1918 Influenza Project, Karori Cemetery
- Date: Tuesday, 20 March, 2018
- Time:
12:10 to 1:00pm
- Cost:
Free — booking is not required.
- Location:
Programme Rooms, Te Ahumairangi (ground floor), National Library, corner Molesworth and Aitken Streets, Thorndon
- Contact Details:
Commemorating 1918 influenza victims
Many more people died worldwide from influenza in November and December 1918 than had died during four years of war 1914-1918.
At least 9,000 people died in New Zealand during the epidemic. While there are many hundreds of memorials to those who died in WW1 throughout New Zealand, only 8 memorials can be found to those who died during of influenza.
A local community initiative has been working to commemorate more than 650 people who died of influenza in Wellington and were buried in Karori Cemetery.
Many of those buried have been forgotten or abandoned, and their plots have been untended for 100 years.
This project is cleaning and tidying many of their graves, and researching the life stories of those who were buried and uploading them onto the project website.
There will be commemoration tours of the relevant sites in the Cemetery during November & December 2018.
About the speaker
Barbara Mulligan studied English and History at Victoria University and has recently been writing up family history stories, having taken up genealogy as a hobby some years ago.
These interests are combined in her hobby venture — Karori Cemetery Tour — and she also coordinates the 1918 Influenza Project as well as a War Memorials Project.
