Indian Casualties of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

The Indian population in New Zealand numbered less than 200 out of 1.1 million in 1916. The impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on the population was never-the-less considerable. The paper, using various sources, seeks to identify the victims and their life courses while situating them within the standard historical accounts of the pandemic in New Zealand.

KEYWORDS:

• 1918 influenza
• Indians
• New Zealand

Acknowledgements

We have incurred more than the usual debts in this project and wish to acknowledge the assistance Emeritus Prof Geoffrey Rice, for interpretation of death certificate information and Emeritus Professor Peter Lineham for discussion about burials during the pandemic. Barbara Mulligan of the Friends of Karori Cemetery provided details about burials at Karori cemetery and pointed us to their work done on Indian Hawkers buried at the cemetery. Brenda Grainger (Waitomo District Council) checked Udo Singh’s burial details and provided a photograph of his headstone and Brent Smith the Sexton for Rotorua Crematorium and Cemeteries helped locate the graves in Rotorua. The usual disclaimer applies.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Rice, G. Black November: the 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005.

2. But excluding Europeans born in India. Half Castes on the 1916 census were self-defined, possibly ‘Anglo-Indians’ in today’s sense or children of an Indian parent born in New Zealand. We are reasonably confident that none of the individuals we write about here come from this group.

3. Roche, M. and Venkateswar, S. ‘Neither Natural-born British subjects Nor Aliens: Indians in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force’. In Experience of a Lifetime, People Personalities and Leaders in the First World War, edited by J. Crawford, D. Littlewood, and J. Watson, 138–152. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2016; Roche, M. and Venkateswar, S. ‘Indian migration to New Zealand in the 1920s Deciphering the Immigration Restriction Amendment Act 1920’. In Indians and the Antipodes, Networks, Boundaries and Circulation, edited by S. Bandyopadhyay and J. Buckingham, 129–161. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018.

4. Phillips, H. ‘The Re-appearing shadow of 1918: Trends in the historiography of the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic.’ CBMH/BCMH 21(1) (2006): 121–134.

5. Paterson, K. and Pyle, G. ‘The geography and mortality of the 1918 influenza pandemic.’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 65(1), (1991): 41–21.

6. Paterson, K. and Pyle, G. ‘The geography and mortality of the 1918 influenza pandemic.’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 65(1), (1991): 17

7. Johnson, S. and Mueller, J. ‘Updating the accounts: Global mortality of the 1918–1920 “Spanish” Influenza Pandemic.’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 76(1) (2002): 105–111.

8. Paterson, K. and Pyle, G. ‘The geography and mortality of the 1918 influenza pandemic.’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 65(1), (1991): 41–21.

9. Killingray, D. ‘A new “Imperial Disease”: the influenza pandemic of 1918–9 and its impact on the British Empire.’ Caribbean Quarterly 49(4), (2003): 30–49.

10. Erkoreka, A. ‘The Spanish influenza pandemic in occidental Europe (1918–1920) and Victim Age.’ Influenza and other Respiratory Viruses 4, (2009): 81–89” and Jones, E. ‘Contact across a diseased boundary; Urban spaces and social interaction during Winnipeg’s influenza epidemic, 1918–1919.’ Journal of the Canadian History Association 13(1), (2002): 119–139

11. Jones, E. ‘Contact across a diseased boundary; Urban spaces and social interaction during Winnipeg’s influenza epidemic, 1918–1919.’ Journal of the Canadian History Association 13(1), (2002): 119–139; Wirth, T. ‘Urban neglect; the Environment, Public Health, and Influenza in Philadelphia, 1915–1910’. Pennsylvania History, 73(3), (2006): 316–342; Irwin, J.F. ‘An epidemic without enmity: Explaining the missing ethnic tensions in New Haven’s 1918 influenza epidemic.’ Urban History 36(2), (2008): 5–17; Malelund, S-E. ‘Spanish influenza mortality of ethnic minorities in Norway 1918–1919.’ European Journal of Population 19(1), (2003): 83–102; Herring, D.A. ‘“There Were Young People and Old People and Babies Dying Every Week”: The 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic at Norway House.’ Ethnohistory 41, (1993): 73–10; Brady, B. and Bahr, H. ‘The Influenza epidemic of 1918–1920 among the Navajos: Marginality, Mortality, and the Implications of some Neglected Eyewitness accounts.’ American Indian Quarterly 38(4), (2014): 459–491.

12. Channdra, S., Kuijanin, G., and Wray, J. ‘Mortality from the Influenza pandemic of 1918–1919: The case of India.’ Demography 49(3), (2012): 857–865 and Mills, I.D. ‘The 1918–1919 influenza pandemic – the Indian Experience.’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review 23(1), (1986): 1–40.

13. Mills, I.D. ‘The 1918–1919 influenza pandemic – the Indian Experience.’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review 23(1), (1986): 28.

14. Summers, J., Baker, M., and Wilson, N. ‘New Zealand’s experience of the 198–19 influenza pandemic: A systematic review after 100 years.’ New Zealand Medical Journal 131(1487), (2018): 54–68.

15. Sweeny, K., Colman, A., Fancourt, N., Parnell, M., Stantiall, S., Rice, G., Baker, M., and Wilson, N. ‘Was rurality protective in the 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand?’ New Zealand Medical Journal 120(1256), (2007): 44–49; Summers, J., Wilson, N., Baker, M., and Shanks, G. ‘Mortality risk factors for pandemic infection on New Zealand Troop Ships, 1918.’ Emerging Infectious Diseases 16(12), (2010): 1931–1937.

16. Pool, D.I. ‘Effects of the 1918 pandemic of influenza on the Maori population of New Zealand.’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 47(3), (1973): 273–281 and Rice, G. ‘Christchurch in the 1918 Influenza epidemic’. New Zealand Journal of History 13(2), (1979): 109–134.

17. Bryder, L. ‘“Lessons” of the 1918 influenza epidemic in Auckland.’ New Zealand Journal of History 16, (1982): 97–121; Rice, G. ‘Christchurch in the 1918 Influenza epidemic.’ New Zealand Journal of History 13(2), (1979) 109–134.

18. Rice, G. ‘Crisis in a country town: the 1918 Influenza epidemic in Temuka.’ History News 51, (1985): 7–13; Rice, G. ‘Microgeography of historical influenza mortality: A New Zealand Example from the 1918 Pandemic.’ 1990, One thousand Years of New Zealand Population. Proceedings of the 1989 New Zealand Demographic Society conference 23–24 May 1989, 35–39. Hamilton: University of Waikato, 1990; Rice, G. Black November: the 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005.

19. Wilson, N., Mansoor, O., Baker, M. 2018. ‘The first analytic evidence for socio-economic gradients in 1918 pandemic influenza mortality rates in New Zealand.’ New Zealand Medical Journal 131(1486), (2018): 51.

20. Wilson, N., Mansoor, O., Baker, M. 2018. ‘The first analytic evidence for socio-economic gradients in 1918 pandemic influenza mortality rates in New Zealand.’ New Zealand Medical Journal 131(1486), (2018): 51.

21. Wilson, N., Mansoor, O., Baker, M. 2018. ‘The first analytic evidence for socio-economic gradients in 1918 pandemic influenza mortality rates in New Zealand.’ New Zealand Medical Journal 131(1486), (2018): 50–52.

22. Shlomowitz, R. and Brennan, L. ‘Epidemiology and Indian Labour migration at home and abroad.’ Journal of World History 5(1), (1994): 47–67 and Kaur, A. ‘Indian Labour, Labour Standards and workers health in Burma and Malaya, 1900–1940.’ Modern Asian Studies 40(2), (2006): 425–475.

23. Phillips, H. ‘The Re-appearing shadow of 1918: Trends in the historiography of the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic.’ CBMH/BCMH 21(1), (2006): 132.

24. See Leckie, J. Indian Settlers. The Story of a New Zealand South Asian Community. Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2007.

25. Leckie, J. Invisible New Zealand’s History of excluding Kiwi-Indians. Massey University Press, Auckland, 2021, 116.

26. Nachowitz, T. ‘Identity and invisibility: early Indian presence in Aotearoa New Zealand 1769–1850.’ In Indians and the Antipodes, Networks, Boundaries and Circulation, edited by S. Bandyopadhyay and J. Buckingham, 26–61. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018; Leckie, J. Indian Settlers. The Story of a New Zealand South Asian Community. Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2007.

27. The terminology is not particularly helpful or accurate for our purposes. NZ newspaper references to ‘Indian’ in the 1910s and early 1920s tend to refer to units of the Indian army. The 1916 NZ census uses Indian meaning from the greater Indian subcontinent, but immigration records tend to use as synonyms for Indian, variously spelt, ‘Hindoo’, ‘Hindo’, or less frequently ‘Hindu’. ‘Punjabi Mohamedans’ occasionally appears and there are references to Sikh Indian army units. Punjabi occurs sometimes as a regional appellation. People from Gujarat seem to be subsumed under the various iterations of ‘Hindo’

28. Leckie, J. Indian Settlers. The Story of a New Zealand South Asian Community. Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2007, 44.

29. Rice, G. Black November: the 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005, 205.

30. Ibid., 161.

31. McLeod, H. A list of Punjabi immigrants in New Zealand, 1890–1939. Hamilton: Country Section of the Central Indian Association, 1984.

32. Roche, M. and Venkateswar, S. ‘Neither Natural-born British subjects Nor Aliens: Indians in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force’. In Experience of a Lifetime, People Personalities and Leaders in the First World War, edited by J. Crawford, D. Littlewood, and J. Watson, 138–152. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2016 and Roche, M. and Venkateswar, S. ‘Indian migration to New Zealand in the 1920s Deciphering the Immigration Restriction Amendment Act 1920’. In Indians and the Antipodes, Networks, Boundaries and Circulation, edited by S. Bandyopadhyay and J. Buckingham, 129–161. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018.

33. Leckie, J. Indian Settlers. The Story of a New Zealand South Asian Community. Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2007. Spelling itself – especially on the re-entry permits can be problematic. Sometimes phonetic variations are traceable for example, Odder, Udo, Udham or Udho Singh would all appear to be the same man. On other documentation, family names and forenames have been reversed. Caste names are almost universally not recorded in the official record.

34. The death certificate typically records the number of days the individuals has influenza as well as the number of days they had pneumonia which was often the immediate cause of death.

35. Rice, G. Pers. Comm 2020.

36. Rice, G. Black November: the 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005, 222.

37. Rice, G. Black November: the 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. Christchurch (New Zealand): Canterbury University Press, 2005.

38. Rice, G. ‘Microgeography of historical influenza mortality: A New Zealand Example from the 1918 Pandemic.’ 1990, One thousand Years of New Zealand Population. Proceedings of the 1989 New Zealand Demographic Society conference 23–24 May 1989. Hamilton: University of Waikato, 1990, 38.

39. Rice, G. ‘Microgeography of historical influenza mortality: A New Zealand Example from the 1918 Pandemic.’ 1990, One thousand Years of New Zealand Population. Proceedings of the 1989 New Zealand Demographic Society conference 23–24 May 1989. Hamilton: University of Waikato, 1990, 39.

40. Bryder, L. ‘“Lessons” of the 1918 influenza epidemic in Auckland’. New Zealand Journal of History 16, (1982): 97–121.

41. Wilson, N. et al., ‘The first analytic evidence for socio-economic gradients in 1918 pandemic influenza mortality rates in New Zealand.’ New Zealand Medical Journal 131(1486), (2018): 50–52.

42. The Fretful Porcupine, Observer 23 November 1918, p. 16

43. The Fretful Porcupine, Observer 23 November 1918

44. Leckie, J. Indian Settlers. The Story of a New Zealand South Asian Community. Otago University Press, Dunedin, 2007.

45. In the grip of the epidemic, Auckland Star, 7 November 1918, p. 4

46. Food is a major determining and differentiating factor within Indian society, underpinned by the entanglements of religion and culture, also manifested across Islamic and Jewish contexts. In addition, to the more familiar proscriptions related to pork products in relation to the latter faiths, in India there are varied proscriptions in relation to all meat products, which pose particular difficulties for the large vegetarian sector of the Indian population. In general, Gujaratis are more likely to be vegetarian compared to Punjabis. See also for more details Sen, C.T. (2019). ‘Hinduism and Food’. In Encyclopaedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Edited by D.M. Kaplan, Dordrecht: Springer, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1179-9_286

47. All the influenza victims have a death certificate, and this is an urban area so the likelihood of there being no certificate is further reduced. So, if we have a cemetery record but no death certificate in that name, then the death certificate likely exists under another [more correct?] spelling.

48. Wilson, N., Mansoor, O., Baker, M. ‘The first analytic evidence for socio-economic gradients in 1918 pandemic influenza mortality rates in New Zealand.’ New Zealand Medical Journal 131(1486), (2018): 50–52.

49. Police court. Auckland Star 10 February 1919, p. 7

50. A Hindoo invasion, Evening Post 9 August 1918, p. 8

51. Plague spots in city, New Zealand Times, 26 November 1918, p. 6

52. Robertson, J. n.d. https://1918influenzakarori.weebly.com/hindoo-hawkers.html

53. Ibid.

54. Plague spots in city, New Zealand Times, 26 November 1918, p. 6

55. Leckie, J. Invisible New Zealand’s History of excluding Kiwi-Indians. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2021, 102 observes that not only were Indians lumped together under the label of ‘Hindoos’ but that they were further conflated with ‘Syrians and Lebanese.’

56. The Temporary Hospitals, New Zealand Times, 22 November 1918, p. 5

57. Fakir Rangi, Probate AAOM 6029 W3265 373/25,374 Archives New Zealand, Wellington. The NZ government introduced conscription in late 1916. Prior to this some Indians volunteered and recruited into the NZ forces. After 1917, although Indians might find themselves randomly balloted to be called up, lists of men of age for military service from 20 to 45 years having been compiled by local officials, but the army refrained from placing them in uniform. The official reason was ‘commissariat’ difficulties which was shorthand for various food handling and dietary requirement that the army was not equipped to meet nor wished to provide. The view that WWI was a ‘White Man’s war’ ought not to be entirely ruled out, though the actual evidence is sketchy. See Roche, M. and Venkateswar, S. ‘Neither Natural-born British subjects Nor Aliens: Indians in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force’. In Experience of a Lifetime, People Personalities and Leaders in the First World War, edited by J. Crawford, D. Littlewood, and J. Watson, 138–152. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2016.

58. First Division, Evening Post 16 October 1918 p. 4. Caste is a major organising principle that ascribes status, occupation, basis for marriage and who one shares food with across Indian society. The vast variations and fluidity that extended across the subcontinent was hardened and reified by British colonial efforts to codify and render legible the complex working of caste that they encountered and tried to administer. See also (Reddy 2016) and (Roberts 2018) for overt and subtle differences in the ways caste is approached and presented by two contemporary anthropologists, one Indian and the other not. Reddy, D. 2016. Caste. obo in Anthropology. doi: 10.1093/obo/9780199766567-0149. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766567/obo-9780199766567-0149.xml; Accessed 14 June 2022 abd Roberts, N.P. 2018. ‘Caste, Anthropology of .’ International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences. .https://www.encyclopaedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/caste-anthropology” https://www.encyclopaedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/caste-anthropology. Accessed 10 June 2022.

Against the backdrop of the enduring attributes of caste, it is important to note the significance of names and the communicative work they perform. In the example of Ravji Fakir Koli, the information provided here can be deciphered as: Ravji, the name endowed to him at birth; Fakir, an appellation derived from a syncretic spiritual quest (extending across Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism), undertaken by him personally or as a familial mission, to live humbly as a mendicant as a pathway to spiritual enlightenment (https://www.britannica.com/topic/fakir); and then Koli, the caste signature that situates this individual’s origins in Western India, the region extending across Gujarat and Maharashtra, and occupations as agriculturalists/peasants or fishermen. A name, then, is a compilation of information that situates the individual across multiple registers. Naming practices vary across the subcontinent, in terms of the extent of information that is included and the order in which they are to be assembled.

Another possibility to note in attending to the variability of names documented on record, are the intentions or agency of the individuals concerned as they traversed the British empire, to ‘recast’ themselves as ‘modern’ men of the empire, shedding the often oppressive regimes of caste, within a context where names remain largely illegible and taken at face value.

59. Fakir Rangi, Probate AAOM 6029 W3265 373/25374 Archives New Zealand, Wellington.

60. Kerr, M. n.d. https://1918influenzakarori.weebly.com/hindoo-hawkers.html

61. Local Authority Handbook, 1919. Government Printer, Wellington.

62. Khan Jamal [a.k. Khan Taj Mahomed] Service Record. AABK 18805 W5541 97/ 0064168 Archives New Zealand, Wellington. Some of the men arrived in NZ via Fiji. The NZ shipping records only give the previous point of departure meaning that is difficult to know if some of the arrivals were from Fiji where they were formerly indentured labourers or were travelling to NZ via Fiji. Others have more clearly come from India via ports such as Singapore to Suva and on to Auckland. Certainly, in the 1920s some men arrive at and return to India via Australian ports. For indentured labourers who journeyed to Australia see Allen, M. ‘Circuitous routes: Journeys from India to Australia by way of the Sugar Colonies’. In. Indians and the Antipodes, Networks, Boundaries and Circulation edited by S. Bandyopadhyay and J. Buckingham, 62–93. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018.

63. Khan Jamal [a.k. Khan Taj Mahomed] Service Record. AABK 18805 W5541 97/ 0064168 Archives New Zealand, Wellington.

64. Roche, M. and Venkateswar, S. ‘Neither Natural-born British subjects Nor Aliens: Indians in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force’. In Experience of a Lifetime, People Personalities and Leaders in the First World War, edited by J. Crawford, D. Littlewood, and J. Watson, 138–152. Auckland: Massey University Press, 2016.

65. Who shall serve? Evening Post 16 May 1918 p. 8

66. Rice, G. Black November: the 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press. 2005, 35.

67. Premature Peace Rejoicing, Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, 12 November 1918, p. 2

68. Tuakau, Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, 19 November 1918, p. 3

69. Khan Jamal [a.k. Khan Taj Mahomed] Service Record. AABK 18805 W5541 97/ 0064168 Archives New Zealand, Wellington Khan Jamal Probate AAOM 6029 W3265 425/28622 Archives New Zealand, Wellington.

70. Likewise, the description of Khan as a ‘Hindoo’ is inaccurate. Clearly names did not connote religious beliefs at the time and newspapers used ‘Hindoo’ to represent ethnicity and culture rather than faith.

71. Rice, G. Black November: the 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005, 286.

72. The Public Services, New Zealand Herald, 19 November 1918, p. 6

73. Service Board Appeals, Te Aroha News, 14 June 1918, p. 2

74. Roche, M. and Venkateswar, S. ‘Indian migration to New Zealand in the 1920s Deciphering the Immigration Restriction Amendment Act 1920’. In Indians and the Antipodes, Networks, Boundaries and Circulation, edited by S. Bandyopadhyay and J. Buckingham, 129–161. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018.

75. Sparrow, C. ‘The Growth and Status of the Phormium Tenax industry in New Zealand.’ Economic Geography 41, (1963): 340.

76. Local and General, Te Aroha News, 16 March 1914, p. 2

77. Rice, G. Black November: the 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005, 21.

78. Singh Mohar. Probate AAOM 6029 W3265 383/26146. Archives New Zealand, Wellington.

79. Singh Udo. 1916. Aliens Re-entry Certificate. ACGV 8840 L28/2 63/1916. Archives New Zealand, Wellington.

80. Gupta, T. 2011. https://process.arts.ac.uk/sites/default/files/toolika-gupta-effect-of-british-raj-on-indian-costume.pdf

81. McLeod, H. A list of Punjabi immigrants in New Zealand, 1890–1939. Hamilton [N.Z.]: Country Section of the Central Indian Association, 1984 .

82. Pers. Comm. Grainger, B. 2020.

83. Singh Udo. 1919. Probate AAOM 6029 W3265 391/26813 Archives New Zealand, Wellington.

84. Rice, G. Black November: the 1918 influenza pandemic in New Zealand. Christchurch: Canterbury University Press, 2005, 17.

85. The Epidemic, Auckland Star 12 November 1918, p. 2

86. A Punjabi hawker was cremated by his countrymen in Whanganui in 1902. In subsequent decades there were cemetery cremations in Hamilton, Whanganui, and Waverly: Hindoo’s Peculiar End. Wanganui Chronicle, 27 October 1902, p. 5; Hindu custom followed ceremony on riverbank. New Zealand Herald, 29 February 1936, p. 14, Indian Cremation, New Zealand Herald. 13 June 1933, p. 9, Indian funeral, Waikato Times. 7 September 1933, p. 3; Cremation of Indian. Gisborne Herald, 12 June 1942, p. 4. In 1926 members of the Indian community a formal request to the Thames County council to allow cremations, see ‘A Strange Request.’ Thames Star, 28 May 1926, p. 5.

87. Deed, S. Unearthly Landscapes. Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2015.

88. Paterson, K. and Pyle, G. ‘The geography and mortality of the 1918 influenza pandemic.’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 65(1), (1991): 41–21.

89. Johnson, S. and Mueller, J. ‘Updating the accounts: Global mortality of the 1918–1920 “Spanish” Influenza Pandemic.’ Bulletin of the History of Medicine 76(1) (2002): 105–111.

90. Bandyopadhyay, S. ‘A History of Small Numbers, Indians in New Zealand, c.1890s–1930s.’ New Zealand Journal of History 43, (2009): 150–168.