A century before corona virus - Spanish flu

A century before corona virus - Spanish flu

In this time of the ‘Chinese’ virus (as Donald Trump styles it) this is a reminder of another time and another virus; perhaps with uneasy parallels to our modern time. After a few months everyone thought it was over and went back out on the streets, infecting others. Months later the same thing happened.

Two members of the Dunn family have featured in the blog. Thomas Dunn and his grandson Ethelbert Blomfield Dunn (Blom). Both were intrepid sailors who spent hours in the water after their ships sank. The ‘missing link’ between them, Thomas’s son and ‘Blom’s’ father was David William Dunn, a Special Constable. Not long after the Great War ends, he died in the THIRD peak of ‘Spanish’ flu in 1919.

David William Dunn born 18 Dc 1876 in Margate, Kent and died 27 Feb 1919 in Croydon, Surrey.

David had volunteered for Croydon Sub-Division of the Metropolitan Special Constabulary (MSP). It is, perhaps, now strange to remember that Croydon was, effectively, the ‘London Airport’ for two world wars against the German aerial might. Specials guarded it with the army.

By 1916/17 the British mood had changed. The PM had been forced from office, there was paranoia against possible German sympathisers or indeed any Germans whether naturalised or not’ culminating in marches. Mobs smashing up properties of ‘suspects’ and, after the German U-boat blockade of England caused Britain to almost run out of food, long lines of people queued for food or cheap meals.

It was eighty years since David William’s great great grandfather, an even earlier Thomas Dunn, was shown as a Constable in Margate. , he catches flu. According to family history, he goes back on duty even though unwell and becomes simply another statistic of the world’s greatest great flu epidemic in which five percent of the entire world population died – even more than in the time of the black death.

Even now, with the publicity surrounding corona virus, it is still difficult to comprehend the scale of the outbreak. Prior to the harnessing of penicillin by Florey and his team in 1942, even the slightest infection could prove fatal. From the mother in childbirth, through the carpenter who merely scratched himself on a saw or a nail and the child with a minor illness, all these could prove fatal.

This was no ordinary epidemic. This disease would kill far more than the bubonic plague and the medical profession was powerless. The Great War caused fifteen million fatalities. Estimated deaths by flu at this time are between at least fifty up to one hundred million fatalities worldwide. India alone had between seventeen and twenty million deaths.

In this time of social media it may surprise you that, initially, the papers were censored, because of the hostilities. So, despite severe outbreaks in Britain, France and the trenches, the first reports were of the outbreak in Spain, in which one of the first fatalities was the King of Spain. Even President Woodrow Wilson suffered from the flu in early 1919 while negotiating the crucial treaty of Versailles to end the World War. The UK Prime Minister, Lloyd George, also caught it (and survived) but this was also suppressed and the name ‘Spanish Flu’ stuck.

In the first wave in early 1918, people took a couple of weeks of work and mainly the very young, old or sick died. The vast majority did not. The ‘flu’ took a quick and strong hold of a person, with children and old people being most affected early on in this (what we now know as a) ‘first phase’. Indeed, a schools inspector reported that children, seemingly fit and healthy would suddenly wilt and droop at their desks.

Now people are blaming air travel for the spread. Seemingly, the spread of the 1918 virus in the UK stemmed from the troops at the front. Virulently contagious, troops returning on home leave spread the disease; hitting the major Cities first and being, hardly surprisingly, most prevalent around railway stations. The allied forces in their trenches were, certainly, badly affected – but this was not publicised.

The return of German troops from the Russian front following the Russian revolution almost broke the allied troops and these ‘stormtroopers’ made the first significant gains in a 500 mile ‘front line’ that had remained almost unchanged, save for more than a million casualties in four years. When the German army took the full brunt of the more aggressive second wave, it probably hastened the end of the war. By July 1918 the German offensive, far from ending the war in their favour as has seemed extremely likely, was failing. Some stories suggest that hardly any German troops remained on the front lines that were not sick, recovering or seriously tired (they remained on the line longer than allied troops and had an inferior diet) and an allied ‘counter offensive’ began.

Unlike now, the British Government still took little action to warn about the disease as the war reached its final stages since, in truth, its causes were not known and it seemed to be running its course. Initially, just as now, most people who caught it suffered ‘mild’ symptoms and were back at work after a week or so of ‘bed rest’. The end of the War, however, led to victory parties and more people on the streets. Indeed, cures for ‘the flu’ in many parts of the world entailed removing the windows from hospitals as fresh air was ‘essential’. Flu sufferers, therefore, were more likely to go out and about if they could. In the week after the armistice 19,000 died in the UK. 228,000 souls died in Britain during the pandemic.

The second wave of ‘Spanish Flu’ was more virulent and now affected people in the prime of life. At its peak at the beginning of November 1918 approaching a quarter of a percent of the population of the UK died in a single week. Cinemas, Schools and Theatres closed, but still the virus spread. People did not realise that the infectious period was often before the symptoms showed. Children wore badges telling people not to kiss them; milkmen delivered to the end of the garden – for fear they would meet the customers and younger children were bathed in garlic and allowed out with a vinegar soaked cloth round their necks to breath.

In many American states going out without a mask was punishable by prison – as was sneezing in the street. In one part of America even shaking hands was illegal. After the onset of symptoms the illness was swift. Some lucky individuals had a long hard road to recovery; most died. The body turned against itself and attacked the lungs. Hospitals were overcrowded with people dying in corridors, stock rooms and cupboards from pneumonia that would begin to turn you blue and kill you within hours. Often hospitalisation was not possible; either because of crowding or simply the speed of the disease.

Stories abound of people going out, seeing friends and realising that they were not simply leaning on the wall sleeping – but had died. One physician writes that patients with seemingly ordinary influenza would rapidly "develop the most viscous type of pneumonia that has ever been seen" and later when cyanosis appeared in the patients, "it is simply a struggle for air until they suffocate." Another physician recalls that the influenza patients "died struggling to clear their airways of a blood-tinged froth that sometimes gushed from their nose and mouth."

An estimated 500 million people became infected – (one third of the world's population, approximately 1.6 billion at the time),. Over 5% of the world’s population died, some 50 million; far more than in the Great War. The pandemic lasted from March 1918 to June 1920; spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands.

Why was it so fatal? Recent researchers found that only minor changes in its structure were required for it to start to bind with human cells as well as bird cells. This gave it the ability to pass from birds to humans, and then between humans - with devastating results. It was not the virus that directly causes the damage to the lungs - it was the body's own response to infection.

After the lethal second wave struck in the autumn of 1918, the disease died down abruptly in Britain. New cases almost dropped to nothing after the peak in the second wave. A decision was made to announce the end of the flu epidemic and the return to ‘normality’. 1919 had arrived with many people thinking that the worst was over. The second wave of flu deaths had died down and, again, many people started to go out and about.

The third wave began in February 1919 and killed more than a thousand in Manchester alone.

The Police Force was a ‘dangerous’ place for contagion. The first newspaper article that I researched noted that 1,400 London Metropolitan Police had been off sick from influenza the previous day. Croydon was part of the Metropolitan Police Force. ‘Specials’ (Special Constables) had come into their own at this time, particularly towards the end of the war and many forces were now relying on them to fill the gaps in manpower caused by the war (or, indeed, the flu). There were even major police strikes in 1918/19 (partly seeking ‘a living wage’).

Thousands of Specials, voluntary, part-time; paid only expenses, generally middle class and mostly middle aged, had been appointed in the first month of the war. Some took shifts from regular police, but many guarded road blocks or installations such as power stations, many with soldiers. Hundreds of local men volunteered to serve with Croydon Sub-Division of the Metropolitan Special Constabulary (MSP), guarding 'vulnerable points', enforcing the blackout and manning observation points.

Although published figures for the “weekly combined influenza and pneumonia mortality, United Kingdom, 1918–1919” show that this third wave was not as destructive as the second, this could have been because, this time round, some of the lessons had been learned; more people stayed in, less got infected. For a licensed victualler with eight young children; for a Special Constable in a situation where the force was overstretched with others illness and death, staying at home was probably not a ‘possibility’. The ‘third peak’ was the week that David William died.

David William’s death, in the prime of his life, is recorded, at home, on Thursday 27th February 1919 “of influenza (5 days) and pneumonia”; (the classic symptoms). According to the Cemetery Returns in the Croydon Advertiser of 8th March 1919 [p.12], David W Dunn of St James District, age 42 was laid to rest at Mitcham Road Cemetery on the following Wednesday – the fifth of March. It was one of nine funerals that day alone in that single cemetery (the following day there were almost double that number buried). (His final resting place is in section K5 grave 10565 as shown).

Pages of deaths in the papers had been common throughout the war but so many were still dying that pages of such Cemetery Reports were in most papers every week. At last, the death toll began to decline after that week. The worst was finally over for Britain…

Widow Ethel Winifred Dunn had a large family of eight children; the youngest only fifteen years old. Ethelbert Blomfield had just had his ninth birthday. He would have to leave school soon and then a good job in the city because they could not afford the train fare. The Navy beckoned....

Thanks Ray