Fighting nuisance on the northern fringe

Abstract

This chapter explores questions of control, and the desirability and feasibility of elimination from the unlikely perspective of Britain’s mosquito experience between the two world wars. The history of mosquitoes in twentieth-century Britain, still largely unwritten, is pursued through a case study of an organization unique within Britain: the British Mosquito Control Institute and its predecessor, the Hayling Mosquito Control—a non-governmental and non-medical initiative first established in 1920 in the English Channel resort of Hayling Island (Hampshire) to combat a particular variety of non-lethal (nuisance or pest) mosquito. The Hayling Mosquito Control’s locally successful campaign (1920–1925) and the successor Institute’s subsequent global remit (1925–1939) are examined within a wider geographical framework. This global context includes recent and sometimes coterminous campaigns to eliminate deadly varieties of mosquito, from the Panama Canal Zone and various bits of Britain’s empire to Italy’s Pontine Marshes, as well as more directly comparable American efforts to control nuisance mosquitoes in coastal New Jersey. The control strategies employed at this particular site in interwar Britain are also situated within larger-scale, more heavily chemicalized interventions beyond Britain during the era of DDT.