That was the big flu epidemic at the end of the First World War. I thought everyone had heard about the Black Flu. You wouldn’t forget it if you’d lived through it. People collapsed and died like flies, even big strong men in the prime of life. In fact it seemed to affect them worse than the weedy types. It came on a ship called the Niagara. Massey and Ward were coming back from some war conference in London, and they didn’t bother to quarantine the ship. The flu went through the country like wildfire. Thousands died in that flu, especially the Māoris. They seemed to get it worse than the rest of us. But I don’t remember ever seeing an official death toll. Perhaps they were too afraid to publish the figures.