My second lockdown – memories of polio
This is nothing new for Wellington writer Judith Dayle, who recalls memories of the 1948 lockdown to fight polio.
I’ve been here before. The current coronavirus situation with its selfisolation requirement for me and other oldies, brings back clear memories that I thought I’d forgotten.
In the first half of the 20th century, several major polio epidemics raged and there was a lockdown like today.
Images of iron lungs, plaster casts, leg braces, crutches and wheelchairs made the illness so graphic to the community. Two major differences, of course, between the coronavirus and the poliomyelitis epidemics – the latter attacked youth and was, typically, disabling rather than fatal.
It is the polio epidemic of 1948 that I remember so vividly. Infantile paralysis it was called back then – two terrifying words – and I can remember seeing small children trying to cope with legs in callipers or even confined to wheelchairs. Schools, sports events, cinemas, swimming pools, big family events were all closed in Hamilton, where I lived, and elsewhere in New Zealand.
That year was to spell a big change in lifestyle for me anyway. I was to be a new entrant to boarding school (at Marton, in Rangitı¯kei, north of Wellington).
Since the Auckland region and Waikato were the worst areas in New Zealand to be hit by this polio epidemic, the school had decided that girls from the north should stay home for a few weeks after classes had officially started. We would take correspondence lessons over that time. Then we would arrive at school to join the girls already there from other regions. There, we would have a fortnight’s quarantine in one wing of the school.
(Presumably girls’ boarding schools didn’t close that year like other New Zealand schools because they were such enclosed institutions back then, anyway – no danger to the locals and safe from the community).
I welcomed those extra weeks that were to be tacked on to the summer holidays before going to school. It was a glorious summer in the Waikato that year of 48. I lived in a house on the banks of the Waikato River and didn’t think the correspondence lessons would infringe too much on my plans for canoeing and swimming (in a river not then polluted), plus the occasional game of tennis.
But my short reprieve from boarding school was not to be. My parents were driving down to
Wellington where my lawyer father had a court case. So why not drop me off at school, at Marton, en route, right at the exact beginning of term? This was a neat, convenient arrangement for my parents (not familiar with child psychology, obviously).
So there I was at a new school that I’d never visited before – in solitary confinement for two weeks before being able to join in everyday school activities. (Self-isolation was not an expression back then.)
I was in a small room, where I would sleep and do my lessons. I can picture it now after all these years – a bed against the wall, small desk, chair and wardrobe. It overlooked the school’s square of gorgeous rosebeds with a pond in the centre. I could walk the schoolgrounds at suitable times – that quadrangle was my favourite spot. I was not allowed to communicate with others, of course – not that I knew anyone at school at that stage anyway, even to wave to.
Only one teacher, Miss Wilson (I remember her with affection) was allowed to be with me during my internment – oops, quarantine. She brought me my lessons, often stayed and talked, and marked my work. At weekends, she took me on outings.
I recall picnics with her and swims at a nearby river (the school swimming pool was out of bounds for me during this fortnight). Miss Wilson was to be my form teacher when I emerged from quarantine, though during those two weeks she was more like my lifeline.
I’ve always been a keen reader and Miss Wilson brought me a good supply of books – I’d sit out in the square in the sun when nobody else was around. But I came from a family of two brothers, one sister – I was used to company and had seldom been on my own before.
My letters home conveyed my misery in no uncertain terms and Mother started writing back to me every day – she was nervous that I’d run away, she told me, much later.
Polio mainly caused partial or complete paralysis of limbs and was typically a disease of children and adolescents. The first symptoms were headache and diarrhoea, followed by stiffness in the neck and back; and then in the arms and legs. Paralysis, often permanent, followed.
In 1947, New Zealander June Opie had contracted polio on board a ship going to England and spent months in an iron lung in London. She amazingly learned to walk again with crutches and both legs in callipers.
In 1957, she wrote about this experience in her book
which became an international best-seller in 10 days.
The Salk and Sabin vaccines thankfully came along in the late 1950s and full immunisation was achieved in New Zealand in the early 1960s. Now it’s just a historical memory in New Zealand and other developed countries. ❚ The virus hadn’t quite finished, though. A condition called post-polio attacked polio survivors years after they had recovered from their initial acute attack. Sufferers started to experience gradual new weakening in the muscles that were previously affected by the polio infection.
Judith Doyle is a former journalist and press officer in the New Zealand Tourist and Publicity Department, and the author of three books.