'Oh my God, what's happening to the neighbours?': Sudden death in Bow Bridge

When I expanded my search for information about my paternal great-grandparents Patrick Geraghty and Margaret Toole Geraghty, and their children, including my grandfather John Geraghty, not only did I look for information about them, but I also looked at what was going on in the neighbourhood in which they lived.  'Contextualizing our ancestors', as I like to call it, within the place and time in which they lived, may give us a more well rounded idea of what life was like for them.

In the course of searching through hundreds of pages of newspaper articles, obituaries and advertisements, I came across an In Memoriam notice which sparked my curiosity.  In truth, it was more than a spark, but rather like something akin to a fire.  The notice memorializes Elizabeth Cassidy and her son Thomas. Their deaths occurred within two days of one another, in the home of the Cassidy family, a family who were near neighbours of my paternal great-grandparents.

With a little more searching I found an obituary for one of the victims to whom the memorial notice referred. Oddly enough, the obituary is only for Thomas and mentions his mother as "the late Elizabeth Cassidy".  I found it curious that there was no obituary notice published for Elizabeth, so I continued to search.

My great-grandfather Patrick Geraghty was a successful car proprietor by 1919. His family and his business were both housed in the building at #6.5 Bow Bridge, living in close proximity to their neighbours.  Right next door, at #7, lived the family of Mr. John Cassidy, a dairyman.  Just like Patrick Geraghty, John Cassidy had his family and his business in the same building.

The sudden deaths at home of two of the Geraghty family's close neighbours had my mind racing about what had happened on Bow Bridge on those two days.  Was it murder that felled Elizabeth and her son Thomas Cassidy, or did they perish because of a house fire? Was there some sort of terrible accident?  The answer to their end was much more shocking than any of these.  Elizabeth and Thomas succumbed to the 20th century plague which was the Influenza Pandemic.

After finding these newspaper notices, along with a number of memorials published in the years following their deaths, I retrieved the civil registration death records of Elizabeth and Thomas Cassidy from the General Register Office reading room in Dublin.  The records make clear the facts of the matter.

6 March 1919, Elizabeth Cassidy, aged 54 years: cause of death: Myxoedema Influenza Certified.

8 March 1919, Thomas Cassidy, aged 29 years: cause of death: Influenza Septic Pneumonia Certified.

In the year after the Great War of 1914-1918, with the onset of the Influenza Pandemic, relief over the end of the war changed once again to despair for many families, not only across Europe, but around the world.  Commonly called the Spanish Flu, because it was thought to have had its greatest impact in Spain, it spread across the globe with alarming speed, killing as many as 50 million people worldwide.  Although many died in Spain as a result of this flu, the moniker 'Spanish Flu' was probably more a function of the fact that there was no newspaper censorship in Spain in the period, so reportage about the numbers of those who succumbed to influenza was quick and thorough.  In other words, there was no fudging of the numbers as there may have been in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Ireland had already lost almost half of its population to famine deaths and emigration, during the period of the Great Famine.  The prospect of a flu pandemic must have been terrifying, although with little coverage of it in the Irish news of the day, the average citizen was probably not fully aware of the true extent of the pandemic until after all was 'said and done'. According to annual reports of the Registrar General for Ireland, the official death toll from influenza during this pandemic was 20,057; however, it is likely to have been closer to just over 23,000.  With the population of Ireland around 4.3 million in 1918, this means that at least one in every 200 persons was felled by influenza, during a period of just over one year.

This type of influenza was remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which was its impact on young, otherwise healthy, individuals.  Without effective treatment, it was a difficult disease to manage, and unlike previous flu outbreaks, this one brought with it sudden savage changes.  An individual might seem as though he or she was recovering, only to suddenly die.  The manner of death was also quite horrific.  While flu might at first seem like a cold, with sneezing and coughing, the onset of Spanish Flu was marked by sudden weakness and pain.  Most deaths would occur on or about the tenth day of sickness, with pneumonia as the principal complication, and often the attributed cause of death.

In 1919, the progression of this influenza was described in graphic detail in a medical journal article.  Persons suffering 'typical' cases of flu during the pandemic would cough up quantities of blood-stained expectorant or sometimes thick dark blood alone.  With the progression of the disease, the lungs of patients would fill with blood, their faces and fingers would become bloated and blue, and their tongues would become dry and brown.  In fatal cases, active delirium would come on, with myxoedemic madness sometimes resulting. As a patient's body temperature rapidly fell the whole surface of his/her body would turn blue.  Patients literally drowned on their own blood.  It must have been an awful sight to behold.

Of course, one can only imagine what the reaction of the Geraghty family might have been at the deaths of their neighbours, but it is easy to think the sudden nature and manner of these deaths might have been met with shock, and some level of fear.  I find myself wondering to what extent these deaths affected the Geraghty family.  Although all of the Geraghty children survived to adulthood, was anyone in the family ill with the flu at this time?  Did the Geraghty family assist their near neighbours?  Did Mr. Geraghty's car proprietorship provide the funeral cortege which took Elizabeth and Thomas Cassidy 'by road' to the New Cemetery, Naas, County Kildare for interment?

As an addendum to this story, it is interesting to note oddities in the memorial notices published in the years following the deaths of Elizabeth and Thomas.  While the year of death is correct in the 1920 first anniversary memorial, in a 1922 notice only Elizabeth's death is memorialized, and her year of death is incorrectly noted as 1920 instead of 1919.  In 1923, there were two memorials placed in The Freeman's Journal, one in March which gives the correct dates of the deaths as 6 March 1919 and 8 March 1919 respectively, and one in May which again acknowledges only Elizabeth's death and gives her date of death as 6 May 1920.  In a 1924 notice in The Irish Independent newspaper, the year of death given for both Elizabeth and Thomas is 1918.  Perhaps whoever placed those inaccurate notices wanted to forever erase any connection between the flu pandemic and the deaths of Elizabeth and Thomas Cassidy.

References:

Civil registration records:
Cassidy, Elizabeth. Jan-Mar 1919, volume 2, page 763. GRO, Irish Life Centre, Dublin, Ireland.
Cassidy, Thomas. Jan-Mar 1919, volume 2, page763. GRO, Irish Life Centre, Dublin, Ireland.

1918 Annual Report of the Registrar General For Ireland, released in 1919.
Annual report of the Local Government Board for Ireland for year ended 31 March 1919, 1920.
Canadian Medical Association Journal. 1919 May, Volume 9, number 5, pp. 421–426.
The Freeman's Journal Newspaper via the Irish Newspaper Archives, March 1919-1924.
Irish Independent Newspaper via the Irish Newspaper Archives, March 1919-1924.
Taubenberger Jeffrey K., Morens, D.M. 1918 influenza: The Mother of all Pandemics. CDC Emerg. Infect. Dis. [serial on the Internet]. January, 2006. http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/1/05-0979_article.htm
Thompson, William J. ‘Mortality from influenza in Ireland’ Dublin Journal of Medical Sciences 4th Series #1, 1920, pp. 174
-77.

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