ECHOES FROM THE PAST!
“The street crowd surged—but
where to go?
The bar? The concert? Movies?
No!
Old Influenza’s locked the door to
Pleasure Land.
Oh what a bore!”
Edna Groff Diehl, 1918
“The toothpaste didn’t taste right— Spanish Flu!
The bath soap burned my eyes—Spanish Flu!
My beard seemed to have grown pretty fast and tough overnight—
Spanish Flu!”
Anonymous – Winnipeg Tribune, 1918
Gunner Ivor John Hiley, the son of a Barry butcher, survived three years fighting in France during the Great War. He had arrived at Newport railway station, on leave from the Royal Field Artillery and walked the eight miles (13km) home to Pontypool by midnight. By the morning he was already showing signs of flu and died within days on December 16, just a month after Armistice Day. His wife and young daughter had already succumbed to the deadly ‘Spanish flu’ pandemic. In Wales the official death toll was 8,750; globally over 50 million died.
The Vale of Glamorgan suffered less than other parts of Wales. Only 78 people died in Barry, the second lowest death rate in Wales. Things were bad in Cardiff where the worst of the epidemic started in October. Doctors were struggling to cope and some schools were 
closed. It appeared worse in the poorer and the more overcrowded parts of Cardiff. South Cardiff – which included the docks – had the highest death rate – 29.9 per 1,000. Army labour corps were drafted in to dig graves. There were reports of bodies being transported in carts from the docks. Delirious with fever, one man fell to his death from his bedroom window.
Unlike today, the epidemic did not affect the older generation quite as much. Of the deaths in the city, 44% involved younger adults, aged 25 to 45. It is thought that older people had possibly gained more immunity as a result of a similar pandemic in 1889.
Responses to the 1918-19 pandemic were also familiar. Precautionary leaflets were issued with advice including urging people to avoid sneezing and coughing, to boil handkerchiefs and take to bed in a well-ventilated room. Every effort was made to stop people gathering together. Schools and cinemas were closed but just like today some people ignored the pleas. Social distancing proved difficult in the Welsh mining communities where the sense of neighbourliness and community spirit was strong. One physician, Dr Jenkins, lamented the ‘well intentional but ill-advised custom of neighbourly inter-visitation between the occupants of infected and unaffected houses’. There was also the habit of spitting ‘still prevalent in most communities’- a by-product of working with coal.
As today, some people failed to understand the situation or heed warnings. In March 1919, Aberavon Council ordered the closing of premises of Messrs. Gibbons because a room above their shop, sufficient in size for 18 people and with no through ventilation, had been used by 170 people to hold a séance!
The1919 pandemic eventually waned and gloom was replaced with a spirit of optimism. Gradually things returned to normal and economic prosperity resumed. Encouragingly perhaps, the next decade is often remembered as the ‘Jazz Age’ or the ‘Roaring Twenties.’ Of course we also have one massive advantage today – several effective vaccines!
