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The Brontes All Died Young From Drinking Graveyard Water & Human Waste

catseye said:
I have seen one of the sisters' dresses on display in the Parsonage, and iirc, it's absolutely tiny.
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The bloke who made Emily's coffin said it was the narrowest one he ever made for an adult... She'd have probably been ill with TB for several years or more, although wouldn't have realised it til only months before she died. Onset of the obvious symptoms really only a very short time before it carried her off.

I've seen and handled some of the clothing. Small-ish but not beyond the bounds of what was probably normal-ish. Although I don't subscribe to that idea that "people in the past were generally smaller", I also don't think the Brontes were exceptionally tiny. (Before ravaged by TB). Charlotte described herself as "dumpy" but her clothes aren't the clothes of a dumpy person.

Added complication. - Emily may, just may, have been anorexic. There are a few telltale signs. This will have weakened her, as well as the TB.
 
escargot said:
I do love all this sort of thing. Water tables and hygiene and epidemics. Wonderful stuff. :cool:

Water provision and sewage removal have always been problematic. You need your clean water and your sewage to be kept well apart.
These days we don't realise what a tall order all this is when we're grumbling about the water bill.
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I've always wondered about the system they have in Paris where the potable water (along with other utilities) are run along the roof and walls of the sewers. A great idea - they must have far less roadworks than we do- but the potential for cross contamination is there I would think.
However, it seems to have worked well for a couple of hundred years, so maybe it's not an issue.
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
The bloke who made Emily's coffin said it was the narrowest one he ever made for an adult... She'd have probably been ill with TB for several years or more, although wouldn't have realised it til only months before she died. Onset of the obvious symptoms really only a very short time before it carried her off.

I've seen and handled some of the clothing. Small-ish but not beyond the bounds of what was probably normal-ish. Although I don't subscribe to that idea that "people in the past were generally smaller", I also don't think the Brontes were exceptionally tiny. (Before ravaged by TB). Charlotte described herself as "dumpy" but her clothes aren't the clothes of a dumpy person.

Added complication. - Emily may, just may, have been anorexic. There are a few telltale signs. This will have weakened her, as well as the TB.
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I suspect that people in the past may have been 'smaller' just because of the lack of availability of highly nourishing food and the seasonality. So, for 'smaller' read 'not as likely to be overweight or obese'.
 
maximus otter said:
l watched several minutes of this film of London streets within living memory.

Obesity? Zero.

maximus otter
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I read somewhere the Victorian artist Etty - who was infamous for painting nudes at any excuse - preferred farm labourers for models as they had the perfect musculature and presumably not an ounce of body fat. Read somewhere else, the average calorie expenditure of a 19thC farm labourer was probably something like 5,000 cals or more per day... They were probably using most of that, though, hence the perfect bodies.

I guess we're now the perfect storm of living sedentary lives plus eating unlimited amounts of crap food.
 
Ghost In The Machine said:
I read somewhere the Victorian artist Etty - who was infamous for painting nudes at any excuse - preferred farm labourers for models as they had the perfect musculature and presumably not an ounce of body fat. Read somewhere else, the average calorie expenditure of a 19thC farm labourer was probably something like 5,000 cals or more per day... They were probably using most of that, though, hence the perfect bodies.

I guess we're now the perfect storm of living sedentary lives plus eating unlimited amounts of crap food.
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We don't all live sedentary lives though. But I think the availability of 'easy' food might have something to do with it. And you'd be astonished at how few people understand how many calories are in what foods.
 
Here's a 1968 painting by one Herbert Whone (1925-2011) of Haworth High Street.

Just so we know what we're on about. :)
 

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  • Herbert Whone (1925-2011) - Haworth High Street, Yorkshire - 1968 .jpeg
    Herbert Whone (1925-2011) - Haworth High Street, Yorkshire - 1968 .jpeg
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Years ago I used to visit one of my wife's many cousins, who was then living in Yorkshire, and while there I picked up a book Ghosts and Gravestones of Haworth. I've never been there, and I can't remember if the book is any good or not, it's been too long since I read it.
 
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escargot said:
This looks like the view on Google Earth. It's called Main Street, not High Street.

Google Earth view of Haworth Main Street
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The (only) road running through my village is called Main Street. There is also a 'lane' which is a dead end which comes off it. I wonder if it's a Yorkshire thing, because in my address we usually omit the 'Main Street' part because there isn't another street. So all the houses are either 'Catseye cottage, Tiny Village, Kirkbymoorside, York' or NotCatseyeCottage, Deadend Lane, Tiny Village'

Because there is no road name. online address forms hate it, so we only use Main Street as a sort of cosmetic appendage. To be honest, you could just put my name and postcode and it would get here, there's only four cottages in the postcode and everyone knows who lives in them.

Maybe the Brontes were the same.
 
The father moved to Haworth in 1820 and died there, aged 84, in 1861. He drank the water there for 41 years, yet made what even today would be regarded as old bones.

The two youngest sisters - Maria and Elizabeth - apparently both contracted TB at school and came home to die.

Elizabeth Branwell drank the water for 21 years and died of "bowel obstruction."

Patrick drank & drugged himself to death.

UK life expectancy in 1820 was 40.53 years. The famous 3 Brontë girls died at 39, 30 and 29 respectively. Younger than average, but a long way from being outliers.

maximus otter
 
I expect that 'Bronte, Haworth' would find them. Unless there had been an outbreak of Brontes in Haworth, it would probably get to the Parsonage without too much trouble.
 
catseye said:
I expect that 'Bronte, Haworth' would find them. Unless there had been an outbreak of Brontes in Haworth, it would probably get to the Parsonage without too much trouble.
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As I never tire of mentioning, when Escet was at Oxford I'd send him mail addressed to

'ESCET'
TRINITY
OXFORD

This didn't detain either the Royal Mail or the gate staff for a minute so I upped my game to

'ESC'
TRIN
OX

which also worked.

When I lived in Hungary this became

'ESC'
TRIN
OX
UK

to puzzled frowns from Hungarian Post Office workers.
Customers still had to hand over mail for inspection at the counter, no sneakily posting it yourself, and pay the clerk.
It probably looked suspicious but was accepted and processed. Escet received it in good time.
 
escargot said:
As I never tire of mentioning, when Escet was at Oxford I'd send him mail addressed to

'ESCET'
TRINITY
OXFORD

This didn't detain either the Royal Mail or the gate staff for a minute so I upped my game to

'ESC'
TRIN
OX

which also worked.

When I lived in Hungary this became

'ESC'
TRIN
OX
UK

to puzzled frowns from Hungarian Post Office workers.
Customers still had to hand over mail for inspection at the counter, no sneakily posting it yourself, and pay the clerk.
It probably looked suspicious but was accepted and processed. Escet received it in good time.
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I tested this out with my Mum once. Addressed it to:
Mum
[Name of Mum's town]
[Mum's postcode]

It worked!
 
I once planned to visit my nan and give her a birthday card. Then I changed my mind, and so I posted the card; unfortunately, the envelope only had the words 'To Nan' on it, and no stamp.
 
maximus otter said:
The father moved to Haworth in 1820 and died there, aged 84, in 1861. He drank the water there for 41 years, yet made what even today would be regarded as old bones.

The two youngest sisters - Maria and Elizabeth - apparently both contracted TB at school and came home to die.

Elizabeth Branwell drank the water for 21 years and died of "bowel obstruction."

Patrick drank & drugged himself to death.

UK life expectancy in 1820 was 40.53 years. The famous 3 Brontë girls died at 39, 30 and 29 respectively. Younger than average, but a long way from being outliers.

maximus otter
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I like the fact that Emily Bronte and Kate Bush, who launched her career with a song about (literally) Wuthering Heights share the same birthday.... is that what inspired KB in the first place? And the fact that it's my birthday too makes it interesting to me, anyway!!
 
escargot said:
Here's a 1968 painting by one Herbert Whone (1925-2011) of Haworth High Street.

Just so we know what we're on about. :)
Click to expand...

I visited Haworth (and the Parsonage) earlier this year having not visited since I was a teenager.

20240503_115709_Vaeo9Txk2U.jpeg

20240503_115247_Gct9wV2X8g.jpeg

20240503_130532_TVReCwcA4q.jpeg

20240503_130538_i3O2g3IM9G.jpeg

20240503_125435_y1oZjqvp2O.jpeg


I really like it there, it's got character and plenty of independent businesses too.

P.S. If the picture quality looks a bit off, it's because I had to decompress the images in order to post.
 
I think I've recommended the 1973 television production The Brontës of Haworth previously. It's available to watch, for free, on Youtube. It is heart-breaking of course, though not by design, because of the family's constant bereavements. But aside from those tragedies and the literature resultingly denied to us, what is most memorable about the series is how the actors capture the family's essential personalities. While Anne is kind, Charlotte more grounded than her siblings, and Branwell's life-story a very sad tale of abilities undeveloped and thwarted (frequently by a kind of personal haplessness)...Emily stands ever alone.

This isn't just a matter of Romanticising her, of her talent setting her apart or of her struggles against the conventions and inconveniences of life (which, to various extents, each of the siblings struggled with); instead the production enables the viewer to see that death was a kind of release for her, because mere life couldn't contain or restrict her spirit. What are commonly stated as being instances of her anti-social nature or evidences of her 'troubled mind' are only examples of commentators missing the essential point: that some people's lives appear to us in a 'language' that we cannot understand. It is sometimes not enough to repeat the truths that 'Many people are essentially unknowable, even to themselves'. This isn't because of our relative ignorance or because especial genius is some sphere frequented only by those of supposedly nobler spirit and mind but because the expression of what it means to truly live is even beyond them...and this essentially kills them.

Emily's imagination, which was a spirit more sombre than sunny – more powerful than sportive – found in such traits material whence it wrought creations like Heathcliff, like Earnshaw, like Catharine. Having formed these beings, she did not know what she had done.

(Charlotte Brontë)


The Brontës of Haworth:

 
Emily in 'Not actually awful or Romantically bonkers' shock:

'Elizabeth Gaskell’s biography of Charlotte Brontë embellished the stories even further. “Those founding images have been extended and reworked and dramatised and amplified, they have become mythic up until the present really.”

The academic Claire O’Callaghan said Emily had been portrayed in many ways, usually negative. Sometimes she was “a staid, old-fashioned, people-hating spinster who roamed about the Yorkshire moors alone with her dog” or “a painfully shy and socially awkward girl-woman who was sick whenever she left home” or “she’s a stubborn and defiant woman who willingly withheld assorted physical and mental ailments, or an ethereal soul too fragile to endure the real world”.

She said the myths were damaging. “They perpetuate this idea she was weird and different and strange and other in a way that is quite hostile.”

O’Callaghan said it was true Emily was shy, or reserved, and craved solitude and enjoyed getting out the house walking on the moors with her dog Keeper, a large mastiff. But this did not make her odd.

“Today when we think about character traits and personality traits we take a different approach to things, we try to accommodate and understand differences or social awkwardness or anxieties or just different ways of being. We try not to stigmatise people.”'
 
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