Level 4 lockdown: I’ve been immersed in the pages of my late grandmother’s handwritten memoirs and came across her recall of the 1918 Flu epidemic in New Zealand.
She was 11 years of age when the flu hit, living with her family in Auckland:
Cath [16] had looked after my younger sister Edna [9] and myself when our mother was taken to hospital during the ‘black plague’. It was a dreadful thing and so named as people were dying like flies and would go black down to the waist. All schools were closed and we were not allowed outside our gate.
The Tech College was turned into a reserve hospital as the main hospitals were full. Hundreds of people died. My father was ill with it and my mother nursed him through it. She was a nurse and a midwife in her younger days but she caught the plague and was taken to hospital and was about 6 weeks battling for her life. What a wonderful happy day it was when the ambulance brought her home to us. We all cried with happiness as we had missed her warmth and love.
She was one of the lucky ones.
This was New Zealand’s worst-ever public health disaster. 9000 doctors, nurses, soldiers and civilians died during our 1918 influenza epidemic in New Zealand. The whole country seemed to come to a stand-still for several weeks in November 1918.
My grandmother’s reference to the ‘black plague’ was very intriguing. I did some digging.
The 1918 influenza pandemic was commonly referred to as ‘the Spanish flu’ but it did not originate in Spain. It was also described as ‘black flu’ but it wasn’t the black plague.
Why did the bodies turn black? It is cyanosis from pneumonia, as explained by Geoffrey Rice, author of That Terrible Time: New Zealand Eyewitnesses of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic. As inflamed lungs fill with blood and fluid, oxygen exchange is decreased and the skin turns a dusky purple (especially lips, mouth and earlobes first). Nosebleeds (also called epistaxis) was common with the infected (although severe nose bleed patients often survived), along with hair loss and loss of finger/toe nails.
Schools closed and turned into temporary hospital wards.
I was interested in the Tech College she mentioned too. Her sister Gladys studied at this college and became a short-hand typist (then a personal secretary to Michael Joseph Savage, deputy leader at the time of her service). I believe it was ‘Auckland Tech School’, renamed in 1913 to ‘Seddon Memorial Tech College’, now AUT on Wellesley Street East.
Poster: (Alexander Turnbull Library, Eph-B-HEALTH-1918-01)
The Health Department in 1918 was very small (it was only started in 1901) and many of the senior ‘medical men’ where not available due to the war. Schools were indeed closed, as with all workplaces. Schools and local halls became make-shift wards. Transport halted. Flour and coal were scarce. Those who managed to survive pneumonia with an absence of nursing care, took weeks to recover.
The 1918 influenza killed many 25-45 years of age, often sparing the elderly or younger children (in fact the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides at the time assisted in the distribution of food and medicines). In some areas of New Zealand 90% of local populations were infected – often children left to fend helpless to care for their ailing parents.
The learnings?
Self reliance and a prompt response.
If you are interested to learn more insight into the 1918 Influenza, I would highly recommend watching this presentation (published in 2018).
