Spanish Flu

Nurse wearing a Spanish Flu mask
November 1918, the guns on the Western Front fell silent ending the First World War, however the world was still at war. The ‘enemy’ didn’t need to use modern warfare to claim its victims, this enemy was the ‘Spanish Flu’, and it hit the young and healthy particularly hard. To date this was the worse pandemic that the world has ever seen since the Black Death.
The origin of the Spanish Flu was of one of three locations. Firstly, it could have been established at a British army base at Etaples. Secondly, at Fort Riley, Kansas, USA, where a new Camp Funston, home to at least 50,000 serving soldiers, where the first case of flu was recorded in March 1918. Within hours of the first case, dozens more soldiers fell ill with the symptoms. By the end of the first week, there were at least 500 cases. Finally, it was thought that the outbreak actually started in 1917 in Shanxi Province, China, and that it was spread by the Chinese labourers who were hired to work in France and Britain during the First World War. Even today the origin remains a mystery.

So why was it called the Spanish Flu?
Spain who remained neutral during the First World War, and didn’t have the same wartime censorship, was able to report that King Alfonso XIII was gravely ill, but made a full recovery. The newspapers of the day thought and reported that Spain was the most affected country, thus the pandemic was dubbed “the Spanish Flu”. Prime Minister David Lloyd George contracted it, and made a full recovery.

Makeshift warehouse converted into a Hospital War, circa 1918.  Credit BBC.
Back in the UK, the flu easily spread with returning soldiers, who travelled home on the railways to various parts of the country. The main symptoms were sore throats, headaches and a loss of appetite. Usually, recovery was swift but with no treatment available, such as antibiotics or penicillin, the ensuing pneumonia was fatal. Penicillin was ‘discovered’ in 1928 by Alexander Fleming.
It is estimated that 228,000 British people died from the Spanish Flu. Here in Wales, that number was 11,000. How were these figures calculated?
Each year, the Medical Officer of Health would produce a report and setting out the work done by his public health and sanitary officers. The reports would provide information such as birth and death rates, infant mortality, incidence of infectious and other diseases and the general health of the area.
Using the 1918-1921 Medical Officer of Health Reports for Swansea, we can establish how many people died from Spanish flu.
1918 – 273 deaths; 1919 – 161 deaths; 1920 – 54 deaths and

Babell Chapel Burial Register, 30th November 1918
Medical Officer of Health Report – 
kind permission West Glamorgan Archive Service, Civic Centre

 1921 – 15 deaths. Two of those who died from the influenza and its complications in 1918 were father and daughter, Thomas (64) and Lydia Williams (25), of 66 Pentregethin Road. They died on the 27th and 28th November. Lydia had gained her certificate to be a school teacher (Elementary). Both were buried at Babell Cemetery, Car-marthen Road, on the same day, 30th November 1918 (see Burial Register above).
The Medical Officer of Health Reports (left) can be found in the West Glamorgan Archive Service, Civic Centre.By the summer of 1919, the flu pandemic came to an end.




Copyright - The Bay Magazine, February 2019



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