Abstract: This article provides the first comprehensive overview of the severity and impact of the Spanish flu in Belgium (1918–1919) and thereby makes a long overdue connection with the extensive international literature on pandemics in general and Spanish flu in particular. Leveraging ego documents (diaries), municipal-level excess mortality, and individual-level cause-of-death registers, we present new evidence on the chronology and spatial distribution of Spanish flu mortality in Belgium in 1918 and 1919 as well as social and demographic characteri...
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