When the Spanish flu reached NZ
My grandfather Alfred Humphrey Hindmarsh was the Labour MP for Wellington South when he died of the ‘‘Spanish flu’’ in 1918.
Fourteen of his parliamentary colleagues succumbed to it as well. His wife died a couple of years later of pneumonia, leaving my father, then only eight, an orphan to be cared for by his 14-year-old sister. I recently came across one of my father’s letters to her, where he called his teenage sister ‘‘Mum’’.
We can read all the statistics we want to, but I suspect that real pandemic trauma still runs subconsciously deep in some families.
The Spanish flu was a massive tragedy on top of our war losses. World War I killed 18,000 New Zealand soldiers, but that took four full years. In just six weeks, from early November to mid-December 1918, at least 9000 New Zealanders died from influenza.
The last of the great plagues to afflict humanity, the worldwide pandemic claimed the lives of at least 50 million people. Some estimates put the overall infection rate at 500 million, around onethird of the world’s population at the time.
Wartime censorship meant that news of the outbreak amongst Allied troops in France didn’t get out. It wasn’t until the epidemic reached neutral Spain and made King Alfonso VIII gravely ill that the press there had a field day, giving the impression to the world that the flu started there.
The H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin originated in northern China, and was brought to Europe by the mobilisation in sealed boxcars of 96,000 Chinese labourers to work behind the British and French lines on the Western Front. Mutating to became super-deadly during the spring of 1918, it was spread by sailors and sea passengers to ports all around the world.
It came in three waves, striking young and healthy people alike, pitting their strong immune systems against them in a way that was different from previous epidemics.
Many people thought it was a return of the bubonic plague, because the combination of severe influenza and pneumonia turned many of the victims’ bodies black. It could hit with terrifying speed. Five hours from showing the first symptoms, you could be dead.
It is believed that the deadliest wave was brought into this country by passengers aboard the RMS Niagara, which berthed in Auckland on October 12, 1918, after sailing from Vancouver and San Francisco. Among those on board was Prime Minister William Massey, returning from a war conference. He was accused of pulling strings to avoid the usual quarantine procedures.
The New Zealand passenger cargo ship Talune took the flu to Samoa. Seriously ill passengers were allowed ashore without being quarantined, and the virus spread quickly throughout the islands. Between one-fifth and a quarter of the population, the highest death rate anywhere in the world. In New Zealand, Ma¯ ori suffered a death rate eight times that of the general population.
Life in New Zealand ground to a halt by mid-November as the pandemic peaked. Workplaces, schools and public facilities shut down, and all events were cancelled or postponed, including Auckland’s Armistice celebration planned for November 11.
Streets everywhere became deserted, apart from ambulances or volunteers door-knocking to find the worst-affected cases.
Temporary influenza wards were set up in schools and church halls, and even under racecourse grandstands in Hastings, Reefton and Gore. Soup kitchens had to be hastily set up to feed the feeble, with Scouts and Girl Guides recruited to help distribute food and medicine to stricken households.
So many people died at the same time that undertakers could not cope. Councils stepped in to commandeer trucks and vans to take coffins to the cemeteries, where teams of men were flat out digging graves. For a fortnight in Auckland, special ‘‘coffin trains’’ took the dead twice a day from the city to Waikumete Cemetery to help clear the backlog.
Fatalities were not evenly distributed. Military camps and some small towns, such as Nightcaps in Southland and Denniston on the West Coast, had startlingly high numbers of deaths, suffering the ‘‘Ma¯ ori rate’’.
Auckland recorded a final count of 1128 Pa¯ keha¯ deaths, a rate of 7.6 per 1000. Wellington lost 773 residents, a rate of eight per 1000. Christchurch lost 458 at a rate of 4.9, while Dunedin’s 273 was the lowest city rate at 3.9 per 1000.
Some towns, such as Cambridge, Tauranga, New Plymouth, Westport and Timaru, had low death rates, possibly because they had gained more immunity from the mild first wave.
Others, such as Hastings, Dannevirke, Hawera, Masterton, Amberley, Kaiapoi, Temuka, Oamaru, Winton and Invercargill, had high death rates.
The Nelson province faired reasonably well. Nelson City (population then 8774) lost 29 people to the flu, a death rate of 3.3 per 1000. Waimea County (population 9384) lost 11, a death rate of 1.1. Motueka (population 1474), lost only four people, or 2.7 per 1000, while Murchison (population 1251) lost six, a 4.7 rate. Takaka County (population 1858) saw three deaths, a 1.6 rate, while Collingwood County (population 1251) recorded none at all.
In the wake of the pandemic, the government set up a royal commission, which resulted in what was seen as model legislation to prevent such a situation happening again: the 1920 Public Health Act.
Among the many memorials set up to the victims was one to Dr Margaret Cruickshank, our country’s first female doctor, who lost her life to the disease while ceaselessly helping others.
It could be said that by world standards, New Zealand coped remarkably well with the 1918 flu. Neighbours helped each other, and communities rallied to help the stricken. The war years’ mobilisation had not been in vain.
I can’t help but think that the privileged younger generation today have grown up feeling immune from turmoil, getting everything they ever wanted. I now watch ones with imminent OE travel plans, reeling in absolute disbelief that something could disrupt them.
The world is suddenly a different place, but it’s important to realise that we have been there before. The silver lining may be that we rediscover our resilience, fortitude and compassion for others.
By world standards, New Zealand coped remarkably well with the 1918 flu. Neighbours helped each other, and communities rallied to help the stricken.