A CENTURY ago today as the First World War was coming to an end, an even greater killer was stalking the streets of East Lancashire.

Now largely forgotten the Spanish Flu pandemic killed 50million people at a conservative estimate compared to the 16 million deaths caused by the conflict.

Between Monday November 25 and Friday November 29 1918, after the fighting had officially ended, Darwen saw a sudden spike in fatalities as 92 townspeople died from the disease.

The following weekend another 22 were killed by it.

Neighbouring Blackburn saw a similar peak in deaths t a time when the disease seemed to be subsiding elsewhere.

The week ending February 28 1919 saw another spike in fatalities in Blackburn and Darwen with both recording a death rate of 20 per 1,000 inhabitants compared to a national average of 10 per 1,000.

In March 1919, at the peak of the outbreak, the death rate in Blackburn was 65 per 1,000. The town record for victims' funerals in a week was 127.

Across Britain more than 250,000 people died and globally 100million succumbed.

In Blackburn alone 338 people died of influenza in 1918 out of a total of 2,175 deaths. A further 187 died in 1919 out of 2,008 deaths.

Between Blackburn and Darwen approaching 5,000 local soldiers died in the conflict.

Stephen Irwin, Blackburn Museum's education officer, has researched the forgotten pandemic.

He said: "It was a cruel irony that just as the First Word War ended Spanish Flu claimed so many lives, including returning soldiers who had survived and their families.

"Blackburn and Darwen were hit particularly, hard but the surrounding areas of East Lancashire also suffered badly."

Mr Irwin's personal stories unearthed from newspapers and records of the time are harrowing

One on June 30 1918 reveals: "The wife of a local JP was struck down; taken ill on a Friday, by Sunday Mrs Peel was dead."

In Darwen's deadly week in November 2018, they show: "Mr Jepson, the manager of the Darwen Industrial co-op lost both his daughters Bertha (22) and Nora (20) to the flu within minutes of each other. "

Another account says; "In Darwen, Mr Whittle,of 67 Heys Lane, who had returned from the funeral of his wife and child on Friday, was found dead the following day - the whole family having been wiped out."

Equally tragic is the story of Albert Howarth who returned to his home in Coleridge Street, Blackburn from a Prisoner of War camp and died two day later followed shortly by his sister.

Across Blackburn and Darwen schools and theatres closed, public meetings were cancelled while the workhouse banned visitors. Trams were denounced as 'hotbeds of infection' and bodies were left unburied in their homes for days.

Victims suffered a peculiar symptom as their faces turned a blueish-grey colour before they died, first noticed at the giant British army base at Etaples in France in 1916 where it is thought bird flu mutated into a deadly human virus

The pandemic was lasted until May 1919 unusually killing mainly those aged 25 to 40.

As Mr Irwin says: "It must have been truly frightening."