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?

The body, Ruby Gillis is one of Anne's friends in Anne of Green Gables. I think she dies in the third book. Of consumption and dating.

To someone much further up the thread (sorry I can't find you now): Charlotte Bronte dies of extreme morning sickness during her first (and only obviously) pregnancy.

God I love Mumsbet

I always thought consumption was alcoholism

MN teaches me new things daily.

Little Women, also a good example of glamorous sickliness but I can't remember plotlines or names so will continue lurking.

Thanks hand made.

Pom oh my god you are right 11 it is, getting carried away with her ' round dozen' or the quads she was always threatening.

The richardsons were wards but what about Erica? another ward?

God call myself a chalatean!! I hang head in shame and go to st skolosticas ( wrong spelling) with miss Bubb!!!

It's obviously because they had no lemsip.

But slightly more seriously, if you look at the 1911 census it has a question asking how many children have been born alive, how many still living and how many have died, I have one ancestor who was living with her 3 remaining children, seven having died. People died then of things that are easily treatable now as has been said.

Oh yes but as the Robin accepted God she was miraculously cured.

The robin also had 2 long naps a day and still slept from 6 pm to 7 am.

Where did I go wrong with my kids?

I love Victorian pregnancies! Women of a certain standing always seemed to take to their beds for at least a month before the baby was due . They also seemed to need about three months in bed to recover. Can't imagine getting that on the NHS today.

I also vaguely remember in Lady Chatterlys Lover, Lady C and Mellors go out , ahem, frollicking in the rain. It did not seem to dampen their passion (or cause consumption) But that was not Victorian rain, so maybe it was different!

Horopu T'was ME!!

I looked at Wikipedia after posting and it mentioned that too. How bloody sad. It also suggested consumption or typhus.

It said she got pregnant soon after being married. She got married in the June and died in the next March. I always thought she was in the very early stages of pregnancy when she died - that made me think she was much further along, Oh dear. Poor, poor Charlotte.

To long for love so much. To lose your Mother and ALL your sisters and your brother, then finally find love, get married and become pregnant. Then find pregnancy makes you so ill you succumb to . . . well, either the sickness itself or something else a healthy person could shrug off. It's so unfair. Life can be so cruel.

BalloonSlayer - didn't Charlotte Bronte have horrific hyperemesis, and that was why she became so ill? I seem to remember that from university. Her actual cause of death is the subject of some debate, as the official record says tuberculosis but I think typhus was implicated too.

Oh, Ruby Gillis. The perils of being a fast woman - dance with one too many young men, and you too could be rattling your last breath on a hammock shortly before you're due to marry your true love. The irony!

Whoops! Sorry BalloonSlayer, I really should learn to read posts properly

Cb probably didn't die of the rain, but all her life she was terrified about weather and the effects it might have on her. She got depressed at both equinoxes, every year.

The whole rain and fever thing is because they believed in Hippocrates and the idea of the perfect climate you could move to and be healthy and all that. Hence all the going on about changes of air and all that, spa towns and schools by the sea. Especially for consumption, which was definitely thought to be caused and helped by climates.

Charlotte Bronte died of pre-eclampsia, apparently.

Mum says that actually her hayfever/asthma/occasional chronic bronchitis have been better living in the south in the warm salty air of the coast.

salt probably does have a mildly healing effect on lungs (it does on skin generally) and drier air might help too...

also getting very cold does weaken your immune system.

I want to be wheeled out in a bath chair on to a terrace to take the air.

I want to retreat to a Spa town for the season and spend it taking the waters and shopping for ribbons.

Everything was more malevolent in Victorian times.

If you found a dead body it sent you MAD.

If you spent a night in the same room as a person with mental health problems it sent you MAD too.

You could train an adder to come when you whistled and slither around killing people.

The sting of the lion's mane jellyfish was so lethal that only very strong people could survive -if immediately revived with large doses of brandy.

(Still sulking about that last one: I once got the best part of a lion's mane down my cleavage and would have struggled to get as much as a drop of brandy out of my stingy - and teetotal- family: they didn't even run to calamine lotion!)

And the devil's claw, the effects of which used to terrify me in the Sherlock Holmes' story, is now on sale at Lloyd's pharmacy down the road: apparently it is good for the joints or something.

We live in boring times.

Ruby Gillis had long blonde plaits and was marked out as gilberts beau until Anne came along. I snivelled when Gilbert got typhus...

And Beth's death in good wives was v.moving. As was the quiet death of John Brook in little men.

Climate does have an impact on asthma so the Victorians were right about that. And going to the seaside got people away from the terrible pollution in big cities. But they were sadly lacking in inhaled steroids. Or antibiotics.

Wrong era, but I once interviewed Robin Cousins, who told me he is very lucky to exist at all. His Dad caught TB towards the end of WW2, when he was serving in N Africa, I think. Anyway, he was sent back to England. A very severe case - told his fiancee to give up the engagement and feel free to marry someone else. (Very Victorian.) Then a doctor wandered down the ward, asking if anyone wanted to sign up to test a new drug. Placebo controlled trial. Mr Cousins senior was lucky enough to get Drug B, which turned out to be one of the first antibiotics. Cue a cure, a marriage and (eventually) Cousins junior. Apparently his Dad still had a shadow on his lung and had to go every year for a check up at the hospital - it wasn't until the 70s that he came back with an X-ray showing the lung damage had gone.