Spanish Flu pandemic 1919

My dear Liffer,

We are in the middle of what promises to be a very severe influenza outbreak…

On 12 February 1919, my grandfather’s sister, Mary Meagher wrote to her brother Frank, a doctor stationed in France, about an influenza outbreak in Melbourne. It was to become known colloquially as the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1919, and it was a tragic postscript to the devastation of the First World War.

As I write this post over one hundred years later, the world is grappling with a new strain of influenza, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), which was first reported in China in December 2019.  Just like Mary, I have been reading the newspapers with wide-eyed interest at the daily developments; I can’t help but ponder the parallels between the ‘Spanish flu’ and the novel coronavirus, particularly when the two outbreaks occurred in the height of summer just before school was to resume.

In late November 1918, Australian State Ministers and health officials attended a conference in Melbourne to determine the methods required to best protect Australians from the pneumonic influenza epidemic should it present locally. Despite valiant efforts to quarantine and ward off the disease, Victoria was declared ’infected’ with pneumonic influenza on 29 January 1919 and the State was placed in quarantine with theatres, hotels, racecourses and schools closing.

The following day, New South Wales took quarantine matters into its own hands, shutting the border between New South Wales and Victoria, and defying the Commonwealth agreement made in November.

Fast forward to 2020, on 1 February, the Australian Prime Minister declared that foreign nationals in mainland China would not be allowed to enter Australia for 14 days, stranding students and tourists alike. This action has virtually closed the Chinese tourism sector (akin to the theatres in 1919) and prevented international students returning to start the new school year (akin to school closures in 1919). At the time of writing, newspapers were reporting that this 14-day ban is set to be extended, and also expected to impact 100,000 students.

Mary’s letter, 12 February 1919

Mary describes the quarantine measures employed in Melbourne in her letter to Frank Meagher:

My dear Liffer,

We are in the middle of what promises to be a very severe influenza outbreak. The cases were first reported about three weeks ago, and there have been about 230 deaths reported already, and there have been over 2000 cases. We were all inoculated on the day “suspicious cases” were reported, so we got in bright and early.

All amusements have been stopped and today an order was issued that all hotels within 15 miles of Melbourne were to close, so there are thousands of people out of employment. All the schools which were to resume work today have been given extra holidays, and many of the state schools have been turned into hospitals, and some of the convents are going to be made into hospitals also. The school next door has been made into an emergency hospital, it has been very well equipped. About 30 of the nurses at St Vincents have been down with influenza, but a good many of them are convalescent. Valda Kelly has been seriously ill for nearly a week and her people were sent for, I have not heard how she is to-day. By the way you did not tell us you had influenza after pneumonia, I did not tell Pup about it. Do take care of yourself, and get quite strong again, I see that influenza has broken out in London again, do be careful.

Mortality rates

The number of cases reported to the Board of Health on 13 February 1919, the day after Mary’s letter, was 252. A sharp rise from the number of cases reported two days prior (170). This rise was attributed to a delay in reporting of cases from the country.  The number of deaths the day before (18) was described as an improvement on the past figures collected over several days. This is a stark contrast to the situation in 2020. At the time of writing; only 15 active cases of the disease are recorded nationally in Australia. Five people have recovered and the others are in a stable condition according to the Federal Department of Health website. Of course, this is a very different situation from mainland China, and currently there are reports of over 1000 deaths to date.

Mary, Frank and Valda

Mary’s voice in the family archive is very rare. There are only two letters in Mary’s hand surviving: one as a child and the excerpt above written to Frank as a nineteen year old. Mary’s words of ‘what promises to be very severe influenza’ couldn’t be truer.  Apart from this letter, I haven’t been able to pin down any other direct references to the relationship between Frank, Mary and Valda Kelly, and how they knew each other. I presume the connection was made through the St Vincent’s Hospital, where Frank had been a resident surgeon after finishing his studies at Melbourne University in 1918. He spent six months at the St Kilda base hospital prior to enlisting in the war. There is another letter in the archive, written in April by Mary’s father, that references the influenza outbreak, but no mention is made of Valda Kelly’s fate.

Tragic Postscript

Mary wrote that she hadn’t heard how Valda was faring that day, which suggests a close connection or perhaps they mixed in a similar circle of friends. If Mary didn’t hear personally, she certainly would have read in the newspapers that Valda did not survive. Nothing brings a crisis closer to home than losing someone you know. A close history colleague of mine, Mary Sheehan, has researched Valda’s heroic efforts as a nurse during the influenza outbreak; you can read about Valda’s story here.