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Hannah Mawdsley, who is researching letters from Spanish flu survivors for her doctorate, discovered that she had a parent who was killed during the pandemic
An extraordinary archive of letters written by survivors of the Spanish flu pandemic, which portrays a nation struck by fear and chaos, helps give a glimpse of life in the shadow of a deadly disease.
Hannah Mawdsley, who is researching Imperial War Museum documents, describes these letters as a "valuable window into the human experience of the pandemic," which killed more than 250,000 people in Britain and 100 million in the United States. world.
The collection, donated to the museum by historian and journalist Richard Collier, was incorporated in the 1970s and has about 1,700 testimonials from those who witnessed the pandemic.
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The joy of the Armistice Day celebrations in London in 1918 contrasted with the misery experienced by many
A nine-year-old girl from Coventry, whose 35-year-old mother and seven-year-old sister died two days apart, wrote to Mr. Collier in the 1970s about the age of nine. impact of the disease.
"It caused a sensation with the double burial of November 11, 1918, the very day of the end of the First World War," she wrote.
"I remember very well when the procession was on the way to the church, the bells, thugs and all the noises of celebration were delirious but how much the silent people realized that it was our funeral.
"It was really a terrible time, not knowing who we would lose next."
In this cruel wrangle, the Spanish flu arrived on the British shores just as the soldiers were returning home after the horrors of war.
"You have poignant stories of soldiers who survived the war (…) they are on their boat and go home and they receive a letter telling them that their wife is dead," said PhD researcher Dr. Mawdsley. . Queen Mary University of London.
"There was all this celebration, this joy and this relief at the end of the war that clash with death and sorrow."
A letter related how the Spanish flu has left people "to disturbed minds" – some people have developed a psychosis, which in extreme cases has led to suicide and even murder
The young son of a Baptist pastor from Leicester wrote that his father was sleeping in the cemetery chapel while he was conducting funerals from dawn until dusk.
He wanted to avoid bringing the virus home to his wife and eight children – all of whom survived. They were the lucky ones: Leicester was particularly affected by the death of more people in 1918 than babies born.
About one in four deaths in the city that year was attributed to the flu.
"The funeral processions have succeeded one another throughout the city," writes the man in Collier on May 19, 1973.
"Often there was more than one coffin in a hearse.The graves were used to bury more than one person, especially when more than one household was victim at the same time."
The letters describe the "spectacular" symptoms of the Spanish flu, Ms. Mawdsley said.
"Some victims have suffered from a cyanosis called" heliotrope ", which was a kind of creepy blue that formed from the fingertips, the tips of the ears, nose and lips, but could become completely black" .
"As you progressed, you were more and more likely to die, and immediately after death the body would be completely black, which would be very traumatic for loved ones."
The relentless processions of the bodies in the streets were a spectacle that a man from Stepney, in East London, could never forget.
"The funeral directors could not do the coffins fast enough, let alone polish them," he wrote on May 16, 1973. "The bodies changed color so quickly after death that they had to be screwed to wait until burial.
"The gravediggers worked from dawn to dusk seven days a week to get up.The odor of these deaths was indescribable."
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A person from the RAF in Dorset has committed suicide in the woods because of the Spanish flu, a letter said
The Spanish flu has also affected some people with psychosis that can lead to murder and suicide. Newspaper articles have detailed some of these deaths, which the courts have attributed to "delirium during the flu".
A man who was at the RAF at Blandford Camp in Dorset, wrote: "A small wood below the camp was called" Suicide Wood "because of the number of men who had the flu and who were committing suicide there.
"The flu seemed to leave people with disturbed minds."
A Norfolk baker beat his wife and two sons to death before hanging himself, according to the Hartlepool Northern Daily, November 6, 1918.
"Sitch was attacked by the disease last week and the whole family was finally forced to go to bed," the paper said.
"Yesterday morning, a neighbor discovered Sitch's body hanging on a line in the room and the wife and children were later found beaten to death in another room.A helicopter and a bayonet were found in the room. bedroom."
According to the Aberdeen Evening Express of November 26, 1918, a James Sydney Shaw, 33, cut off the trachea-artery of Edith, his two-year-old daughter.
"The facts were very sad because the accused was very attached to his child," the statement added.
"On the night of October 18, a neighbor heard Mrs. Shaw shout," Come quickly! My husband went crazy! "and she found [the accused] lying on the ground with a sore throat.
"Little Lucy … was sitting in her bed crying with blood on her." Leonard was crying too, and poor Edith was lying in bed, her throat slit.
When he was examined by a doctor, Shaw "did not seem to know anything about the tragedy". He was declared crazy because of "delirium during the flu".
A quarter of the British population contracted the Spanish flu at one point or another of the pandemic and about 228,000 people died, according to the Wellcome Library.
In contrast, the number of people who died of influenza in England and Wales in 2016 was 430.
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Wellcome Library
According to a German doctor, the Spanish flu opened the way to a sleeping sickness virus in the 1920s
In places like Leicester, Coventry Felixstowe and Malmesbury, about 25% of deaths in 1918 were attributed to influenza.
The viruses were not well understood at the time and the doctors did not know how to treat people.
"The remedies ranged from classic camphor to quinine to alcohol – in particular, the whiskey was sworn in," said Mawdsley.
"But some more extreme treatments like creosote and strychnine were used – basically, people were so desperate that they were trying anything."
An advertisement in the Northern Whig in Belfast hailed the Oxo sauce as a "huge service as a protective measure".
"Nursing was one of the only things that really helped and there was a big call for volunteer nurses right now, because a lot had been sent to the West Front," he said. Ms. Mawdsley.
"Obviously, people who put themselves in this situation will be more exposed to the virus and there are testimonials from nurses who succumb to the flu after volunteering for the service."
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Hannah Mawdsley
Elizabeth Ann Mawdsley's death certificate indicated that she had died of the flu and pneumonia.
Today, the most vulnerable to the flu are the very young and the elderly. But the Spanish flu has proved to be deadly disproportionately in the 20s, 30s and 40s.
"You have this quite amazing peak in the age range of the men who serve in the war and nurses from the western front," Ms. Mawdsley said.
A year after her research, the historian discovered that her great-great-grandmother, Elizabeth Ann Mawdsley, 57, died of the flu on December 14, 1918.
"She was rather a formidable woman, very stocky and determined," she said.
The ancestor of Mrs. Mawdsley was the wife of a canal boatman in Lancashire and her death certificate indicated that she had died of flu and pneumonia.
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Belfast: Northern Whig
An advertisement praised Oxo as a way to prevent the flu
"The average Spanish flu mortality rate was between 2% and 5% worldwide," she said.
"It's a lot of people whose families would have lived and survived to tell the story.
"Many people, like me, have unknown personal family ties to this global catastrophe, perhaps in newspapers and letters."
The Spanish flu did not generate the same commemorative culture as the first and second world war and, as a result, England has no specific memory for the victims of the pandemic.
In the United Kingdom, the deadliest period of the Spanish flu occurred between October and December 1918 and clusters of graves dating from this period are found in the cemeteries of the country.
"For me, these groups of graves serve as a kind of unofficial memorial to those who have died, and illustrate the speed with which the disease struck and helped us understand how terrifying it must be," said Mawdsley. .
"These letters go one step further as one of the only other physical memory resources of the Spanish flu reality."
Additional report by Faye Hatcher
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