A 108-year-old woman and survivor of the 1918 Spanish flu is thought to have become the oldest victim of coronavirus in the UK.
Hilda Churchill died in a Salford care home on Saturday, hours after testing positive for Covid-19 and just eight days before her 109th birthday.
She is the oldest victim of the virus to be named in the UK. She was born in 1911, the year before the Titanic sank and three years before the start of the first world war. It was also seven years before the Spanish flu pandemic, which infected 500 million worldwide, and killed her sister.
The coronavirus pandemic had prompted Churchill to reminisce about the Spanish flu, according to her grandson, Anthony Churchill. Speaking to the Manchester Evening News, he said: “As I was telling her about this coronavirus she started talking about the Spanish flu and she remembered how bad that was.”
She and most of her family in their home in Crewe became infected with the Spanish flu, including her father, who collapsed in the street, she recalled. They all survived apart from her 12-month-old baby sister. “Grandma said she remembered a small box being put in a carriage,” her grandson said.
He added: “She was saying how amazing it is that something you can’t see can be so devastating.”
He said his grandmother, a seamstress who moved to Salford during the Great Depression to find work, had generally been in good health until recently. “She never understood how she got so old. I think it was the hard work that kept her going. That and good genes.” She had four children, 11 grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren.
