1918 Spanish Flu Epidemic

Gerard Hoskins

First published in Ngā Ākau ki te Tonga Southern Bays number 14 2019

It’s a hundred years since the Southern Bays experienced the terrible influenza epidemic, a horror we shared with the people of the world. More people died world-wide than those killed during World War 1 and 2. In India alone 14 million people died from the virus with 50 – 100 million dying world-wide. At the time the flu was thought to be caused by bacteria.  Viruses had not yet been discovered, being so small they could not be seen by any optical microscope of the day. The virus for some reason favoured the young and the fit people between 20 and 40 years old and more-so men rather than women. Often poor and crowded communities or those people with weakened immunity systems suffered more with many people eventually dying from pneumonia as the infection spread. It was popularly known as the ‘Spanish Flu’ as earlier the Spanish King, Alfonso XIII, fell seriously ill with a form of the influenza. 

There were a total of 8,600 deaths in New Zealand in less than two months from a population of only 1.1 million. The influenza came in two waves, first as a mild form of the disease with the second wave being more deadly than any other infection. Catching the first wave of the flu was initially thought to give some immunity to the second deadly flu wave. This view was later retracted as it was found that it often weakened patients instead. In Wellington the flu was spread by soldiers returning home from WW1 and in military camps. Often public facilities, institutions and businesses were closed with people returning to normal lives after the event having lost parents, husbands, wives or other family members and friends. 

Temporary Hospitals were set-up at St. John’s Presbyterian Sunday School, St. Patrick’s College dormitories, The Normal School Thorndon, the Sydney Street Soldiers’ Club, the Alexandra Hall, Abel Smith Street and the Mount Cook Girls’ High School as it became impossible to deal with all patients in their homes. Reported in the Evening Post 18 November 1981: New temporary Hospitals were also established in Brooklyn and Miramar. Gifts of beef tea, lemon water, barley water, broth were asked for. Praise was given to those who risk their lives caring for the ill.

For Island Bay the death toll was 18 from a roll of 3,850 people giving a rate per 1000 people of 4.6. For comparison the death rate in Kilbirnie and Lyall Bay was 15.6 and in Newtown 13.6. Miramar and Seatoun escaped lightly with a rate of only 1.6. The death rates at the military camps of Featherston and Trentham were 22.6 and 23.5 respectively. The total dead in Wellington was 757 with 656 of these being buried at Karori cemetery. [The figures above are from Black November: The 1918 Influenza Pandemic, by Geoffrey Rice, University of Canterbury Press, 2005. The population figures are those of the 1916 Census taken two years before the Pandemic]. 

There are no figures for the people in Wellington and Island Bay that became desperately ill and managed to recover but it was estimated that between 1/2 and 2/3 of the population contracted the disease. Trentham Military camp had at one point 2,500 soldiers laid up on bedrest. 

With the Flu to the war - Sid Anton's story

First published in Ngā Ākau ki te Tonga Southern Bays number 

“He always brought home the wreath to go on the bell tower at Island Bay School for the Anzac day ceremony and today I cannot smell chrysanthemums without thinking of all those wreaths throughout the years! During the service he recited the Laurence Binyon lines - ‘They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old...’ Every Thursday evening for many, many years, he and his friend, Arthur Brown, drove up to the Island Bay Home of Compassion to take packets of cigarettes to the returned servicemen in hospital! They even took chocolate to the very occasional one who did not smoke! He called into the club rooms near the corner of Mersey St and The Parade every Friday night after doing the shopping and once a month attended ‘Long Night’ at the club on a Saturday night. (I think the long-suffering wives were invited to ‘Long Night’ now and again!) For all his services to the RSA, he was eventually awarded a Gold Star Badge.

“In later life he enjoyed playing bowls - he had been both a rugby and a soccer player in his youth. He doted on his ten grandchildren. Every single Friday night, for many years, after going to the Club he would come to my house where my Mother had spent the evening and he always left on the mantle piece a small cake of chocolate and shilling piece - one for each of my eight children! He was a great creature of habit - once he started going something he just kept on doing it.! Eventually all that smoking caught up with him and he developed emphysema. He died in the Home of Compassion that he had visited so often in 1970. He was my dear Father and a kind and generous man!”

Sid Anton’s diary began as he mobilized at Trentham camp to embark on 10 July 1918. He immediately began recording illness – seasickness among the troops in rough weather and his own problems with a boil and backpain. Both improved as the journey, first to Australia, continued. But there was worse to come.

There were a total of 1,087 people aboard. Conditions were cramped. Later that week he noted: ‘Sickness still continuing, it affects one with headaches sore throat all muscles and limbs aching. Felt my first touch, took a mild fit after tea, caused through heat. Saturday August 31 Weather and climate cooler. Sickness beginning to diminish. Patients getting up after five to seven days in bed. Lost all my sickness now. OK. Sunday Sept 1 Good weather and a good sea.  Sickness not yet abated. Lot in very low condition.  4 deaths during night. Man jumped overboard. Rescued doing well. Monday Sept 2 Good weather and plenty warm sun. Patients starting to pick up. First burial at sea today. Two more deaths this afternoon. Tuesday Sept 3 Good weather…Two deaths on board this morning, 3 this afternoon. Wednesday Sept 4 Weather still good, sickness eased up a lot although deaths to date total 33. Man lost overboard this morning. Thursday Sept 5 Weather becoming rough, total deaths to date 50. Sickness practically all over, bar a dozen or two. Saturday Sept 7 Weather rough no sunshine sickness practically subsided. Deaths today total 69. Sunday Sept 8 Weather rough picked up escort at 4.30pm, about 36 hours run to Blighty. Sickness all over. Deaths total 72 Monday September 9 Weather still rough only 7 boats left in convoy about seven or eight destroyers running around us. Sickness now well over deaths total 74. Tuesday September 10 Weather good although sea rough. Left convoy at Midday made for Plymouth arrived harbour at 3pm. Berthed in docks at 5pm. Another death on board as entered harbour total now stands 75. 

Island Bay and the ‘Spanish Influenza’ Epidemic

Barbara Hoskins (née Anton)

First published in Ngā Ākau ki te Tonga Southern Bays number 2 2006

The ‘Spanish Influenza’ as it was known, was the second wave of influenza to hit New Zealand towards the end of 1918, just as the First World War ended. The first wave was ‘the flu’ much as we know it today, but the second wave — which swept through the country from October to December 1918 — was our country’s worst natural disaster.

The First World War had killed 16,500 New Zealanders in four years, yet the flu pandemic wiped out 8,600 New Zealanders in just eight weeks, at a time when the country’s total population was just over one million.

The S S Niagara had sailed from Vancouver into Waitemata Harbour on October 12 with the Prime Minister, William Massey, on board and many of the crew and passengers suffering from influenza. After some hesitation the medical authorities deemed the influenza on board to be the mild variety and allowed the ship to dock. Although there were six other overseas vessels docked in Auckland that month, the name Niagara would, in the minds of people, always be associated with the deadly flu epidemic that was about to hit.

By mid-November the epidemic in Auckland had peaked, with that area alone having approximately 2,000 deaths. First symptoms of the flu developed suddenly: severe headache, high temperature, back pain, nausea, vomiting, aching muscles and joints. Many recovered completely but some developed pneumonia and died quickly.

There was now a full-scale epidemic with no cure and little treatment. Alcohol was widely prescribed as a cure, and in the face of the hostile temperance movement, the Health Department distributed small bottles of stout, whisky and brandy. Some people wore muslin masks and others bags of camphor around their necks. Panicking citizens rushed to inhalation chambers set up in the city to breathe in zinc sulphate vapours. An inhalation chamber was set up in the Wellington Town Hall; some people believed the vapours helped prevent the onset of the flu and some believed that they helped the spread of the disease.

The outbreak occurred at a most inopportune time, as servicemen with severely lowered powers of resistance were returning to New Zealand and over 500 nurses and 228 of the country’s doctors (an enormous proportion for the country) were still abroad on military service. Much of the medical care fell to volunteers and many of them paid with their own lives.

Worldwide, the pandemic killed at least 25 million, more than double the estimated 10 million war dead. Tragically it struck hardest at young adults — men more than women — aged between 25 and 45. At the time, Pakeha did not know that the Maori death rate from the flu was one of the highest in the world, seven times the European death rate of 5.8 per 1,000.

The outbreak in Wellington coincided with Armistice Day, November 11, and it spread like a giant conflagration according to the Reminiscences of Sister Angela Moller, a Sister at the Home of Compassion, Island Bay. She remembers:

Crowds had assembled at the Basin Reserve for the Armistice rejoicing when the weather, which had been sultry, suddenly changed to cold rain. People were chilled and so had little resistance to infection, which seemed to be everywhere at once. Next day the Mayor, Sir John Luke, called for volunteers to nurse the sick and announced that a depot was being opened at the Town Hall for medical supplies, gratis. There was a dearth of doctors and nurses because of the War, but the Department of Health soon had a stock mixture of suitable medicine available at the depot.

Island Bay was the first suburb to feel the full force of the scourge, and it was also the first to have it under control. A remarkably efficient Vigilance Committee was formed under the chairmanship of Mr C C Odlin with Mr Colley as his chief assistant, and a depot was opened at the bowling green. Everything was speedily available except medical and nursing services.

On November 13, Sister Claver, who was acting Superior General at the time that Mother Aubert was away in Europe, offered the Mayor eight Sisters from the Island Bay Home. This was in response to the Mayor’s appeal for volunteers. Sister Claver was referred to Mr Odlin who welcomed the Sisters gladly. Three motor cars, plus drivers, were immediately placed at their disposal and they set to work at once, Sister Claver herself leading them that day.

The Sisters were not known to the Island Bay residents, though the Home of Compassion had been in their midst for eleven years. When the Sisters paid their first calls they were shown into the front room as though they had merely come for a social call. Sister Claver had to ask: “Where is the patient?” and then persuade the people that she and her Sisters had come to nurse, not to talk. Very soon they were met with eagerness.

The cases were so severe that very thorough organisation was required to deal with them. At the request of the Sisters, Doctor Fyffe, at great personal inconvenience, came out from the city to see the worst cases. He took Sister Clotilde around in his car (Sister Claver had placed her in charge of the nursing Sisters as she was a registered nurse with very wide experience) and she pointed out the most seriously ill. The doctor came for a very few days, only once a day, for the shortest possible time. He instructed Sister Clotilde that she was to act as an assistant physician and give strychnine injections at her discretion. He gave her several blank orders to commit patients to hospital when she considered this necessary. Medical men were assigned zones within a few days and Dr Fyffe could no longer come to Island Bay, nor could any other doctor come by day. A member of the Public Hospital staff, a Dr Brown, came at 9 pm to the depot where Sister Clotilde had left a written report for him and he visited the worst cases then.

By this time, Friday, November 15, the committee had assigned a motor cyclist with side-car, for Sister Clotilde’s service alone, for she had to visit all the cases and supervise the work of the Sisters, most of whom were St John’s Ambulance medallists and quite competent to carry out her instructions. She also had a couple of boy scouts placed at her service, one of whom was always in attendance to carry messages to the depot, or to her Sisters if she wanted them.

The Boy Scouts referred to above came from St Hilda’s Scout Troop, which provided a valuable corps of helpers at this time. They delivered food to homes and were given the power to break into houses if they suspected that people needing help were inside. Often there were people who were sick and others who had already died. Whenever the Scouts found sick or dead people, they were required to return to St Hilda’s Church hall to pass through a decontamination vapour shower as a safeguard against passing on the illness. The Scouts also had the right to stop motorists to ask for assistance for sick people or to be driven somewhere if the need arose. Their great work was recognised by the government at the end of the epidemic when each scout received a ‘thanks’ scroll signed by the then Minister of Health, Mr G W Russell. In addition, the people of Island Bay thanked their own Scouts by presenting the troop with a carrying flagpole, engraved with an expression of thanks.

According to Sister Angela Moller, the Island Bay committee had organised everything so well that the epidemic was under control in ten days or so, but then there was an outbreak in Berhampore where conditions were worse and the outbreak lasted much longer.

St Patrick’s College, then near the Basin Reserve, became an emergency hospital with the Sisters of Compassion as nursing staff and Sister Genevieve in charge.

By the time the Island Bay epidemic was over, many of the Sisters themselves collapsed. Some of the Sisters from the Whanganui River came to Island Bay to assist, but the rumour spread in Island Bay that now all the Sisters were dying of the disease. Convalescent patients in the Bay were ready to panic, and they needed some evidence that affairs at the Home of Compassion were not in such an alarming state. Mr Odlin and Mr Colley visited the Sisters and pleaded with them for even one Sister to continue to visit Island Bay patients. Sister Veronica, who had just arrived from Jerusalem, went immediately.

The Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Avon Street sent a cooked dinner every day to the Home of Compassion — enough for 24 people — and insisted on hosting the convalescing Sisters in small groups for some days of recuperation.

The Island Bay residents, as soon as they heard the Sisters were ill, sent broths, jellies, custards and other dainties to the Home. At first the Sisters thought these were meant for distribution to the patients they visited, but they soon found out that this lavish generosity was a mark of the great gratitude of the people of Island Bay.