In 1918 influenza killed men and women in their productive years, aged 20-50. In many cases their deaths left orphans to be cared for by wider family, or the state. William Weaver and his second wife Mabel, both aged 31, died 4 days apart in November 1918, leaving William’s son Victor an orphan. Victor’s mother, also called Mabel, had died when he was only three weeks old in 1914.
