The flu pandemic that swept the world in 1918 killed more than 20 million people, and Bermuda was not spared from its grip.

The illness was at its peak on the Island during the the month of October 1918, and by the end of that month the estimated death toll since mid-September had already hit 139.

Sally Swan, 92, from Pembroke, was just six years old at the time of the outbreak but has vivid memories of it.

She lived in Laffan Street at the time, and told the : ?Nearly every family in Bermuda was affected. There were funerals every day, and they kept tolling the bells for funerals at St John?s Church in Pembroke.

?They eventually stopped tolling the bell because it was so dreary and made everyone feel so depressed. My brothers and sisters and I never went out without camphor bags on our chests to try to stop us catching flu.?

According to historian Colin Benbow, in his book ?Commentary?, the Spanish Flu was first diagnosed in Bermuda at Prospect Military Hospital on September 15, 1918 when a soldier reported sick. The following day, a resident of Somerset went down with it and within a week there was a definite outbreak. By the start of October, Pembroke alone was reporting more than 600 cases.

On September 24, a report on the front page of speculated: ?Just how the epidemic got here or what started it at this time has not been discovered. One theory is that the germs reached here in copies of the London newspapers.?

In a bid to stop the spread of the killer disease, the schools were shut for a fortnight from September 24 and as the epidemic worsened patients were advised not to go to the doctor?s office but to send for him to visit them at home. Soup kitchens were set up across the Island to feed afflicted families. On one day in October, according to an article in , the North Shore Relief Station served 1,244 people.

Three treatment centres were also put in place at the Bermuda Nursing Home, the Mission Room on North Shore and Mr. Aubrey Robinson?s store in the Spanish Point district.

In early October the paper said: ?A virulent influenza is affecting our people from end to end of the islands, hampering industry and causing many deaths. How did the sickness come here? What?s the matter with our quarantine system? There is room for improvement when a little island in mid-ocean, with very limited passenger traffic and two ports of entry can be invaded to such an extent by a well advertised disease for which all sanitary authorities have been watching.?

On October 8, the House of Assembly voted ?1,000 in public aid for the sick. Two days later, an advertisement from the Bermuda Telephone Company in said: ?Owing to the shortage of Operators due to the present epidemic, subscribers and others are requested to refrain from asking for ?information? and also to dispense with any unnecessary use of the telephone.? On the same page, it was announced that the 9 p.m. steamer trips from Hamilton, Somerset and Ireland Island on Saturdays and Sundays would also be cancelled because of the outbreak. By the end of October, figures furnished by the Venerable Archdeacon Davidson showed that had been an average 13 burials per week during that month in the Pembroke churchyard, compared with the usual rate of three per week.

By November, the epidemic was abating, but not without reporting one final sad story about an unfortunate sufferer during this period in Bermuda?s history. Headlined: ?How one poor horse suffered from the flu? the November 2 article told the story of ?a prominent local truckman who stood ruefully looking at his woe-begone horse yesterday, after an absence of some weeks from his stand on Front Street.?

The man told the reporter he had entrusted the care of his beloved horse, Tommy, to another man while he had been confined to his bed with the flu.

?I had got worried about Tommy and then found him shut up in the stable without a thing to feed on. The poor fellow had eaten all his bedding and not a fresh straw had been put in for him to lie on,? he moaned. ?I?m bound to get well soon if it?s only to go after that man who promised to look after Tommy. If I had a gun I?d shoot him now!?