Park. Needless to say, curiosity got the better of me and I went to see why. Corpses wrapped in canvases lay in the tribune and waited to be buried. . . My late husband was living in Greenlane, near Ellerslie Racecourse, and he told me that a hospital had been set up under the grand stand and that corpses had been left on the bleachers, like at Victoria Park.

Bert Ingley was a student at Wellington Customs

I woke up from a very disturbed sleep with a kind of irritation on my nose, and when I turned on the light, I found that the blood was starting to flow from both nostrils. I fell off the bed near the sink, I half filled the basin with water from the jug, placed the basin on the chair next to the bed and put myself back under the covers.

After a while, the bleeding stopped, but by then the pelvis appeared to be full of blood. You can imagine the horror of my owner and her husband, who had heard the heckling and came to see how I was. I think the lady almost fainted … The only consequence was the loss of all my hair. I became very bald for a moment. I was also extremely hungry during my recovery and I lived only for eating and more.

Edith Chapman, Waimate, South Canterbury

You must have heard of Dr. Cruickshank, she was a wonderful doctor in Waimate, who died of the flu in 1918. Such a tragedy is to lose your life after helping to save other people. I've heard this amusing story about her, which shows how hard she worked. She went to one place and saw that she had left her stethoscope in the buggy. She placed her ear against the man's chest and told him to count aloud while listening to his lungs. So he started with "One, two, three, four" and so on. And she's asleep! She woke up to hear him continue: "Nine hundred and ninety seven, nine hundred ninety eight. . & # 39; I think that he was one of the survivors. But there were not many funny stories like this one. It was a terrible time.