Pandemic Archives

Plague Ahoy! Maritime quarantine in the 18th century

by History Guild | Jun 9, 2022 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 8 minutes
On 23 August 1720 at the Council Chamber in Whitehall, the Privy Council issued an order to the commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs ‘to prevent the landing any goods, passengers, or seamen from on board any ships coming from the Mediterranean’. Diplomats and statesman had been in correspondence for weeks about the worrying state of affairs developing in the south of France. Writing to Secretary of State James Craggs, the diplomat Robert Sutton related ‘the melancholy news of a pestilential distemper being crept into Marseille by the infection of some bales of cotton brought from Sidon (in modern day Lebanon)’. Other letters reported that the seamen on the said voyage had died, with many others taken sick and transported to infirmaries. Four porters, who had opened the goods carried on the ship, died suddenly as the distemper spread from ship to shore killing as many as 24 people in one street. Quarters of the city were barred up and houses and their contents were burned. The plague had hit Marseille.

100 years later, why don’t we commemorate the victims and heroes of ‘Spanish flu’?

by History Guild | Jan 11, 2022 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
ous Rookwood Cemetery, a lichen-spotted headstone captures a family’s double burden of grief.
he grave contains the remains of 19-year-old Harriet Ann Ottaway, who died on 2 July 1919. Its monument also commemorates her brother Henry James Ottaway, who “died of wounds in Belgium, 23rd Sept 1917, aged 21 years”.

Maurice Hilleman, the scientist who saved more lives than any other

by History Guild | Nov 10, 2021 | Social and Cultural History | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
Maurice Hilleman is credited as the man who saved more lives than any other scientist in the 20th century. He developed over 40 vaccines throughout his career, eight of which are still routinely administered today. His intuitiveness prevented the spread of a possible flu pandemic during the 1950s. Despite these lifesaving achievements and the fact that he is widely considered the father of modern vaccines, Maurice Hilleman is not a well-known figure today.