To wonder whether you'd prefer to go to Malory Towers or the Chalet School

[Vintagejazz]

I just heard to girls about 11 years of age having an earnest discussion about this on the bus. I didn't think kids even read Chalet School books any more.
I think I'd opt for Malory Towers. They seemed to have more fun. I'd probably be expelled from the Chalet School for cursing, wearing lipstick and forgetting to speak German every Wednesday or whatever it was.

In the '20s and '30s, were not TB patients in this country treated by sleeping in the open air, under verandah-like porches? Didn't Mary Berry suffer this treatment or am I getting confused? You would think, on this basis, that a blast of snowy air would actually be expected to do Jo good.

Oh I loved how dramatic joey's illness was after 5 minutes of looking at the snow. I read that tucked up in bed with flu and had to beg to be allowed to stay home from school that afternoon after I took myself off home at lunchtime. (Would be a huge safeguarding issue now as it was junior school).

I've always wondered if all the delicacy was what we would now diagnose as allergies - asthma, stomach problems, generally being a bit unwell most of the time.

And I agree about treating asthma. No Ventolin for me even in the 1980s, and a distinct lack of any treatment other than staying in bed, propped up, and waiting until I could breathe again.

I think Mary Berry had polio, not TB.

EBD seemed to see being delicate as an assett - much more ladylike than being all robust and healthy. But totally ridiculous that someone as delicate as Jo could then go on to give birth to 11 children, including triplets, with no complications. In fact with no one even knowing she was pregnant, half the time.

It's Monday, Corus, so I think you'll find that as well as muddling up your tenses you've actually used the wrong language. Please translate your post into German and make sure you remember to put your schilings or your pfennigs or whatever into the staff gin fund fines box.

Wasn't the time Joey gets ill in and Jo, the time when Mme LeP says "fetch this good doctor from round the lake. He'll come because he loves la petite".?
As if the doctor would have said for any other child "actually they're a bit of a brat. I'm not coming."

CorusKate: my granny had had rheumatic fever or something as a child which had damaged her heart, so things like pollen/humidity/sinus problems seemed to be a massive issue for her. Not quite sure on the medical details but I agree this could be seen as delicacy - and she managed to have three children, worked as a teacher and had a normal life although she did eventually (in her 80s) die of complications related to this.

It must have been terrifying before antibiotics just to have someone so quickly slip away, or have to watch someone suffer and be unable to help them so I can imagine people might overdo the caution for 'delicate' children.

In The Chalet Chalet School and Lintons everyone keeps referring to Joyce as a baby. Even Madge says to Jo, who's giving out about her, 'she's just a baby'. She's FOURTEEN FFS.

And the Robin, at eleven, is being sent to bed at 7 o'clock and going around holding her face up to people she's just met for a good night kiss.

And yet they all get married at about 17.
Which gives them about a two year window to just be 'girls' or 'young adults'.

I think it is definitely TB that they are all worried about. I have a cousin who spent 6 months as a child away from her family at an open air hospital sleeping on a balcony because of suspected TB. I think she found out recently that it was founded for ”the scrofulous poor of London".

I can remember a lot of talk as a child about relations who had been "consumptive". TB still cast a shadow in the fifties, though it could be cured by then.
Have just given in and ordered 6 of the books for the DGDs (well officially for them).

Yes, certainly in the earlier books, EBD was writing in an era when there were no antibiotics and only a very limited understanding of what caused many illnesses. It wasn't just that she herself was clueless.

I also do have a feeling that kids (at least middle class ones) were much more 'babied' in those days. I remember when I was about 10 reading some vintage (as in published in the 40s and read by me in the 70s) book which talked of 'a girl of twelve with a scrubbed face playing with her dolly' and thinking eww, soppy. Because to 10-year-old me in 1975 12 was grown up, almost, and cool and the age my mum would let me wear eyeshadow or so I hoped.

DaisyM, you are quite right about Mary Berry having polio not TB.

Even in the 60s, teachers applying for jobs in London were required by the ILEA to have a chest Xray before they were appointed.

I think it's TB too, the "dreaded white man's plague" and she calls it. Is there any evidence that it was a whites' only disease? I suspect not. Or maybe it was prevalent in cool, damp climates like Cornwall where the Bettanys come from.

Is/was there any inherited element of TB? Or can you just have a weak chest, which can be inherited, and therefore be more susceptible to contagion? My mum and sister would have been classic "Annexe types" in the CS whereas I would have been boringly strong and healthy.

My Grandad's sister dies of TB in the 1920's. Shame she couldn't have gone to the Chalet School for some bracing air. Her name was Anastasia and everything, she would have been perfect!

My aunty had tb in the 1940's and was sent to an open air sanatorium. They got tarpaulins thrown over the beds on snowy days. Doubt Joey would have survived such spartan treatment as a child!

My mother in law had TB as a child and spent time in hospital in the open air. She is only 61 so this was well after the war. If you've recovered from TB I think you can pass some immunity down your family. Or maybe the opposite! I know there was some doubt over whether to give my kids the BCG (they did).

My grandad died of some complex lung disease and, while he was ill, we were all x-rayed and tested for TB (this was 1981 or thereabouts). Apparently my mother had had a mild bout of it and recovered without treatment, some decades previously (probably around the early 50s). Hmm, thinking about it, when I say without treatment I mean without TB-specific treatment - she probably got given an antibiotic for a nasty cough which did the trick.

I couldn't have the BCG at school as I had such a violent reaction to the heaf test - my reaction was wider than the card with the grading holes to assess extent of the reaction! In fact, my reaction was so violent, they sent me for chest X-rays and other tests to confirm I didn't have TB!