Your Great-Grandparents Lived Through Quarantine, and They Were Exactly As Done With It As You Are
“We were quarantined on account of the Spanish Influenza and everyone is mad.” — Maurice, Telling It Like It Is Since 1918
From the 1918 Spanish flu to the polio pandemic, from Industrial London cholera outbreaks to Hong Kong’s isolation due to SARS — quarantine anxiety is not new. Since time immemorial, we’ve been faced with disease, and since time immemorial, we’ve been writing letters anyway.
Quarantine, self-isolation, and “lockdown” will drive you mad. Surviving this phenomenon is complicated, but it’s weirdly comforting to be reminded that your great-great-grandparents went through this too, hated it, and watched the world be ravaged by pandemics, all the while feeling a lot like you feel right now. Here’s what they went through and how they coped with it, per quarantine letters of archival history I spent an existentially fulfilling amount of time to find, winnow down, and deliver to you as premium content (as ever, kid).
These excerpts from letters written during the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic echo emotions we’ve all experienced during COVID-19 today — loneliness, panic, boredom, irritation, detached fascination, dark humor, and fear. While…
