Daniel Johnson was my 3x great grandfather. A domestic gardener by trade, he was born on 7 December 1817.
On 31 May 1840, he married my 3x great grandmother Sarah Birch (born 1818) at St Nicholas Church, Liverpool.
Together they had eight children, including my great great grandfather Joseph.
Tragically they both died in November 1893 within four days of each other at home at 68 Langton Road, Litherland. Both death certificates state bronchitis, but older family members always said they died in a pandemic. This is probably true, in what was at the time the fourth and final wave of Russian Flu, which swept across Europe and the UK between 1889 and 1893.
I write this in the middle of another pandemic, as we await a potential second wave. It brings it home, and acts as a warning to wear masks, wash hands and keep socially distant.
