Using Hansard at Huddersfield for Historical Research: The Spanish Flu of 1918

How does the UK Parliament response to COVID-19 compare to responses by previous parliaments to previous pandemics? For meaningful comparison, we first need to establish what the parliamentary response to previous pandemics was actually like. In this blog, Gavin Hart shows how Hansard at Huddersfield helped him quickly get useful insight into the UK Parliament’s response to the Spanish Flu in 1918. 

The manner in which Westminster has adapted to the COVID-19 outbreak has created interesting questions about what was happening in UK Parliament back in 1918 as the Spanish Flu spread across war-torn Europe. In this blog, I outline how the Hansard at Huddersfield web application can contribute to an exploration of potential parallels. In particular, I show how it can be used to quickly gather historical data that illustrates key trends in parliamentary debate on a given issue, in a defined timeframe. Having participated in beta-testing of the web app several months earlier, I decided to see how it could help me identify the similarities and differences between then and now. What follows is a very brief overview of the research and a mini-discussion of some of the information that I found using the application. For the record, the blog highlights the usefulness of the search-tool far more than it does my credentials as a parliamentary historian.

Using the search tool
The Hansard at Huddersfield web app is super simple to use. You just enter a search term and select the years you want to search, which in my case were 1917 – 1920. Initially, I entered the search term ‘influenza’ into the search engine, as captured in figure 1 below:

Screenshot search box for search word "influenza" for the House of Commons between 1917-1920
Figure 1 – Search box showing search limiters for “influenza”

I then added some extra search terms (you can have up to four): ‘flu’, ‘epidemic’, and ‘pandemic’. This search gave me an interactive graph indicating key points in the timeline when these words had been written in the Hansard record (see figure 2).

Graph influenza, flu, epidemic, pandemic
Figure 2 – Distribution graph comparing hits in the period 1917-1920 for search words “influenza”, “flu”, “epidemic” and “pandemic”

What I found was, that, unsurprisingly, the term influenza was most commonly used in 1918. Between 1918 and 1919 the virus killed around 50 million people, while the British institutions of governance were mostly consumed by the war effort in mainland Europe (see Johnson, 2006; Spinney, 2017). From the graph, you can then select the time point (or period) that you wish to explore further and the site will take you to the relevant quotations in the Hansard record. These are set out in a table and you can select the records you wish to investigate further from a table that looks like this. Such a table allows you to quite easily spot patterns in the discursive context surrounding each hit for the search word (see figure 3).

Table showing examples of texts containing search word
Figure 3 – Sample of texts containing hits of the search word “influenza”

Some findings
For some context, Parliament was still meeting in the chambers. There was the small matter of a world-wide-war, but no help to be had from the world-wide-web (sorry). Let’s spend a second here looking at some of the discussions about how to avoid or treat Spanish Flu that seem almost comical to our Twenty-First Century eyes. For instance, poor quality foods were identified as a potential cause of the flu by Thomas Lough, MP for Islington West, who noted in 1918 that: “There is some medical opinion, I believe, which traces influenza to bad meat and bad cheese” (HC Deb 15th Nov 1918, C2750). Not to worry though, because a possible cure for the virus was raised by Colonel Lowther, Member for Lonsdale, who asked the question “Is it a fact that a sure preventative against influenza is cocoa taken three times a day?” (HC Deb 30th Oct 1918, C1462). These remarks suggest the relatively limited understanding of epidemiology in this period and the general lack of clarity about how flu spread throughout the population.

On the other hand, I also found that some members raised issues that seem more familiar to recent discussions about physical distancing as a means to prevent further spreading of the illness. For instance, Viscount Wolmer put the following question to the Under-Secretary of State for War: “How many cubic feet of air space per patient is considered necessary by the military authorities for patients in military hospitals suffering from influenza and pneumonia?” (HC Deb 13th Nov 1918, C2657). Volmer’s question suggests that there was some recognition of the airborne nature of the flu and of the need to maintain distance to prevent its spread. The particular focus on military authorities in Wolmer’s question serves to suggest the broader preoccupation of these Parliamentary discussions: the war raging across Europe.

The overriding concern through these parliamentary exchanges seems to be the prosecution of total-war. The manner in which the Spanish Flu stood in the shadow of the conflict is evident when we review these discursive contributions. A pattern I observed was that most of the debates in which the flu was discussed were explicitly related to the effects of the virus on military matters. Many of the references to the epidemic came in ministerial question times, focussing upon outbreaks at military camps. One such question came from Arnold Ward, MP for Watford, regarding an upsurge of flu at an RAF base. He asked this scathing question to the Under Secretary for the Ministry of Air, Major John Baird:

Mr. ARNOLD WARD (by Private Notice) asked the Under-Secretary of State to the Air Ministry whether a serious epidemic of influenza and septic pneumonia broke out at the Royal Air Force Camp at Blandford, Dorsetshire, in the week ending 19th October; whether the epidemic increased in virulence during the week ending 26th October; whether many hundreds of cases occurred last week and many deaths every day, mostly of very young lads; whether the medical arrangements have been utterly inadequate to deal with the epidemic…. (The question goes on for some time, see Hansard at Huddersfield for the rest. HC Deb 30th Oct, C1464).

There were other questions of this type that are too numerous to discuss here about the effects of Spanish Flu on supplies of coal to the front and food to troops. Trawling through these data gives a sense of how all of these things were interpreted in terms of the total-war effort. Far from the dominant position that Covid-19 has held in recent political discourse, clearly the Spanish flu was principally understood in terms of its impact upon strategic military calculations.

A further interesting difference I noted between then and now relates to perceptions of who should make the key decisions about locking-down society. Flicking through these records you are hit with a sense of the decentralised nature of the UK state and the multilevel response to Spanish Flu during 1918. In many instances, parliamentary discussion refers to localised decision-making bodies in a way that seems strange given the trend toward governmental centralisation in the UK during recent decades. This is evident in the quotation below in which Herbert Fisher, President of the Board Education, defers downwards on the question of school closures:

The closure of schools, or the exclusion from school of children suffering from infectious diseases, including influenza, is a matter which rests with the local education authorities or the governors of the schools concerned. Appropriate directions, issued by the Board of Education in conjunction with the Local Government Board, for the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases occurring ​among children attending public elementary schools have long been in the hands of all local education authorities and school medical officers. (HC Deb 30th Oct 1918, C1464)

This type of deference to local decision-makers is found in other cases throughout the Hansard records, particularly in reference to municipal health authorities. While this is perhaps not overly surprising to those who are familiar with the evolution of the British state, these patterns across Hansard provide an interesting insight into the norms of a different time in our not too distant history.

Conclusion
The Hansard at Huddersfield application enabled me to very quickly delve into a particular area of parliamentary debate during a tightly defined timeframe. The website brought together a selection of useful data that enabled me to gain some insight into Parliament’s response to the Spanish Flu of 1918. I was able to observe some of the key patterns of discussion in the House of Commons as the epidemic and the war raged across Europe, including some of the stranger discussions on the causes and cures of Spanish Influenza. More importantly, it allowed me to observe the manner in which discussions of the flu were a footnote in broader considerations related to the overarching issue of the War. Finally, searching the data using Hansard at Huddersfield provided a sense of the devolved nature of governance during this period. In the hands of a proper historian, this application could make for an excellent research tool!

References
Hansard at Huddersfield Project (2018). ‘Hansard at Huddersfield’. University of Huddersfield. Available at: https://hansard.hud.ac.uk

(HC Deb 30th Oct 1918, C1462), [online] Available at https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1918-10-30/debates/6c669b1e-587e-4092-b198-50c8ed5f014d/InfluenzaEpidemic (Accessed 26/06/2020)

(HC Deb 30th Oct 1918, C1464), [online] Available at https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1918-10-30/debates/6c669b1e-587e-4092-b198-50c8ed5f014d/InfluenzaEpidemic (Accessed 26/06/2020)

(HC Deb 13th Nov 1918, C2657). [online] Available at https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1918-11-13/debates/d66ea3bb-77db-409d-a02d-397ebb66a430/CommonsChamber (Accessed 26/06/2020)

(HC Deb 15th Nov 1918, C2750), [online] Available at https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1918-11-13/debates/d66ea3bb-77db-409d-a02d-397ebb66a430/CommonsChamber (Accessed 26/06/2020)

Johnson, N., (2006). Britain and the 1918-19 Influenza Pandemic: a Dark Epilogue. Abingdon: Routledge.

Spinney, L., (2017). Pale Rider: The Spanish flu of 1918 and How it Changed the World. New York: Public Affairs.

Gavin Hart is a teaching assistant and early career researcher at the University of Huddersfield. He is affiliated with the Centre for Citizenship, Conflict, Identity and Diversity. He is also the communications officer for the Political Studies Association Specialist Group on Parliaments. His research focusses upon ethnic politics, parliamentary studies, and inter-party positioning strategies. E-mail: g.hart@hud.ac.uk, Twitter: @gavinhart10