Curson also predicted in 2003 a substantial increase in infectious disease in the next 10 to 15 years. The Spanish flu pandemic in 1919 killed 6387 people in NSW and infected up to 290,000 in Sydney, according to the NSW State Archives. It transformed the city. “So, for eight months, the people of Sydney lived in a nightmare city, with masked faces in quiet streets, the theatres and concert halls empty, the church bells calling more often to burials than to worship,” The Sydney Morning Herald reported in 1954. Earlier epidemics had an even greater impact upon the city, beginning in 1789 when Europeans brought a mix of diseases to Sydney that reduced the Indigenous population by an estimated 65 to 90 per cent over the next 100 years. In 1881, as Sydney was gripped by a smallpox outbreak that killed more than 8000 people, this newspaper warned readers not to be frightened, but to “adopt every reasonable precaution with a view to protecting themselves”.

These measures included observing the utmost cleanliness, proper drainage and “the free use of proper disinfectants will do much towards preventing the spread of the disease”. Schools were also closed, while the Sydney Omnibus Company sought to reassure passengers that vehicles were “thoroughly cleansed and disinfected every day”. The company also issued instructions to drivers to “avoid carrying any persons who bore upon them the slightest indications of disease”, the Herald reported. Cleaning up Erskine Street in The Rocks during the bubonic plague in 1900. Credit:Herald archives By 1882, the smallpox outbreak appeared to be under control, but the racism it triggered towards Chinese people had not dissipated. “England, as everybody knows, is hardly ever free from smallpox, and we cannot increase our intercourse with the mother country without exposing ourselves to the ills from which she suffers,” this newspaper said.

The public’s distrust of the government over quarantining also caught the attention of this newspaper: “This is a lot that nobody could enjoy, and the unpleasantness of it is all the greater from the conviction which quarantined passengers usually have, that the dangers which the authorities apprehend are purely imaginary.” However, the Herald said individuals were not the best judges of whether these measures were necessary: “It is far better that a dozen or two people should be inconvenienced for a few weeks than that the health and life of a whole community should be placed in jeopardy.” An outbreak of bubonic plague in 1900 triggered a forceful reaction from authorities, with police deployed in The Rocks to ensure residents did not leave the area. Residents were given the option of staying in their homes or moving to the quarantine station at North Head. Professional ratcatchers during the bubonic plague in 1900. Credit:State Library of NSW Yet the curtailment of people’s freedom of movement was not as bad as it seemed, The Daily Telegraph reported. “Quarantine, in the absence of any serious outbreak of plague, will partake more of the nature of a pleasant holiday to many whose days, under ordinary circumstances, are laborious enough.”

Health authorities also ordered the cleaning of houses and streets and the eviction of residents from areas deemed slums, says Peter Hobbins, a medical historian at the University of Sydney. “It didn't shut down the whole city, but many of the areas suspected of harbouring plague and particularly rats were shut down and thoroughly cleaned.” Hobbins says residents in suburbs such as The Rocks, Woolloomooloo and Surry Hills were evicted from their homes, which were then lime-washed by teams of workers. “They’d burn all sorts of refuse from the properties and potentially burn people’s household furniture and clothing as well.” Cleansing the streets in 1900. Credit:State Library of NSW Streets were disinfected with carbolic acid, sewers were fumigated, buildings were demolished and residents relocated, Hobbins says. “It was a pretty major attack on the fabric of the city.” Curson and fellow health researcher Kevin McCracken wrote in the Herald last year that if a pandemic attacked Sydney today at the same rate as the Spanish flu, it would equate to about 1.8 million cases and 22,000 deaths. “It is not difficult to imagine the hysteria that would engulf Sydney if a present-day epidemic of that magnitude was to hit,” they said. Empty supermarket shelves were one sign of the panic predicted by the health researchers.

Historian with the City of Sydney Laila Ellmoos doubts whether there would have been panic buying of items such as toilet paper during past pandemics. “It was obviously in production and being used, but not by everyone,” she says. “I have a memory of my mum telling me, for example, that her family used squares of newspaper growing up on the north shore in the 1950s.” Loading One hundred years ago, there were no supermarkets or a ready supply of non-perishable goods, and the people most affected by outbreaks of infectious diseases - working people living around the waterfront - would have been quite poor, Ellmoos says. Curson also says epidemics that do not cause widespread fatalities tend to be forgotten. A dengue epidemic in 1925-26 caused 147 deaths and more than half a million cases in four months, prompting governments to declare a “war against mosquitoes”. “Dengue has been around in Australia since the 1870s and is a classic example of the adage that if it kills us we, do something about it, if it simply produces low-level illness, we live with it or our government and medical authorities do nothing,” he says.