A time when flu claimed more casualties than the Great War

Country Living with Francis Farragher

I hope that I’m not tempting fate . . . and I did get the flu jab a couple of months back (a sign of growing caution with the passing of the years!) . . . but my memory bank contains no traces of ever having experienced the virus.  Sure enough, like most of the population of Ireland, I’ve experienced my share of coughs, colds and runny noses, but as for a full-blown flu, it’s a plague that I’ve managed to avoid.

As a young child of the 1960s, I do remember quite vividly tales from my father of the 1918 flu or Spanish Flu as it was commonly referred to, where he spoke of whole families being unable to fend for themselves for weeks due to the impact of the virus.

Its impact on the world was both significant and horrendous with various figures for the worldwide death toll pitched in between 40 million and 100 million people, more than died in the Great War.

The catastrophic impact of this pandemic has probably slipped under the historical radar to some extent both nationally and internationally due to the political struggles that were raging both at home and abroad.

Through 1918, the First World War was gradually trundling towards a conclusion while Ireland was also in a state of chassis as the country moved towards a course of independence following the General Election of December 14, 1918, and the meeting of the first Dáil just over a month later.

There might have been a fever racing through Irish politics at the time but through almost all parts of the island there was also a fever of a different kind paralysing the nation, as hospitals, local authorities, doctors and nurses struggled desperately to cope with the arrival of the Spanish flu in the early Summer of 1918.

The flu probably played its part in bringing the Great War to an end, as through the course of 1918, the main armies involved – British, US, French and German – had been badly hit by the virus.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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