Harold A. Munnings, A Hard Lesson Wasted (Munnings, 2024)
On 16 September 1852, a sudden and violent illness overtook Ann Hall, a 60 year old white woman of New Providence in the Bahamas. She died the following morning. This was a moment the islands had feared; cholera had arrived to scythe through the unprepared Bahamians in what would prove to be the second largest natural disaster in their history. In this poignant book, Harold A. Munnings tells a ‘cautionary tale’ of confusion, neglect, bravery, and bungling that resonates still in a place many consider a paradise.
Munnings begins by introducing readers to the people and places that would figure so significantly in the cholera outbreak, revealing the fault lines in Bahamian society as he goes along. The unpreparedness of the Bahamas becomes clear when Munnings surveys the advance of cholera in the Caribbean, noting that by 1851 nearby Jamaica staggered under a severe outbreak. It was, therefore, only a matter of time and misfortune before it arrived on Bahamian shores. Munnings narrates how it did so with a vengeance, spreading illness, death, and terror across the islands. Public health, to the extent they had any, failed Bahamians, as did public prayers; efforts at treatment were, in Munnings’ words, ‘a form of benevolent homicide’. The government also fretted about the economic costs. Within six weeks, hundreds had fallen to the disease, so many that the government stopped publishing the numbers! Fear of famine and the breakdown of law and order soon stalked the Bahamas.
Enter Hector Gavin, an outspoken and belligerent doctor with a plan to fight back. He established a programme of house visits and allocated doctors, admittedly of varying professional standards, across different districts. They tackled the outbreak with mixed results, and the facilities some of them set up were, in Munning’s view, best avoided. But, by December 1852, the outbreak had waned. Munnings surveys the other islands in the colony, discovering much the same story with some wrinkles. He lingers on the case of Eleuthera, which required military intervention to establish control over the terrified inhabitants. Munnings also relates the tragic tale of immigrants on board the Ovando and their miserable fate.
Some normality returned to the Bahamas by January 1853, but cholera lingered. Unfortunately, government penny-pinching returned too. Moreover, Gavin was fired for complaining, prompting a scathing rebuke from him against the governor. Munnings closes with the, perhaps obvious, connection to the recent Covid outbreak and finds the cholera outbreak was over twenty times worse for fatalities. Most of the victims were black and poor, a situation not helped by a prejudiced administration that was more concerned with money than mortality – the number of annual deaths would not be exceeded until 1995! Munnings observes that very little was said about the cholera epidemic after 1853, when yellow fever outbreaks and the fear of smallpox took over, and he argues that this was deliberate: the government saved face, reinforced their racist notions on victimhood, and saved money. He adds that thousands still die from cholera worldwide and that the Bahamas must protect its water supplies to protect its citizens. Munnings adds sixteen appendices full of pertinent information relating to the outbreak.
A Hard Lesson Wasted is a timely book as the modern world reels from Covid and its aftermath, while some administrations appear to indulge in the same neglect that afflicted the cholera-stricken Bahamas. Munnings writes well, offering cogent analysis, and some barbed comments, alongside a fascinating, and sometimes infuriating, narrative. Thus, Munnings toes the line between academic and public history with considerable deftness. That makes his book an entertaining and valuable read with some important lessons as the world tiptoes into the future not knowing what potential disasters might lie in wait.
