The Beast from the East (Who Do You Think You Are? issue 157)

As a huge fan of Who Do You Think You Are?, I couldn’t have been more excited to appear in the companion magazine, especially representing the North of England.

Creeping into Britain from ports on the northeast coast and exploding through the industrial towns of Yorkshire before spreading to the rest of the country, the Russian Flu pandemic of 1889 left an potent impression on society at the time. A young Winston Churchill wrote a poem about it, and the catastrophic contagion did away with the third-in-line to the British throne, Prince Albert Victor, but as soon as it departed, it was all but forgotten.

In this article I tried to balance out granular details that might help readers shade in the blank spots in their own research, with sweeping look at medical care of the time, and crucially - the lessons which if heeded could have spared so many from Spanish flu decades later.

The Beast from the East appeared in Who Do You Think You Are? issue 157. Find out more at whodoyouthinkyouaremagazine.com.