Part two of a colourful and vivid account, interspersed with personal anecdotes, of the last recorded epidemic to hit the island before COVID-19. Read part one.

Supply of rubber and leather boots crops up more than once in the ‘plague’ files. A public call for tenders was issued for the supply of 100 pairs in different sizes and then for 230 pairs of Wellingtons. The first were available for £96. 5s. 0d., the second for £290. 0s. 0d. These prices reflect faithfully the cost of living prevalent in those times.

Professor Pietru Pawl Debono, surgeon at St Luke’s Hospital, mentioned in the plague files. Photo courtesy of the National Archives

In Il-Berqa, the Maltese language pro-imperialist newspaper, ‘A. Z.’ published a long and rambling diatribe on October 3, ‘Half-Measures against the Plague’ about the banning of a fair to be held in Żurrieq as a precaution to counter the spreading of the plague. So why were political meetings allowed? (Żurrieq, especially the Bubaqra area, had been badly affected by the pestilence.)

Again, the organisers of the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Valletta had contracted the Queen Victoria Band of Żurrieq to play festive music and marches in the capital but the order had then been countermanded. A. Z. asked what sense it made to ban the Żurrieq musicians from playing in Valletta but then allow people from Żurrieq to participate freely in the Carmelite feast. Infected fleas were carried by people, not by brass trombones. The file noted that the Żurrieq fair had been banned because of the presence of rabbits and rodents.

Sir David Campbell, Lieutenant Governor of Malta in 1945. He was in charge of the civil government of the island. Photo courtesy of the National Archives

In fact, the officially recognised profession of rat-catcher had, by now, become a focus of admiration and gratitude. Special rates of pay were assigned and several files deal with particular claims. Other workmen too are often mentioned in dispatches: public cleaners, those who manned the drainage services, scavengers or żibel-boys cartmen, sewer men, etc.

The real heroes remained the medics and the paramedics, the frontliners who daily challenged death one on one. Dr Manché proposed special allowances and bonuses in favour of the paramedics, which the authorities approved. Typical of the times, these special payments only benefitted male nurses. Female ones could be dismissed as expendable.

John Debono worked as coffin maker to the government and,  obviously, his workload increased exponentially during the pestilence, though paupers were not buried in coffins. For a zinc-lined coffin that took him 10 hours’ work or more, he claimed £1. 0s. 0d. The authorities deemed that reasonable. Private undertakers charged four or five pounds per coffin.

Dr Alexander Carmel Briffa, later CGMO, very active during the 1945 plague epidemic. Photo courtesy of the National Archives

The government paid compensation for damages actually suffered in the fight against contagion. The files contain several instances of the bona fide claims and of the more profiteering ones. Ġużeppi Mifsud, from Qala claimed £3 for having to destroy the bedding on which his son, Angelo, died of the plague. This payment was approved. A wholly different response awaited a claim by Nazju Camilleri for a quantity of manure burnt by the authorities on his premises in Bubaqra. He claimed payment for 450 vjeggi of manure.

What was hailed as the miracle pesticide morphed into an environmental nightmare

The health officials, C. Bugeja and H. Miller, testified this to be a “gross exaggeration” – the material burnt did not exceed six cartloads or 72 bags. Camilleri was obviously trying his luck at making a fast buck; the health department rejected his claim outright, with some indignation thrown in for good measure.

St Luke’s used as an isolation hospital during the 1945 plague epidemic. Photo: Alfred Galea Zammit

Not daunted, Camilleri hired the services of a bellicose solicitor, is-sur Bert Mizzi, who threatened to sue the department. His threat did not cow them. The law expressly forbade the storing of manure on premises where people lived, so the department had only prevented an illegality from persisting.

A similar claim made shortly later by a J. Camilleri, also from Bubaqra, for compensation for manure destroyed, met with the same rebuff. All the files confirm how careful or, better still, stingy the authorities then were with taxpayers’ money.

The main file, deformed and bulging, contains enough material for a handsome book on the Malta plague 1945. It bundles together 314 enclosures. The medical experts were pinning their hopes on many preventive measures, but also on DDT, the wonder insecticide with miraculous properties then used extensively, and most successfully to combat typhus, malaria and other insect-carried human diseases. Stocks were low in Malta – where could large consignments be had from? The military authorities replied that large quantities were available from their units in Italy and Egypt. What a relief!

Article in The Torch, September 7, 1945, unjustly critical of the authorities. Photo courtesy of the National Archives

The elation with DDT proved short-lived. Scientific reports started piling on the deadly side effects of the chemical − many pest insects soon built resistance to it and, worse still, it had irreversible toxicological and environmental effects. It is virtually indestructible in the environment, travels far in the atmosphere and accumulates in fatty tissues of humans. In other words, what was hailed as the miracle pesticide morphed into an environmental nightmare.

Rachel Carson’s explosive 1962 bestseller Silent Spring popularised the lethal effects on nature that DDT was having globally and contributed to its almost worldwide ban in the 1950s and 1960s.

The file also has references to the use of Keating’s Powder, a household name in the war years and long before. It was believed to be very effective against crawling insects, like ants, cockroaches, lice, bugs, beetles and fleas.

We sprinkled it near doors and windows and on our clothes too, in the expectation it would scare fleas away.

The main file houses several official reports on the plague’s progress, the measures adopted to prevent it and combat it – they all leave the impression of high commitment and professionalism.

I would single out a preliminary report by Dr Briffa, in early July, when only 11 cases of plague had yet been confirmed. Each is described in great detail – how the diagnosis was arrived at, the measures taken in the wake of that diagnosis, the progress of the disease in the patient and on the contacts and physical surroundings.

Extensive spraying with the insecticide DDT, shortly later banned worldwide.

The very first mortality occurred in a young lad aged 15, Francis Camilleri, ‘żibel boy’ from Bubaqra. He was admitted in the evening of June 23 with a temperature of 106F and a pulse rate of 126. He died early the following morning.

Thankfully, many other patients recovered, including the first patient isolated in St Luke’s, the 11-year old Z.R. from Misraħ il-Barrieri, Ħamrun and the seven-year-old Charles Gatt from Birkirkara, seen by professor Pietru Pawl Debono, the well-known surgeon.

The last case was diagnosed on my 10th birthday, 1946. The official report, published in 1948, certified 80 cases of plague contagion throughout the epidemic, of which just over one-quarter proved fatal.

Concluded. Part one was published on July 26

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Anthony Mifsud and Leonard Callus whose help proved invaluable.