In 1918, as the Great War reached its bloody climax and conclusion, the Great Pandemic was just warming up. Spanish Influenza swept across the world again and again, infecting a third of the world’s population. It has been calculated that Spanish Flu killed more people than both World Wars plus the monstrous ethnic cleansing campaigns during and between the wars.
History’s Worst Pandemic is the story of our continuing fascination with that epic epidemic and the elusive virus that caused it.
Victoria experienced the deadly Spanish Influenza epidemic in three waves over eighteen months. Thousands caught the “plague.” Hundreds died. The local history of that epidemic is presented for the first time here, in microhistory — details of the lives and deaths of ordinary people arranged in meaningful patterns. The local experience is presented in three streams of information: