Did Your
Ancestor Die of Swine Flu? (Britain in general)
Ruth A.
Symes investigates the consequences of the 1918 flu pandemic for family
history
[Please read also my article in this blog on swine flu and Scottish ancestors]
In 1918-1919, a
devastating flu pandemic swept across Europe, Asia and Africa. Worldwide it is
estimated that as many as 50 million people may have died. In Britain, the
numbers were a startling 228,000 according to some estimates. The virulence
of the flu pandemic had enormous consequences for many ordinary British
families. Indeed, once the 1921 census becomes available, many of us will find
that our ancestors’ households had undergone enormous changes since the
previous census of 1911 due as much to the flu virus as to the Great War
itself. Many people were widowed and may later have married again; family
breadwinners disappeared; large numbers of young children died; thousands of
youngsters lost one or both parents and were adopted by other family members;
household groups split up and moved to other parts of the country, and in some
cases, out of the country altogether. In the space of less than two years,
thousands of family trees changed shape and new histories emerged.
One of the attractive
features of the epidemic from the point of view of family history research is
that is an event that happened within living memory. Now in her late nineties, my
great-aunt Renee was just five when she lost both her parents to the virus in
Scarborough, North Yorkshire. Before she knew it, she was on a steamship
sailing from Liverpool to Canada with two of her older sisters. Whilst two
other siblings stayed behind to be brought up by other Yorkshire members of the
family, the three girls were bound for a new life as the adopted children of
their mother’s childless sister and her husband. In a letter to me, Renee
remembers clearly the long journey across the Atlantic and the fact that the
chaperone who had been paid to accompany the children spent much of the journey
neglecting her duties and chatting to a young man. I know very little about
Renee’s parents but they were most probably under the age of 35 in 1918. Those
over that age tended to be immune to the disease having developed antibodies to
counter it in the earlier similar pandemic (so-called Russian or Asiatic flu)
of 1889-1890.
‘The Mother of All
Pandemics’
The 1918-1919 flu outbreak was
an unusually severe and deadly strain of avian flu. It is thought to have
entered the swine population as well as the human population in 1918. Experts believe that today’s bird
and swine flu viruses are closely related to the strain prevalent in the
second decade of the twentieth century. Indeed, it’s possible that the
H1N1 strain may have originated on the Western Front itself.
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Death
Certificates and what to look for
If - like Renee’s parents - your ancestors did
die in 1918 or 1919, look carefully at the month of death on their death
certificates. In Britain, the flu virus lasted from June 1918- March 1919
spreading across three continents in three phases. The first phase (from June
to July 1918) was generally considered mild. Its chief victims were those under
two years old, the elderly and the sick. The second phase of the disease in
October and November of 1918, however, claimed a different sort of victim. This
time many deaths occurred in the ranks of healthy young adults aged between 20
and 40. Indeed, nearly half of all the deaths from the flu affected those in
this age group. This meant that many young children, like Renee, lost one or
both parents. The third phase of the disease which struck in February-March
1919 was also vicious and produced a high death toll.
If you
suspect that your ancestor died from the flu you should also take a closer look
at the cause of death on his or her death certificate. Be careful: flu
was often confused with other conditions, and in the initial pandemic phase,
when it was still little understood, deaths were often attributed to 'PUO' (a
pyrexia of unknown origin). Once identified, the disease became known as the ‘Spanish flu’ (partly because
reporting of it was not subject to censorship in Spain, a fact which made it
appear more virulent there than anywhere else). It was also known as La
Gripe Española, or La Pesadilla and as 'three-day
fever'. Remember also that
many sufferers died from complications after the flu. Their deaths may have
been attributed to ‘pneumonia’ or ‘bronchitis.’ Look carefully too at the
records relating to your soldier ancestors. They may not have died
straightforwardly from gunshot wounds, but from the flu that prevented them
from recovering from injury. Finally, it’s worth bearing in mind that many
survivors of the flu virus were left severely depressed. A number of suicides
and murders in Britain were put down to the after effects of the flu.
Across the Country
The chances of your family
having contracted the flu depend very much on where they lived. The general
pattern was that, having been brought into the country by troops returning
from war, it would take root in a major city or coastal port and then follow
the rail and ship networks to other places. High numbers of deaths occurred
early in 1918 in Portsmouth, Southampton, Liverpool, for example.
If your family lived in
London or any of Britain’s other large cities, the chances of them having
contracted the flu will have been high. In 1918, the numbers of deaths
exceeded the numbers of births in the metropolis for the first time in at
least a century; in July of that year, there were 200 deaths a week in
London. In mid-October
1918, Glasgow had over 300 flu-related deaths a week. All over the country, undertakers were
overwhelmed and there was briefly a shortage of coffins.
If your
ancestors lived in more remote towns and rural areas, they may have escaped
the disease.
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Symptoms and Treatment
Sufferers of the flu virus
reported headaches, earaches, nightmares, fever, coughing spells, intense pain
in the eyes and limbs, and loss of weight. In many cases, the skin turned
bluish purple as a result of cyanosis caused by de-oxygenated haemoglobin in
the blood vessels. This caused the disease to be known colloquially as ‘the
blue death.’ In the worst cases a liquid formed on the lining of the lungs and
victims effectively drowned in their own blood. With no such antiviral drugs as
Tamiflu on the market, doctors could volunteer only what now seems wholly
inadequate advice. Patients were requested to gargle night and morning with a
solution of permanganate of potassium and common salt. A variety of other
largely ineffective treatments were put forward including Oxo, quinine, Vick’s
Vaporub, and a concoction of pine oil, lavender oil and eucalyptus oil. It was
understood that the disease could be spread by contact between infected people.
Medical officers recommended that sufferers stayed at home and got plenty of
fresh air. It was recommended that cinemas and theatres be ventilated every few
hours.
The Flu and the War
The flu
pandemic should not be seen in isolation from the Great War of 1914-18. It
emerged at Camp Funston in Kansas, USA, in the early part of 1918. As a
result, it is thought, of US troop ships arriving in Europe to support the War
effort, it soon hit the trenches and field hospitals of Northern France where
it spread rapidly.
Part of the
reason that it spread so successfully was that British soldiers and civilians
were physically vulnerable after four years of fighting. In general, people
were anxious, physically exhausted and undernourished – all characteristics
which encouraged and exacerbated the disease. There were also thousands of
people in transit and more places in which overcrowding was an issue such as in
munitions factories, and on public transport.
It has been
suggested that the flu may have had an impact on the outcome of the War.
Certainly it affected the Germans adversely in an attack on Ypres. The British
15th and 29th Divisions were also forced to postpone their operations due to
sickness. Since Armistice came just a few days after the flu reached its
highest peak in November 1918, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that
this may have played a part in bringing hostilities to a close.
A Clue
in the Grave
One of the
most notable victims of the 1918 epidemic was Sir Mark Sykes (1879-1919), a
traveller, Conservative politician and diplomatic advisor. Sykes died in a
hotel in Paris at the age of 39. His body was brought back to the family seat
at Sledmere House in Yorkshire and buried in a lead-lined coffin. It was the
coffin that was to lead to Sykes' exhumation in September 2008. Scientists
believed that it might have preserved the flu virus allowing the genetic
material to be analysed and perhaps facilitating the development of an antibody
against more recent strains. Unfortunately, once Sykes’grave was opened, it was
discovered that the coffin had split and that his body was in a bad state of
decomposition - nevertheless tissue from
the brain and lungs was sampled. Other corpses from the same period, which were
preserved in one way or another – one in Arctic permafrost – have also been
exhumed and investigated for the same reasons in recent years.
For my
great aunt Renee, the flu epidemic changed the size, shape and geography of her
family irrevocably. Now nearly 100 years old and in a nursing home in Ontario, Renee still
considers herself to be a Yorkshire woman at heart and has made many journeys
back home over the years to visit the grave of the parents she barely knew.
There is another surprising consolation for her – a cheering example of how our
family history really is always with us. Because she survived the 1918-1919 flu
outbreak, modern variants of avian and swine flu hold no fear for her. Like
many other nonagenarians and centenarians, she developed antibodies to the
disease ninety years ago that are still be present in her bloodstream!
Useful Websites
http://www.tracingpaper.org.uk/2009/05/05/history-swine-influenza/
History of Swine flu from 1918-2009
Extra Reading
Barry JM. The Great Influenza: The epic story of the
deadliest plague in history. ( Viking; 2004)
Brown R. The Great War and the great flu pandemic of 1918.
(Wellcome, History 2003)
Van Hartesveldt FR. The 1918-1919 Pandemic of Influenza:
The urban impact in the western world. (Edwin Mellen Press; 1992).
Kolata, Gina Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of
1918 and the Search for the virus That Caused It (San Val 2001)
Duncan, Kirsty E. Hunting the 1918 Flu: One Scientists
Search for a Killer Virus, (University of Toronto Press, 2006)
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Oxford, John S., Ranger, Terry, Killingray, David and
Phillips, Howard eds, The Spanish Flu Pandemic of 1918: New Perspectives
(Routledge Studies in the Social History of Medicine, 2003)
If you enjoyed this article, why not consider buying one of my family history books?
2. It Runs in the Family: Understanding More About Your Ancestors (The History Press, 2013) It Runs in the Family ;
3. Family First: Tracing Relationships in the Past (Pen and Sword Books, forthcoming September 2015)
4. Researching Ancestors Through Their Personal Writings (forthcoming Pen and Sword Books, 2016)
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Keywords: swine flue, epidemics, Britain, British, family history, genealogy, family tree, ancestors, ancestral.
