A History of the Great Influenza Pandemics: Death, Panic and Hysteria, 1830-1920

Influenza was the great killer of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The so called 'Russian flu' killed about 1 million people across Europe in 1889 – including the second-in-line to the British throne, the Duke of Clarence. The Spanish flu of 1918, meanwhile, would kill 50 million people – nearly 3% of the world's population. Here, Mark Honigsbaum outlines the history of influenza in the period, and describes how the fear of disease permeated Victorian culture.


Read more