ALL in one day and all from Darlington: Doris Barker, 17, “beloved and youngest daughter”; Gwendoline Carter, a “dear daughter”, and Gladys Cowen, a “dearly beloved daughter”.

Then, William Lee, 23, a “dearly-beloved son” from Coundon, and Ethel Whittington, 25, a “beloved daughter” from Staindrop. Alphabetically, the last and in terms of years the least, Margaret Wood. She was a “dearly beloved daughter” from Willington, only 14.

Normally, The Northern Echo’s deaths column only contained five names. That day – Monday, December 2, 1918 – it contained 25 as the last great H1N1 flu pandemic swept our corner of the world.

It had first visited in July when “thousands of colliers were prostrated with the disease and the output of coal seriously affected”.

But it returned, frighteningly fatal, towards the end of October. A new weekly column counted the nation’s death toll – it started at 1,895 in a week, but quickly rose to 7,560.

It was followed by a new daily column. The patients in Darlington isolation hospital were given numbers and relatives, like bingoplayers, checked the Echo from afar to see how they were faring.

That first day, patient 159 was described as “dangerously ill”. As 159 didn’t feature in subsequent days under the headings “condition much the same” or “making satisfactory progress”, the patient must have quickly succumbed. As did PC Ernest Rennison, of Barnard Castle. He was laid low on Friday, October 18; stricken with pneumonia on the Monday, dead by the Thursday. Only 30, he left a widow and three children.

As October drew to a close, 40 people a week were dying in Middlesbrough and 80 in nine days in York. There was an “extraordinary flu ravage at Darlington” where 2,000 schoolchildren were infected within days.

At first, the paper was full of quack adverts.

Dr Williams’ “pink pills for pale people”

were said to be efficacious. You could “fortify yourself against the flu with Licoricine – it acts like magic”, or by sucking five Formamint tablets a day. Oxo claimed to “maintain vitality” to fight the flu; a Bishop Auckland tobacconist said “Dr JC Murray’s world-renowned Ozonized Snuff” was not to be sniffed at.

But just as the war was declared over and the flu death toll reached its peak, the quirky quackery faded from the pages.

In one week, 100 died in Newcastle, 97 in Middlesbrough, 100 in the Spennymoor district, 13 near Aysgarth and 145 in Sunderland (plus another 36 to pneumonia and 24 to bronchitis).

In Chester-le-Street, you had to wait eight days for a coffin. In Malton, the gaslights were off for two days as all the gasworkers were ill. In Shildon, cemetery staff were unable to cope. In Darlington, the ashpits went unemptied as council staff died.

Funerals were hourly occurrences, perhaps the most noisy coming in Willington for Thomas Swingler. He was chief cornet player in the Silver Prize Band, plus tutor to Oakenshaw Colliery Band and Hunwick Band.

All three marched at the head of the long procession, playing competing sorrowful tunes.

But after eight weeks, the storm blew itself out. Just in time for Christmas, the Echo’s death column returned to its normal length with its normal, elderly inhabitants, Oxo went back to making the meat ration go further, and the quacks went back to advertising Danderine for “soft, lustrous, fluffy, wavy hair” and the answer to dandruff, which caused baldness.

Despite war and then flu, life endured.