It just seems weird that she wouldn’t have understood TB’s infectiousness, given her date of birth alone (and Googling suggests historically high rates of TB in South Shields) ! I grew up in Ireland where it was a serious, endemic problem in the first half of the 20thc, particularly in poor, overcrowded areas, and where there was considerable social stigma, as it was seen as a disease of poverty — my parents (now in their 80s) remember those visiting people in TB sanatoria getting off the bus at a different stop and walking back because of the stigma.
In the 40s and 50s, getting a coveted civil service job required a chest x-ray screening! We all still got the BCG vaccine and boosters as a matter of course in the 70s and 80s in my schooldays. It was in many ways the AIDS of its day.
I get that EBD’s TB sufferers are upper-middle and upper-class, and she seems to be leaning into the 19thc stereotype of ‘consumption’ involving ‘delicacy’ etc, but it seems strange she doesn’t depict basic anti-infection measures.
Actually — does EBD depict any men with TB (other than the nameless man who ‘falls asleep to wake with God’?)? It just occurs to me that literally every family member I can think of at the San is female…? I suppose Jem or Jack being infected wouldn’t have suited her heroic doctors narrative, but historically, not surprisingly, the staff of sanatoria did get TB from constant exposure to airborne droplets, or were often recruited from people who’d already had TB.