Mono Monday: Ancestors

Backblip for Monday 22nd February 2016

This is a photo which Mum has on display by her desk.  On the left is her own mother - my Nanna, Alice Jane, after whom I was named.  I have only hazy memories of Nanna, as she died in 1964 not long before my fifth birthday.  Nanna was born in 1890.  Her mother was an East Ender and her father was Scottish.  She's about 22 or 23 in this photo, taken a year or two before the outbreak of the Great War, and beside her is her sister Florence who was a few years younger than Nanna.  Tragically Florence died in the post-war 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, along with many of her young friends.  She was just 23 and, like most of its victims, was healthy, athletic and strong.  Recent research has concluded that the virus killed through an overreaction of the body's immune system, which meant that the stronger reactions of fit young adults ravaged their bodies much more than the weaker immune systems of children and older people.  Many of the Spanish flu's victims were, of course, young soldiers who had made it through the years of conflict.  A final sting in the tail after the carnage of "the war to end all wars".