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Easter Revels

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The Stamford Mercury tells us that there were, on Good Friday and Easter Monday, various entertainments provided for the public to suit the respective tastes of the Peterborians, neighbours and visitors. I wondered what these may have been and tried to investigate. Well, on this day - Good Friday - in Peterborough town, the recreation ground was well filled while 'various sports were indulged in'. What these 'various sports' were is not recorded so I'll let your imagination bring these to life. There were also several large tea parties, one of which was held at the Grand Hotel in Wentworth Street - a significant establishment then vying for central Peterborough ascendancy with the Angel just round the corner - while another was at the Drill Hall.  One I would like to have attended was the 'monster' tea party at New England. I'm not too sure, though, that I would have liked to have rounded off the day sitting through the lecture by Mr George Goodwin, which was 'remarkably well delivered and much appreciated, there being a fashionable platform and a very good audience in the body of the room'. The Mercury tells of the platform and the audience, but nothing about the lecture. Perhaps the journalist went to sleep!

Taken from The Peterborough Book of Days by Brian Jones, The History Press, 2014.

World War I , Infection , Pandemic , Medicine , Health

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Influenza Pandemic

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1918

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The 1918 influenza pandemic also known as Spanish flu, was a deadly influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza virus. It infected 500 million people around the world killing 50 million but possibly as many as 100 million people. It was one of the deadliest epidemics in human history. Where it originated is unclear but it certainly spread to Britain from France with returning soldiers, with Peterborough suffering as much as the rest of the country.

The name Spanish flu arose because Spain, being neutral in the First World War, did not censor the news to maintain wartime morale, so the epidemic’s effects were freely reported, falsely making it appear that Spain was particularly hard hit.

 This particular pandemic had a very high mortality rate because of several factors including malnutrition due to the war, overcrowding in hospitals, lack of hygiene and the movement of troops all around the world. The pandemic also came in 2 waves, the first in the spring of 1918 producing a more usual ‘Three Day Fever’ followed by recovery except in the very vulnerable, the very old and very young, but the second wave, peaking in October 1918, was more virulent and targeted particularly young adults; nearly half of all deaths were people aged between twenty and forty years.

By the summer of 1919, the flu pandemic came to an end, as those that were infected either died or developed immunity.

References:

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed The World, Spinney, Laura. Vintage 2017

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

Images (in the Public Domain)

A chart of deaths in major cities, showing a peak in October and November 1918

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