NZHistory, New Zealand history online - death

Disease in New Plymouth

Conditions in New Plymouth deteriorated during the fighting of 1860-61. Many settlers from the surrounding district moved into town for protection. Soon diseases such as scarlet fever posed a greater threat than warfare. By the time the truce was signed in March 1861 about 120 inhabitants of New Plymouth had died of disease. Richard Foreman lost his wife and three of their children to disease, probably scarlet fever, in just six weeks.

Steve Watters collection

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Thomas Millard grave

Thomas Millard was killed in the skirmishing that occurred around the Waireka Stream on 28 March 1860.

David Green collection

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First victim of the Taranaki War

The Sarten family grave at St Mary's Church, New Plymouth.

Three members of the Sarten family died during the tumultuous year of 1860. John Edmund Sarten had the somewhat dubious distinction of becoming the first official fatality of the Taranaki War when as a member of the mounted volunteers he died from wounds received during the assault on Te Kohia on 17 March. His father Edmund died in August and his brother Joseph was killed in a raid on the village of Henui in December.

David Green collection

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Nightcaps and the influenza pandemic

Nightcaps and Wairio in Western Southland suffered one of the highest death rates in the country during the 1918 influenza pandemic – 45.9 per 1000 people. Down the road at Riverton the rate was 16.2, and Nightcaps' death rate was about five times that of Southland as a whole.

Influenza historian Geoffrey Rice suggests that the high death rate at Nightcaps may be explained by the combination of high morbidity, perhaps as high as 90%, and lack of effective relief organisation. As in many Maori communities, so many people fell ill with influenza, or were nursing people in their own household, that there was no one available to organise relief efforts.

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Grave of James K. Baxter

Jacquie Baxter (wife) and Stephanie Baxter (granddaughter) at the unveiling of the gravestone of James K. Baxter at Jerusalem on the banks of the Whanganui River. Baxter died on 22 October 1972 and this stone was unveiled a year later.

Read more about James K. Baxter

Alexander Turnbull Library
Reference: PAColl-2146-002
Further information and copies of this image may be obtained from the Library through its 'Timeframes' website, http://timeframes.natlib.govt.nz
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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Aftermath - 1918 influenza pandemic

Robert Makgill

Following the pandemic speculation continued over the Niagara's involvement in bringing the virus to New Zealand. The Department of Public Health was also heavily criticised. The government responded by setting up a royal commission with wide powers of investigation.

It fell to Robert Makgill, acting Chief Health Officer, to implement the Commission's recommendations. One of the recommendations, which Makgill had argued for, was for a new Health Act ‘to consolidate and simplify the existing legislation'. Historian Geoffrey Rice describes the resulting Health Act 1920 as ‘the most useful legacy of the 1918 influenza pandemic'. The legislation:

... was so well drafted that it survived with only minor amendments until the 1956 Health Act, which itself still followed the general pattern of the 1920 Act. At the time it was widely recognised as a model piece of health legislation, said to be the best of its kind in the English language.

Remembering the pandemic

As the government took steps towards improving the health system people began to return to their ordinary lives – often without parents, husbands, wives or other family members.

Considering the number of lives lost during pandemic it is surprising that the event has not had greater 'prominence in national histories and public monuments'. Geoffrey Rice suggests that its 'mark on the collective memory may have been more distinct' had it struck during peacetime.

Memorial to Dr Margaret Cruickshank

The pandemic was certainly remembered by those that lived through it. Visit our media gallery to read and hear some of their recollections. These are taken from a 1967 radio documentary produced by Jim Henderson and entitled The great plague. None of the interviewees are named in the documentary.

Two statues erected in Canterbury to honour doctors who died during the epidemic, Dr Little at Waikari and Dr Margaret Cruickshank (New Zealand's first woman doctor) at Waimate, are among the few public monuments to the victims of the pandemic.

Response to the influenza pandemic

There were consistencies in New Zealand's response to the influenza pandemic. Many of these arose out of a circular telegram the Health Minister, George Russell, issued to all borough councils and town boards. This ‘laid out a practical and comprehensive scheme of relief organisation in clear and concise language, and gave full initiative to the local authorities'. Many of the features of the scheme – such as the establishment of a central committee to coordinate relief and the division of areas into blocks or districts, each with its own ‘depot or bureau', were Auckland initiatives. Some towns and cities, such as Dunedin, had already taken steps to coordinate relief efforts, but Russell's circular undoubtedly prompted others to take action.

Cures and treatments

One action taken in many town and cities was to set up inhalation sprayers to disperse a solution of zinc sulphate to the public. Though ‘medically useless', this was the only approved preventative for influenza known to New Zealand's public health department. Most sprayers were set up in public buildings. They were made even more accessible in Christchurch after someone observed that the compressed-air braking units on trams ‘could be adapted to operate a sprayer by reconnecting a few hoses'. Eventually 14 trams were converted and ‘stationed on loops at the end of all major routes, handily placed to serve the outlying districts'. Some local authorities also disinfected streets and public buildings during the pandemic.

Armistice Day

Another response in many towns and cities was to close or restrict opening hours for public facilities and businesses, and cancel or postpone public events and gatherings. In many cases these actions were initiated by those in charge of relief efforts. For example, as soon as influenza was declared an infectious disease – giving local authorities greater ability ‘to check or prevent the spread of disease' – Auckland's district health officer, Dr Joseph Frengley, ordered the closure of ‘all public halls, places of entertainment, billiard rooms and shooting galleries for at least a week'. In some cases individual businesses chose to close because of depleted staff numbers, or to free employees to nurse those in their households or to volunteer to assist relief efforts.

The medical workforce

Doctors, nurses, chemists, and voluntary organisations such as the Red Cross, St John Ambulance and district nursing associations all played crucial roles during the pandemic. But they were spread very thinly across the country, particularly in smaller towns, which meant relief efforts relied heavily on volunteers. Some women, free of employment when schools or shops closed, became lay nurses. Both men and women served on block committees, answering phones or checking on those reported to be ill. Still more people helped their families, friends and neighbours as best they could, particularly where there were young children that needed care. People with any sort of vehicle found themselves in particular demand: to take food or medicine to stricken families, to transport the sick or to take away the dead.

There were other consistencies throughout the country, as the same rumours circulated widely. Some claimed that bodies were being cremated or buried in mass graves. None of these rumours turned out to be true. Some graves were left unmarked, but only in situations where the body could not be identified.

One alarming detail relating to victims' bodies that turned out to be true was that some of them turned black. But it was pneumonia, rather than the virus itself, that caused this. Pneumonia can lead to a condition known cyanosis, where ‘the amount of oxygen exchanged into the bloodstream is drastically reduced, and the skin loses its normal health pink hue, turning a dusky purple'. Historian Geoffrey Rice has described pneumonia as ‘the real killer in 1918'.

However deadly and disruptive the influenza epidemic was, it was also over quickly. By late November the epidemic had peaked or decreased in most parts of the country, and by early December it was effectively over.

Uneven rates of death - 1918 influenza pandemic

It is clear that no matter how the second wave developed in New Zealand, it was many times more deadly than any previous influenza outbreaks. No other event has killed so many New Zealanders in so short a space of time. While the First World War claimed the lives of more than 18,000 New Zealand soldiers over a four-year period, the second wave of the 1918 influenza epidemic killed almost 8600 people in less than two months.

Influenza in institutions

Death did not occur evenly throughout the country. Some communities were decimated; others escaped largely unscathed.

Maori suffered heavily: their overall rate of death was 42.3 per thousand people, seven times that of Europeans. In one community, Mangatawhiri in the Waikato, about 50 out of 200 local Maori died. Whina Cooper recalled similar suffering at Panguru, Hokianga:

Everyone was sick, no one to help, they were dying one after the other. My father was very, very sick then. He was the first to die. I couldn't do anything for him. I remember we put him in a coffin, like a box. There were many others, you could see them on the roads, on the sledges, the ones that are able to drag them away, dragged them away to the cemetery. No time for tangis.

Influenza among Maori

But there was an exception. Mortality amongst Maori on the East Coast of the North Island was, according to historian Geoffrey Rice, ‘much less than expected in comparison with other North Island districts’. This may have been because they had received partial immunity from the first wave which was reportedly widespread in the district during August and September.

The overall rate of death for Europeans was 5.8 per thousand people. But in some communities it was well above the national average.

Featherston military camp

The most striking of these was in the isolated coalmining district of Nightcaps and Wairio in Western Southland. Its rate of 45.9 deaths per thousand people rivalled that of many Maori communities.

Geoffrey Rice notes that ‘the only places where the mortality showed any uniformity were the military camps’. He describes them as ‘by far the most dangerous places to be in 1918’. At the Featherston and Trentham camps the rates were 22.6 and 23.5 deaths per thousand people respectively.

Rice comments that even the best answers of the variations in mortality rates ‘must remain to some extent speculative’, but concludes that:

The underlying cause of extreme variations in deaths was almost certainly the quirky nature of the patterns of partial immunity left by the mild first wave, together with the unpredictable behaviour of a virulent and rapidly mutating virus.

See also: death rates in suburbs and counties of the North Island and South Island

The pandemic begins abroad

The first wave

When the ‘new pandemic flu’ first appeared in 1918 there was no immediate cause for alarm. The disease was different to other strains experienced in the past – for example, it was unusually prevalent amongst young healthy adults. But most people affected by what would turn out to be ‘the first wave’ of the pandemic recovered.

The Spanish flu

The 1918 influenza pandemic was commonly referred to as ‘the Spanish flu’ but it did not originate in Spain. It was given the popular name by journalists when the Spanish King, Alfonso XIII, fell seriously ill with a form of influenza in May that year.

Evidence suggests that this ‘mild’ first wave originated in North America. Influenza was present in many countries in late 1917 and early 1918. According to influenza historian Geoffrey Rice, author of Black November, only a ‘well-documented’ outbreak in Haskell County, Kansas, in January–February 1918 bore all ‘the characteristics of a new pandemic flu – high attack rate, higher morbidity rate and greater mortality than is usual for influenza’.

The disease spread among recruits who entered Camp Funston in Kansas, then to camps in Georgia and South Carolina, and then rapidly across the Midwest.

American soldiers are also credited with bringing the disease to Europe, where the first cases appeared near the huge American transit camps at Brest and Bordeaux in early April. By June the first wave had spread across most civilian populations in Europe.

The first wave followed normal diffusion patterns and struck the southern hemisphere a few months later, becoming prevalent in New Zealand in September. By this time it had run its course in Europe and cases related to the more severe second wave were emerging.

The second wave

Second wave deaths

The first New Zealanders affected by the second wave of the 1918 influenza pandemic were soldiers of the 40th Reinforcement on board the troopship Tahiti. On 22 August their convoy – which had called at Cape Town, South Africa, en route to Plymouth, England – refuelled at Sierra Leone, West Africa. None of the crew or soldiers went ashore as fever was reported to be raging. But locals came on board to coal the ship, and within days over half of the men on board fell ill. The final death toll exceeded 80.

The first cases of a more severe form of influenza emerged amongst British and French troops serving on the Western Front early in July 1918. By mid-August the second wave, ‘a highly infectious flu, with sudden onset and an alarming propensity for pneumonic complications’, was spreading rapidly in France.

This time Europe would be responsible for infecting North America. By late September the second wave was well established in most of major cities.

The second wave did not follow normal diffusion patterns, instead striking the southern hemisphere while the disease was still raging in the northern hemisphere.

In October, for example, the flu was at its worst in countries as far apart as South Africa, Japan, China, Peru, Greece and Italy. It is now thought that the worldwide death toll was as high as 50 million.

According to historian Geoffrey Rice, the puzzle of the simultaneous outbreaks in both hemispheres may be resolved:

When one follows the very rapid diffusion from a July epicentre in eastern France: the second wave did not peak everywhere at the same time but was spread over four months, allowing ample time for diffusion by sea and rail.

Through the systematic analysis of individual death certificates, Rice calculated that New Zealand's peak of mortality occurred on 23 November 1918. This date has proved useful in dispelling the belief that the RMS Niagara was responsible for bringing a deadly new influenza virus to New Zealand.

The 1918 influenza pandemic

Influenza instructions for nurses

In the early 21st century anxiety over the danger of avian influenza virus H5N1 revived memories of New Zealand's worst disease outbreak, the lethal influenza pandemic of 1918. In two months New Zealand lost about half as many people to influenza as it had in the whole of the First World War.

Many people believed that the severe form of influenza that struck New Zealand between October and December 1918 was caused by the arrival of ‘a deadly new virus’ aboard the Royal Mail liner Niagara on 12 October. But Geoffrey Rice, author of Black November: The 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand, suggests that the influenza aboard the Niagara was probably ‘a last fling of the mild first wave of the pandemic’ which had been prevalent in the country during September. The remaining ‘plausible possibilities’ are that the severe form was a mutation of the existing mild form, or that it was a hybrid of the mild form and an overseas variant which may or may not have arrived on the Niagara.

However the pandemic arose by the time it eased in December the death toll had topped 8600. Maori suffered heavily, at least 2160 died. But death did not occur evenly among Maori or the country as a whole. Some communities were decimated; others escaped largely unscathed. Rice notes that the only places struck with any degree of uniformity in mortality were military camps.

There were consistencies in the way in which the country responded. This was due in part to a circular telegram that the Health Minister, George Russell, issued to all borough councils and town boards. Central committees were established to coordinate relief efforts, areas were divided into blocks or districts, each with its own ‘depot or bureau’. Inhalation sprayers were set up to disperse a ‘medically useless’ solution of zinc sulphate to the public, and streets and public buildings were disinfected. It was common to close or restrict opening hours for public facilities and businesses, and to cancel or postpone public events and gatherings. The medical workforce was reduced due to the First World War, and volunteers were widely relied upon whether in their own household or community.

The epidemic was disruptive and deadly and the public sought answers from the government. What they received was ‘a major reorganisation in the form of the 1920 Health Act’ which Rice describes as ‘the most useful legacy of the 1918 influenza pandemic’.

Considering the number of lives lost during pandemic ;it is surprising that it has not had greater ‘prominence in national histories and public monuments’. Rice suggests that this is because it struck during peacetime. Had it not its ‘mark on the collective memory may have been more distinct’.