To think that Victorian rain was much more malevolent than contemporary rain?

[squoosh]

Whenever a character in a Wilkie Collins novel goes for a walk in the rain they either get pneumonia resulting in near death or develop sudden onset rain related delirium and then die. In Pride and Prejudice Jane Bennett's illness meant she was confined to Netherfield for a week after hoofing it over in the rain.

Am I alone in my disappointment with our weedy modern rain that doesn't even provoke a sneeze much less madness and pneumonia?

Oh yes Elephants I'd love to be sent away to 'take the waters' at Bath or to 'take the sea air' in Bournemouth Sorrento.

Oh and, yes, OP, Victorian/regency rain WAS more malevolent, definitely. I don't think anyone in contemporary fiction succumbs to and dies of 'a chill'.

Consumption is now known as TB isn't it?

Actually I think colds do kill people now, still - or at least things start off as colds. BUT mostly this would be old people or people who are already ill. Did the healthy Young Things of the Regency and Victorian eras have the immune system of today's octogenarians?

That's a good point, Maryz. They probably were quietly ill already but undiagnosed.

Yes, I think consumption is TB. Often treated rather glamorously in fiction, and literary lore (John Keats etc).

Victorian and Regency laydeez were v delicate little flowers. And they wore Impractical Shoes.

The consumption often galloped.

In 1940s films the only way to tell if a lady is pregnant is if they faint.
Cut to next scene and she is sitting up in a bed jacket with a ribbon in her hair and a baby in the bassinet.

Pregnancy was very different in the 40s.

I was like a victorian laydeee this afternoon.
I had a lie down in a darkened room.

squoosh - I think you'll find that was the horses. The horses pulling the coach containing the becomingly pale and interesting consumptive heroine holding to her white lips a lace hanky spotted with blood.

BTW in my head that last post was related to this thread.

No, galloping consumption makes sense to me!
OhDoAdmit, did you take to your chaise longue with a box of violet and rose creams?

That's basically my idea of the perfect duvet day, by the way.

How were those babies conceived do you think Ormiriathomimus? Those matching single beds that all married people in the fillums slept in don't look very conducive to nights of passion.

I am a strapping lass, the picture of health in terms of infectious disease resistance, but I actually did manage to get pneumonia in January a few years back, probably not entirely unrelated to getting cold and wet around Xmas time, was proper poorly, and was one hack away from being taken to hospital in a dramatic fashion. Really, the whole Victorian thing writ large.

I spent one particularly memorable day listening to my chest crackling away, not even caring whether I lived of died from it any more, thinking "If this was 1930 I would be dead tomorrow". But fistfuls of antibiotics got rid of it after about 3 weeks or so.

That must be the difference.

As it happened I took to my iron bed with two slices of strawberry cheesecake and the Crime and Investigation Channel

I have bought some 'lounge wear' from Sainsburys. I now waft around A La Jean Harlow in my head
As long as I avoid mirrors I am the epitome of 1930s glamour.

i think rain is bound to be more perfidious when

1. you don't have waterproof clothes
2. you have to walk everywhere, or take a horse
3. paths are not paved but all muddy
4. your house doesn't have UPVC guttering and downspouts, or central heating
5. you really need to snag that husband, or the plot doesn't allow for you drown your misery in gin, but only in long walks....

I have a friend with a weak chest who spends October to March in a state of almost continual prostration. Clearly she should really decamp to the south of Italy for the winter, but modern employment requirements make that tricky.

Has anyone read The White Death by Thomas Dormandy? Amazing account of TB in fiction and real life. Apparently dying of TB was really horrid and didn't just involve lying on a sofa feeling weaker and weaker like Beth in Little Women.

I've often thought this myself! In Victorian novels people are always catching colds or fevers from getting wet whereas now we know that, hey, colds are caused by viruses not by being wet. It's possible that if you're wet and cold, you're more susceptible to catching a virus, I suppose, but it's a bit of a long shot if you ask me.

That sounds horrible Boffin.

Afterwards I hope that at the very least you received a proposal from an eligible gentleman with an income of £5000 a year. And I hope your blonde curls (has to be blonde curls) were ranged prettily on the pillow.

My mother had proper Victorian style double pneumonia, and an eighteen inch waist. she survived the double pneumonia, though the waist is a thing of the past...she has been known to faint in extremes (though has asthma...)

she has subscribed to the 'a handsome husband and ten thousand a year' as key to happiness, but only snagged the first on a permanent basis (my daddy is gorgeous :) ).

In her youth there was a woman who walked around even in summer in a full skirt, corset and bustle, saying 'this higher hemline is a passing trend' with the deepest disdain. It was Burgess Hill, you get a more particular sort of eccentric.

hhmmmmm strawberry cheesecake...

No, hackmum, in fact there is now evidence that you are more likely to catch a cold if you are cold.

At least, Dr Hillary said it on Steve Wright in the afternoooooooon, so it must be a fact(oid).

I think it was perhaps more of a fear than a reality though?

Like films today about new viruses popping up and killing everyone before any treatment can be found?

But it would not have been warm and drying out would be hard if you only have one set of clothes.

I ate both portions.
I didnt pause between the two.
I virtually inhaled them.

Hmm, in the cities it probably WAS more malevolent (love that word :o ), containing as it did the dissolved outpourings of the dark satanic mills

Yes, modern Acid rain clearly has nothing on Malevolent Satanic Rain :)

But I think Malevolent Corsets were the cause of it all.

It's threads like there which keep me here.

Mad as a box of frogs.