Chains of Transmission

Kiss of Death is set in Wellington in 1918, during the pandemic known as the “Spanish flu”. The manner in which the flu arrived on our shores and spread so quickly was the cause of much debate at the time.

Blaming the Politicians

There were two waves of the Spanish flu that spread around the globe. The milder form of the virus first emerged in Fort Funston in Kansas - a large training camp with thousands of recruits. These recruits spread the flu to Europe and the milder form had taken hold of the European civilian population by July. Then a more deadly variant took hold, and swept through the soldiers in their crowded camps. It is this deadlier wave which washed up in Auckland in October.

People at the time blamed Prime Minister “Old Bill” Massey for bringing it with him on his return from the Imperial War Conference on 12 October. The RMS Niagara left Vancouver in September, and by the time it was three days out from Auckland it had a dozen cases aboard. The health authorities elected not to quarantine the vessel, believing that it contained only the milder form of the flu which had already reached our shores. They may have been right, but Massey was unfairly blamed for using his influence to dodge quarantine. A new marching song soared in popularity: Old Massey brought the flu, parlez vous.

The Gathering at Parliament

When the artillery fire rang out to announce the end of the Great War, the citizens of Wellington flocked to Parliament to witness the official commemoration ceremony. The city spent the day in wild celebrations culminating in an event at the Basin Reserve cricket ground. The festivities are well recognised by historians as a super-spreader event for the Spanish flu. In Auckland, where the flu had already taken hold, the celebrations were much more muted.

The Real (Probable) Culprit

Contrary to public opinion at the time, it is now believed that the flu arrived in New Zealand on overcrowded troopships returning from Europe. Two troopships arriving in Auckland on 11 and 12 October had 80 serious flu cases aboard. Unlike the Prime Minister’s ship, their arrival was not reported due to wartime censorship. The pandemic quickly took hold in Auckland and spread down the country.

Conditions on these vessels were overcrowded in the extreme, and such vessels had experienced the flu sweeping through them before. An earlier example is the SS Tahiti, pictured opposite. While transporting soldiers to Europe, it picked up an unwanted extra passenger in Sierra Leone, in the form of the flu. By the time it finally reached Plymouth, 66 passengers had died. Six weeks later, only a quarter of the 1100 troops on board were fit for deployment.