The Guardian (USA)

'We take no risks at all': a voice from the Spanish flu outbreak

- Matthew Curlewis

Does history repeat? Ask an ancestor. I was in hotel quarantine when I discovered a letter written in 1919 by my great-aunt Jean about her work as a voluntary aide during Australia’s Spanish flu outbreak.

Young writer Jean Curlewis, aged 21, was writing to her mother, Ethel Turner (Curlewis), the popular author of Seven Little Australian­s, about why she wouldn’t be taking casual leave from her role at Walker hospital, in Parramatta, relieving nurses who were exhausted from carrying out precaution­ary measures and overworked from caring for ill and dying patients.

“Matron asked me was I coming home on my 24 hours’ leave and said she thought there would be no risk if I had a Lysol bath, wore a mask all the time, and clean clothes, and kept six feet away because, of course, the visiting medical officers come out every day, but when I asked her was she going home, she said, ‘No.’ On the whole, though I long to see you all, I think I would rather not spend the subsequent nights worrying myself sick for fear I had given it to you. Some of the girls do go home, and some do not. I’ll spend a luxurious and quite happy day here – 20 hours in bed and four in the garden. Oh – my camera and a couple of films. But there’s no hurry. And Mother, it really is far worse for me to feel you go into town to shop or send me parcels than to go without the things.

You know I am not given to imaginatio­ns in worrying, but up here, all the girls find it almost unbearable to think that people belonging to us might get this awful thing, through lack of precaution. Up here, we take no risks at all – in all these seven days I have never seen a single soul though they were blind with weariness, yield to the temptation to omit one tiresome detail of the long, long ritual of getting clean four or five times a day. So, don’t.”

During 1919, from a population of about 5 million, nearly 15,000 people died from the Spanish flu in Australia.

I found this unnervingl­y prescient letter during my two-week isolation in a Sydney hotel. I had rushed from my now home in Amsterdam to say goodbye to my father, Ian – Ethel’s grandson and Jean’s nephew – who had been placed under palliative care for bone cancer.

Worried I was starting to lose my mind from being locked in a guarded, airless room after a too-close-to-strangers terrifying flight, and while being anxious I wouldn’t reach my father in time, I dived into exploring some family archive material about Jean. I was quickly stunned to stumble across direct parallels between both my specific situation and our collective one at this unique moment in time.

Just like today there were clearly gaps between how seriously some people were behaving and others who were “carrying on as usual”. Further explaining why she can’t simply “leave her post”, Jean comments on this disparity, and the social pressure she was receiving from friends:

“‘Flu is real – ‘flu is earnest – and whew, one gets letters such as I did the other night from Gwen and Rosie, insisting on my coming to picnics, and to be tried on for seven bridesmaid’s frocks. One doesn’t quite know how to answer them without appearing either melodramat­ically tragic, or else apparently putting them off for insufficie­nt reasons, as they seem to think that it is the easiest matter in the world to come out.”

Right as I discovered these writings, my applicatio­n for exemption from quarantine, based on compassion­ate grounds, gets – compassion­ately, I’m pleased to report – declined. Until explained by a NSW health department representa­tive, I had no idea that if I was released sooner than 14 days everyone I came into contact with, including my already ill father, would then have to isolate for their own two week periods.

Having just travelled from pandemic-ridden Europe, the last thing I wanted to do was spread Covid-19 among my family or friends.

So precaution it was and will continue to be.

The letter from Jean – who died aged 32 from tuberculos­is – reaffirms what we have known about societal responsibi­lity and protecting others for more than 100 years.

Wash our hands. Keep a physical distance. Wear a mask.

Let’s make these things ritual and allow our ancestors to slumber peacefully. In 2020 we don’t need to have even 1,000 deaths, let alone 15,000.

And although it was a difficult 14 day wait for me, I made it in time to say goodbye to my father. I was with him when he died this week.

 ??  ?? Red Cross nurses in 1918, Sydney, during the Spanish flu outbreak. Photograph: National Library of Australia
Red Cross nurses in 1918, Sydney, during the Spanish flu outbreak. Photograph: National Library of Australia
 ??  ?? Jean Curlewis, who worked as a volunteer nurse during the Spanish flu outbreak. Photograph: Matthew Curlewis
Jean Curlewis, who worked as a volunteer nurse during the Spanish flu outbreak. Photograph: Matthew Curlewis

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