Twists and turns keep the plot of Downton Abbey rolling. One twist was unsurprising – the arrival of Spanish flu just as the war was winding down. The flu pandemic that swept around the world and killed an estimated 40 million people (some scientists estimate that as many as 100 million died globally) in three waves in 1918, 1919, and 1920 spread quickly via troop movements and global transportation. One major problem in containing the pandemic was that in 1918 governments were primarily concerned with the war and were caught flat-footed in containing the pandemic when it struck. The first wave of the pandemic was the most deadly.
Flu pandemic image @Wikipedia
The Spanish flu resulted in a particularly virulent and lethal pandemic. At the time people did not yet understand how flu was spread or how to take precautions against it. All they could do was stay indoors and wear masks when venturing outside. Two age groups that were especially susceptible were babies less than a year old and healthy young adults between the ages of 15 and 35. The flu usually killed the very young and the very old, but this virus strain attacked teens and young adults with robust immune systems. Immune cells were activated by the virus, increasing the number of immune cells circulating in the blood and overwhelming the lungs with fluids.
Healthy young adults essentially drowned from within. Some patients died only a few hours after their first symptoms appeared; others died in a matter of days. Patients would turn blue, suffocating from a lack of oxygen as lungs filled with a frothy, bloody substance.
In the US, twenty five percent of the population was afflicted by the flu. More remarkably, in only one year the average life expectancy in the U.S. dropped by 12%.
As happened in real life, a number of Downton Abbey’s inhabitants contracted the flu. Some survived and others did not. Edwardian Promenade has written a more detailed account on this topic.
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Jane Austen's World 
One notable to die of Spanish flu in 1918 was Victoria of Baden’s son Prince Erik. She was a friend and patient of Dr. Axel Munthe who wrote the amazing The Story of San Michele. He writes in detail about an earlier cholera epidemic in this book.
Wasn’t there a scandal associated with Prince Erik, Patty? Or am I thinking of someone else?
This prince wasn’t involved with a scandal – he was mentally retarded and epileptic and was kept relatively hidden from public responsibilities. Maybe you mean Prince Eric, the suitor of QE I? This chart of his life is so typical of royalty that it’s funny. Let’s see……mentally unstable, illegitimate children, and so on.
http://www.elizabethfiles.com/info/elizabeth-is-suitors/prince-eric-of-sweden/
I agree with Linda’s post below on just about everything.
Oh Patty, I do apologise. I have only just read your comment. Axel Munthe!! He lived up the road from where I live in Wimbledon. He lived at South Side House. It is still owned by the family. They open it for a few days a year. Marilyn and I visited it two years ago with some friends. The Hand in Hand and Crooked Billet pubs are just across the road. We followed our visit with a lovely pub lunch. I have quite a few pictures of the house and garden. I think Axel Munthe actually wrote The Story of San Michelle in the garden of Southside House. It is called Southside House because it is on the south side of Wimbledon Common next to Kings College School Wimbledon.
The house has featured in a couple of Charles Dickens TV dramatisations.
All the best,
Tony
Thanks, Tony, for all the great info about Axel Munthe.
Vic, it doesn’t appear that others looked at the Prince Eric chart site or someone may have commented that he died a more spectacular death than Mrs. Bates – arsenic was put in his pea soup while he was in prison!!!!
Patty, what a great site. Thank you for sharing.
There’s a little ghost town not far from the place where my mother grew up in southern Indiana. All the people who lived there died in the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-19.
How very sad.
My great-grandmother was in labor with her only son. The doctor could not come, nor the local midwife as they were both down with the Spanish flu in Toronto Canada in 1918. My mother, who was 11 at the time and her aunt delivered the still-born infant. My mother recalled that she observed many horse drawn wagons loaded with “wooden boxes”. My mother and the aunt were the only ones in the family not to go down with the flu. No one died other than the newborn brother.
It is remarkable how memories stay within families even a century after the events occurred. These stories are priceless.
i remember people talking about it when i was a child. someone told the story of their family and the neighbor family both having it. the neighbors took some medicine the dr. gave them. they didn’t take the medicine. the neighbors all died. their family didn’t. chance, i realize now. then the woman inferred it was the medicine.
Sad as the flu pandemic was, I was more grieved to see the pandemic of weird antifeminist dialogue in this episode. Without giving spoilers, we saw the deadly flu open one woman’s eyes to the need to be more attentive to her man (punishment received, lesson learned); another woman actually glad to succumb because it would be more convenient for her man that way (!); and a woman volunteering to give up first her body and then her livelihood, based on what would make a man happy at any given moment. I know this program is set in the past, but — really? (And, on another topic, were the expressions “sucking up” and “on the sidelines” really used by aristocrats in 1919?) Sorry to be a spoilsport; I was really bothered by this episode.
Two points: I can remember my own grandparents, who were contemporaries of the era Downton is covering at the moment. They loved each other deeply but my grandmother did womens work and my grandfather did mans work. There were differences and they followed the conventions of their upbringing. If Downton, and I am not following it, has men and women behaving towards each other as they would have done in the early 20th century then surely they are right. That is the way things were.
The other point. “To suck up or suck up to,” is early 19th century. It does derive from a sexual practice but I am sure during the era of flappers , nightclubs and jazz even the aristocracy who took part in all that ,”fun,” voraciously would have used that phrase.
Tony, the youngest daughter of an earl takes up with a chauffeur, which means she would take on his social status. I think this relationship was meant to show how much the classes were shifting and changing due to the war, but I agree with Linda in that this story line took the shift a bit too far. While Lady Sibyl wanted to find meaningful employment, would things change THAT swiftly so soon? I’m curious to know what others think.
Dh Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterleys Lover at about this time. The lady went for the estate worker hook line and sinker and seemed prepared to do anything when love was involved. But, what do I know.
I once went to visit the Freud museum in the house he lived in Highgate after he escaped from Germany. It showed a couple of old films of Freud while he lived in the house. Freud had friends amongst the English aristocracy. One film shows him sitting in the garden being waited on hand and foot by his wife and also a Lady …..? Forgotten her name, a member of the aristocracy as though she was his servant.I must admit the experience of watching Freud behave like that and expect women to behave like that around him was a slight shock.
But I agree, Vic, Downton is obviously on a time schedule and has to fit everything in. At least it appears to be making the right point. The new episodes of Upstairs Downstairs are being shown soon here. They should be on their way to you.
Tony
OED offers:
‘suck up . . 5. intr. to suck up to , to curry favour with; to toady to. (Also without to.) slang (orig. Schoolboy slang).
1860 J. C. Hotten Dict. Slang (ed. 2) , Suck up, ‘to suck up to a person’, to insinuate oneself into his good graces.
. . 1905 H. A. Vachell Hill vi, ‘Afterwards’, John continued, ‘I tried to suck-up. I asked you to come and have some food.’
‘sideline 1.a. A line extending along or towards one side of a thing or space; spec. in Football and other sports: a line marking the edge of the playing area at the side; a touch-line. Also, the area immediately outside this. Also fig. with allusion to the position of a spectator observing but removed from the action of a game, esp. in phr. on or from the sidelines .
. . 1886 J. Dwight Lawn Tennis ii. i. 41 He may play down the side-line or he may lob.
1899 A. H. Quinn Pennsylvania Stories 24 The coaches on the side lines were not so jubilant.’
A few years back, scientists exhumed a body from a Spanish flu sufferer to take samples. I believe this was during the first bird flu outbreak.
They discovered the virus was very much alive in the body and still quite deadly.
You are absolutely correct. Not only did scientists recover the strain of flu nearly a decade ago from a Norwegian flu victim who had been preserved in permafrost, but they were keenly aware that they were resurrecting one of the most violent strains of flu ever. They infected monkeys, who died swift and horrible deaths, and put an end to the experiment earlier than they intended. This article questions the ethics of recovering this virus: http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v98/n1/full/6800911a.html
My grandmother was a child in a farm outside a small village in Italy at the time. I asked her whether she remembered the Spanish Influenza and she didn’t really say anything until someone remarked that they heard Italians wore cloves of garlic around their necks to ward off illness. Then my grandmother said her ma did and Ma was better than any doctor. They all survived well into their 80s and 90s and my grandmother is now 100 so I guess it worked.
Linda: I had numerous problems with this episode and Branson’s treatment of Sybil in general over this whole season has been worrisome. By 1919 there were women with what we would call feminist views.
Quietly and without much fanfare, Parliament passed a bill in 1918 allowing some British women the right to vote once they reached 30. Social upheaval in Great Britain was such a threat to British unity and support of the war, that this was one way to contain it. Lady Sybil would have been too young to vote during this year, but she was indeed a feminist of her era and would have known of the Pankhursts. http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/parliamentary-archives/archives-highlights/archives-the-suffragettes/
My great-aunt (by her next marriage) lost her only baby to the Spanish ‘flu. My grandmother (maternal) lost her parents and had to raise her brother and sister.
It really was a deadly strain, most especially in the disordered period of the aftermath of the Great War.
QNPoohBear and Eileen, such sad stories. That they are still in the common memory is saying something.
Help I’m a teacher.
We get everything going!!!!!!!!
Schools can be breeding grounds for all sorts of nasty bugs and germs and that’s just the teaching staff!! Ha! Ha!
Interesting article Vic. The pandemics are easy to forget in a country with a proud tradition of a national health service.
I was really surprised by those most likely to be attacked by the Spanish flu.
[…] Spanish Influenza in North America, 1918–1919 – Harvard University Open Collection The Flu Pandemic in Downton Abbey – Jane Austen’s World Spanish Flu: The Forgotten Fallen – BBC docu-drama […]
Thank you Linda.
I would not be here, if not for the Spanish flu. My grandfather’s second wife went to visit her parents in St. Louis in November 1918 and died just two weeks later, along with a sister and two brothers.
My grandfather then married my grandmother two years later, in December 1920 and my mother was born in 1922.
Most of both my paternal and maternal family members lived on largely self-sufficient farms in western Kentucky, with not a great deal of outside contact. The three men in the family who had been in the military were wounded soon after the AEF reached France and were home before the pandemic became so aggressive.
There were several families in the area that lost most of the adult members and several of the children of these families were adopted by the Shaker community at South Union, although the community disbanded a few years later. There were several members of that community who visited and treated many people in that area where there were no doctors.
Just done some Googling of pandemics.
It appears that scientists and doctors are far quicker at tracking them and finding antidotes.. It is also thought that subsequent pandemics after 1918 have generally been less disastrous because people build immunity.
However, in this country i remember mad cow disease which seemed to be kept to cattle but we thought at the time it might spread to humans.. It destroyed not only the immune system but the nervous system. The cattle died horribly if not killed so tens of thousands were put down.. Manny farmers lost their livelihoods. Suicides amongst the farming community increased. I remember seeing the smoke from fire pits the farmers used to burn their cattle. Nobody was permitted to walk in the countryside. This was in the 1970’s.
Here is a news article that might be of innterest.
Avian flu (H5N1) 1997 onwards – Avian flu does not normally infect species other than birds or pigs, but the first documented infection of people with the H5N1 virus occurred in Hong Kong in 1997, causing severe respiratory disease in 18 people, 6 of whom died.
The disease emerged again in February 2003, and again in December 2003. So far person-to-person spread, if it has occurred, has done so with difficulty.
But the emergence of H5N1 is thought to have increased the risk of another flu pandemic significantly – it has already demonstrated it can affect people and cause severe disease, it has a documented ability to mutate, and, if more people are affected over time, a “mixing” between human and avian influenza could take place.
Thanks. Tony. What is frightening is that most epidemiologists fully expect that a flu pandemic may break out in the not-too-distant future for which there is no adequate immunization. Sometimes Mother Nature just cannot be conquered. Even scarier is that they expect it to act similarly to the Spanish flu and target mainly children, babies and healthy young adults. A flu that hits that demographic has the potential to wipe out quite a large chunk of an entire generation. a brutal form of natural population control.
Very interesting info! I am hooked on Downton Abbey and this added to my understanding of the last episode. Thanks for posting this!
Blessings,
Kim
Me again. Actually, I wasn’t bothered by the Sybil/Branson storyline all that much. It was (spoilers this time!) both Lavinia and Jane the maid being oh-so-willing to take themselves off the moment they became inconvenient, encapsulated in the Lavinia’s incredible line “Isn’t it better this way?” and Jane’s “I’ve already packed my bags.” I know this is ye olden times and all, but surely there could be less head-smackingly sacrificial ways to resolve the storylines? And with the handiness of Cora’s “awakening” to her bad-wife behavior once she had been punished by near death, and Anna’s “at last I know who I am meant to be” — well, it was all just a bit too much Gingrichian male-fantasy for me.
WARNING: Plot spoilers. I must confess that I checked out emotionally at the end of this series. Edith also seems to have been neutered, standing around with very little to do, her evil little escapades gone and not replaced with anything substantial.
I was most distressed with Isobel’s and Cora’s story lines. Isobel has blinders on when it comes to hurting the Crawley family’s feelings in her zeal to turn the Abbey into a hospital. Elizabeth McGovern’s role as Cora was so one-dimensional. Except for showing some steel when it came to governing her own house as it was turned into a convalescent hospital, Cora melded in with the background, carrying sheets or crossing off items on her list. Her main function was to ignore the earl, who would then be attracted to the new maid.
Poor Ethel got her comeuppance for her ambition and was saddled with a bastard and no job. The maid Jane’s story line came out of left field. She appeared and disappeared swiftly. This story arc managed only to provide the earl with a powerful temptation. Too bad the writers did not take the opportunity of his finding something worthwhile to do with his life instead of dallying with a maid.
I won’t even go into the Anna/Bates story line, which simply started to turn me off. I do hope the writers are given more time for Season 3 to iron out the story line and add more subtleties. This season felt too much like “One Life to Live at the Abbey.”
Thankfully Violet was left inviolate and remained a vivid female character.
I’m curious, Linda; how you might write the story-line if you were Julian Fellows. What would you have Jane do, following the first romantic encounter that she and Robert have?
It seems to me that there are several possible options:
she could have become his mistress and remained in her position in the house,
she could have blackmailed him and departed,
he could have pronounced his love for her and asked Cora for a divorce,
he could have set her up in a small house on the estate, and carried on a ‘double
life’,
they could have carried on an affair until she got pregnant and had his child,
which she then gave up and he found a home for (as in Gosford Park), and then
she stayed on at Downton Abbey.
No doubt, there are many more variations of the above.
None, however, allows for the story to continue with the family intact, and for the theme of the good and noble in the human spirit, overcoming the base and corrupt.
More than anything, I think it is that message that resonates with most of the huge following of Downton Abbey, and why it has become so enormously popular!
Respectfully,
Barbara Kidder
I apologize to Vic for having hijacked her very interesting flu thread, but I want to answer Barbara’s question if I may. Quite simply, what I would have done is a very small change really: after Lord Grantham realizes he has been unwise in getting too close to Jane, during that scene in the library, he says, “I’m very sorry, but you’ll have to leave Downton.” She is hurt but complies; he feels guilty but gets over it. Not that big a change, but I think it reflects his character (recall that he dismissed Bates, with whom he had a much stronger bond), reflects how the aristocracy was accustomed to dealing with servants, and doesn’t require Jane to commit self-sacrifice. As I said earlier, it’s the dialogue, more than the actual plotlines, that pushes me over the edge.
Thank you Barbara!!.. i agree with everything you said.. though in the beginning i did feel off about the whole Jane thing but i think they tied up the knots pretty well this season (because i hated Lavinia!!).. maybe cuz i’m Indian and we LOVE melodrama but i thought this season really gives a beautiful example of changes in social class.. and honestly the Christmas special just wraps up the whole season in a neat little box
Linda, you are right, yours was an option that I overlooked!
Unlike the Spanish flu and who succombs, which cannot be traced back to a person’s behavior, how people deal with matters of the heart has been the subject of discourse and speculation for centuries!
However, I do feel that Julian Fellows, in handling this issue (which is a recurring theme in most of the Downton Abbey relationships), does so with the prevailing attitude of that period, whether of the aristocracy or the working class.
Perhaps, someone will write a sequel, with more of the viewpoint of a D.H. Lawrence or an Evelyn Waugh.