‘Hospitals were overwhelmed... doctors worked round the clock’
FERNS NATIVE DR IDA MILNE, WHO HAS STUDIED AND WRITTEN EXTENSIVELY ON THE SPANISH FLU OUTBREAK OF 1918, TALKS TO MARIA PEPPER ON HOW THE PANDEMIC AFFECTED WEXFORD AND CHARTS THE SIMILARITIES WITH TODAY’S COVID-19 CRISIS
IT’S NOT the first time that communities have shut down and people have practised self-isolation and physical distancing in Wexford. Over 100 years ago, families stayed at home for fear of catching the deadly Spanish flu while doctors and nurses worked around the clock at overhelmed hospitals and infirmaries.
The influenza pandemic and associated pneumonias claimed 23,000 lives in Ireland and left many thousands more with long term health damage.
Among them were James Milne and his wife Elizabeth who died at their home in Clohamon in December, 1918 from an illness that swept around the glob, killing and terrifying in equal measure.
The tragic deaths of James and Elizabeth left two young teenagers orphaned, their lives changed forever.
James Milne was a cousin of Harry Milne, the grandfather of Dr. Ida Milne, author of the book ‘Stacking the Coffins: Influenza, War and Revolution in Ireland, 1918-19 (published by Manchester
University Press) which deals with the impact of the Spanish flu on people in Ireland.
‘The 1918-19 influenza pandemic is considered the Big One, by researchers and medicine, the worst case scenario against which emerging pandemics are rated, like now, with the coronavirus crisis’, said Ida, who grew up in Ferns and now lives in Kildare.
‘Globally, it killed upwards of 50 million people, according to the World Health Organisation. Exactly how many, we will never really know. Certification of death by disease was in its infancy, prompted by the cholera pandemics of the nineteenth century, which we tend to know far better than this dreadful flu pandemic.
‘Many countries didn’t certify deaths, and anyhow, in countries where they did, doctors were working hard to keep the still living alive, and often didn’t have time to do the paperwork for the dead.’
The Spanish Influenza has been a research passion of Ida’s since 2005 when she was looking for a topic for an MA thesis in
Maynooth, as a mature student.
‘Knowing about it from the family loss, I was surprised that there was then no written history of something which I knew had such devastating effects on not only our family, but on many of our neighbours’ families too.
She went on to do a PhD in Trinity College on the social impacts of the Spanish flu on Irish people and became even more hooked.
‘Looking at the Registrar General’s death statistics from around the country, I established a three wave pattern, with Leinster being worst affected in the second wave in the winter of 1918, and from regional newspapers – including the People and the Guardian – I found that as it moved around the country, entire towns or communities would effectively shut down, even though there was not then robust Government advice to practice social distancing.
‘Entire families were laid up with it, or else were staying home for fear of catching it. Hospitals and workhouse infirmaries were overwhelmed, doctors and nurses worked around the clock.
‘Many of them paid the price – in Enniscorthy, the Poor Law Union’s Dr John Pierse died in November 1918, after what a Wexford People journalist described as a ’Herculean effort’ to heal the influenza ill.
Ida’s supervisor, Professor David Dickson, suggested early on in her research that she should conduct oral interviews, as there were people still alive who had lived through it.
‘He even gave me my first interviewee, TCD historian R.B. McDowell, who caught it as a small boy in an upper middle class
Belfast family. He told how it had killed his nurse, and how the family doctor had told his parents he would not live through the night.
‘RB was always very concerned with his health as a result, and always wrapped up in several layers of clothing in case he caught a chill.
‘People began to tell me tragic stories of the impact illness and death from the disease had on Irish life. Along the road where I grew up in north Wexford, between Strahart and Tombrack, there were several families affected.
‘Near Tombrack, Lily Ralph told me of her grandfather, farmer John Ralph who died from influenza on 13 October 1918 leaving a widow and five children. His family believe John may have caught flu when he went to Dublin on the train on business. ‘He was our grandfather Harry’s close friend. His eldest son Joe was then a boy of 11. Joe’s wife, Cissie, recalled that Joe was so traumatised by his father’s death that he never spoke about it.
‘Bab (Eileen) Davitt told how her mother and aunt walked the three miles from Clobemon into Ferns to ask the local priest whether they should nurse their ill neighbours, the Lancasters, in case they brought the disease to their own family. ‘Bab said that he told them God would protect them, and he did Sadly, two of the Lancasters died.
Ida said Covid-19 is a different disease – a corona virus rather than an influenza - but she has watched, fascinated and horrified, as the story began to emerge from Wuhan, where, coincidentally, she spent her 30th birthday in 1990.
‘The parallels, of a respiratory disease moving through a population, of it challenging medicine to the limits of its knowledge, of medicine upping its game to learn from it and defeat it, and of the terrible effects on the victims and their families, are so extraordinary.
‘My book, Stacking the Coffins, Influenza War and Revolution in Ireland, 1918-19, seems to mirror everything that happens.’
Ida lectures in Carlow College where her BA history students,
including many from Wexford, had to put up with her, since January, walking into lectures armed with disinfectant wipes and hand sanitisers, to raise their awareness about hygiene and safety.
‘They have been getting mini-lectures on the 1918-19 flu and the risk the current crisis poses in my courses which outwardly have nothing to do with these diseases – Fascism, the Age of Exploration in the Early Modern World, or Nation States. They probably thought I had lost the plot, but politely indulged me, and let me do some rough market research on the crisis.’
Ida said her students’ thoughtful and sometimes provocative responses have been a great help as she is inundated with requests to write newspaper articles and contribute to radio debates or advisory group, on the Spanish flu comparisons with the coronavirus.
‘It became quickly obvious that because there were few young victims from Wuhan, some students felt it was not a risk for them. Part of my work was to explain that viruses change so nothing is certain until it is all over, and anyhow young people have a duty to limit their socialising to reduce the chances of their older relations getting it.
Ida said that at a time when there is little comfort, is comforting to know that her research on Spanish flu is seen as helpful to understanding what is going on in society now.
‘Not of course as helpful as medicine or medical science, but all humanities disciplines can play a role in such events too. We will need psychologists and sociologists in the coming months and years to make sense of this unfolding tragedy.’
She said that in Carlow college staff and students appreciated being in a setting where numbers are lower than the larger universities, and where the buildings manager and her team increased disinfection of surfaces and the dining hall manager also increased sanitary practices to protect everyone.
‘Clever clued-in behaviours like this will help us get through the coming weeks.
And kindness, which we saw in our community here in Wexford in 1918, in abundance, and we see happening again now. Kindness can make the most trying of circumstances better’, said the author.