Lots of flu epidemics

everyone knows about the 1917 influenza epidemic, but there were other influenza like epidemics before and after that. 

 So anyway, I was listening to this discussion about Jack the Ripper, and one person who was suspected by those who like conspiracy theories is a Royal son (at 22 minutes), and they mention that he was in Scotland during the time and he later died of influenza in the 1890s influenza epidemic.

there was a major flu epidemic in the 1890s? Sort of forgotten today that influenza is a recurring illness.

Hmm. sort of overlooked that lotss of influenza epidemics out there  

As for the 188990 epidemic here on Wikipedia, 

It was the last great pandemic of the 19th century, and is among the deadliest pandemics in history.[2][3] The pandemic killed about 1 million people out of a world population of about 1.5 billion (0.067% of population).[4][5] The most reported effects of the pandemic took place from October 1889 to December 1890, with recurrences in March to June 1891, November 1891 to June 1892, the northern winter of 1893–1894, and early 1895. According to researchers' estimates, excess mortality from Russian influenza in the Russian Empire for the period 1889–1890 could be from 60,000 to 90,000 people, with lethality from the virus, a little more than 0.2%.[6]

more here:

A partial listing of particularly violent outbreaks likely to have been influenza include one in 1510...In 1580, another pandemic started in Asia, then spread to Africa, Europe, and even America,,, 

In 1688, influenza struck England, Ireland, and Virginia; in all these places “the people dyed … as in a plague” (Duffy, 1953). A mutated or new virus continued to plague Europe and America again in 1693 and Massachusetts in 1699...

In London in 1847 and 1848, more people died from influenza than from the terrible cholera epidemic of 1832. In 1889 and 1890, a great and violent worldwide pandemic struck again ...

read the entire article for a background of repeated epidemics of influenza type epidemics.

there is a question in some of the articles I perused wondering if that the reason the 1918 influenza was weaker in China was that they had partial immunity from previous infections.

A similar idea could explain why in 1917 it killed the young adults not just the elderly was because the middle aged and elderly may have had partial immunity due to previous infection in this earlier epidemic.

One sometimes forgets about previous epidemics.

One of my earliest memories was the doctor making a house call for my mother who had Asian flu, which was a major epidemic of 1957

Sine things to remember when you read hysteria about the next swine flu or bird flu epidemics threatening the world.