This article relates to the Installation Meeting of The Vale of White Horse Lodge 102 years ago - the issues facing them sound all too familiar.

The epidemic was the Spanish Flu -

The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. Lasting from February 1918 to April 1920, it infected 500 million people – about a third of the world's population at the time – in four successive waves killing approximately 50 million worldwide.

Thanks to W. Bro. Maw for sending this in.