nanowrimo

There hasn't been any blog activity in the last few months I know, and there's a good reason for that.
Way back in March I went on a long holiday...back a few weeks and off again...and ...wait for it ... off again. Lately, it feels as if I've been out of the country more than I've been in it.
In the last few months I've visited more countries, albeit briefly, than during the whole of the rest of my earlier life.

That started me thinking about how the world is so much smaller than it used to be.
I know it's a daft notion, but it really does seem that way to me.

When you think about it, these days you can get to just about anywhere in the world in a day.
Okay, I know there are some remote parts of the planet where you'd have to track the final few hundred miles, but, generally speaking we can jump on a plane and go more or less wherever we please fairly easily.

Our ancestors weren't so lucky were they.

I've been reading a little about the coffin ships that took people from Ireland to Canada via Liverpool during the time of the great famine in the 1840s.

Taxes imposed upon the gentry, to help support the people who lived on their land, made some landowners think that it would be cheaper for them to pay for a ticket to send their tenants from Ireland to North America. As a result, there was an increase in immigration. Ships were overcrowded and many of the passengers, already weakened by famine, died during the voyage when illness broke out, typhoid being a major cause of death.

I can't imagine the despair those people must have felt, being crammed together below deck with a couple of hundred other people. How their hopes for a better future must have turned to fear as they watched their fellow passengers begin to fall ill and die around them. How they must have yearned to return to their former homes, even if it was to die and to be buried there.

As always, in delving into the past,  I find I am fascinated by the lives of those who went before me.

This month of November is National Novel Writing Month - NANOWRIMO - and so I've decided to use my family history research to write a story based (loosely) on what I know of my ancestors. NANOWRIMO requires writers to just write...turn off your inner editor and write 50,000 words during the month of November. It doesn't have to be good, it just has to be written.

I can do that.

Who do YOU think you are?

Watching afternoon TV yesterday, Richard ...whatsisname... you know, the Richard and Judy feller...anyway, he was tracing his ancestors, or rather, a load of experts were tracing them for him, and he was just there as old ladies' eye candy I presume.

Now I didn't see all of the programme, but I saw the bit about his great, great, great, great grandfather who had fought with the New England militia in a war against the leader of the Pokanoket Indians - a man who was called King Philip by the colonists. This was in December of 1675.

The researchers had dug deep and found out a heap of facts about his ancestors, and I couldn't help but feel envious that so much information had been uncovered. There seemed to so much information about his g,g,g,g grandparents.

There was even a document that outlined the events of one particularly horrific battle in which it's highly likely that Richard's ancestor would have taken part, and I thought how wonderful to read about something that your ancestor actually did.

But then I listened to what the researcher was actually saying.

Seems that about a thousand members of the Narragansett tribe (men, women and children) were in a huge fort in the middle of a swamp. They must have felt pretty safe given that you'd have to know the paths extremely well in order to successfully reach the fort. However, the swamp froze, and a guide helped troops to get close. The colonial militia were able to take the people holed up inside by surprise and there followed a fierce and bloody battle.

Ah...just remembered the guy's name - it was Richard Madeley.

The document that was read out to Richard Madeley was supposedly a first hand account written by someone who was actually there. Distressingly, it described how wigwams were burned with people inside, whether dead or alive. (Wikipedia also says that there were large numbers of casualties, including many hundred women and children.)

I know that anyone taking part would have been following orders, but I can't help wondering how a common soldier would have felt during a battle like that.

Would they have been horrified at what they had been told to do? Or would they have felt justified in carrying out such a horrific attack?

My own research has revealed my own grandfather's military history, and now I'm wondering what terrible things he saw and did.

I think that maybe, sometimes, it's best not to know.

I think the blog is working ...

Before I started this blog I had lost the will to write. I'd try...but then I'd ask myself, Why bother? Who would want to read anything from me anyway? This went on for quite a long time. Having been a fairly confident writer, I suddenly seemed to lose it.

I waited...I took my time...I was gentle with myself...nothing happened. Now there's a surprise!

What did I expect? That, with no effort on my part, I'd simply wake up one day and have a Eureka moment? That a voice would whisper an amazing plot in my ear and I'd knock out that best seller in record time?
...maybe...?

Well anyway, that didn't happen. Surprise surprise.

I wasn't being pro-active at all, my imagination had gone walkabout, and I was starting to feel more and more frustrated with myself for not even trying to write.
I really needed to write something, anything, for my own satisfaction, just to show myself that I could still do it.
So, as you know, I started to write this little blog - just for me - I decided to let myself ramble on about anything that interested me at the time. As it happens I was growing more and more interested in tracing my family history. I've been recording my thoughts to help me to stay organised, and I've allowed myself to speculate on how my ancestors lived, worked, fought, loved, died...I let myself go with the flow. It didn't matter that I'd jumped from person to person, or that I'd drifted through time with no sense of order. The aim was to simply write anything.

And it's starting to work for me.

The other night I had an amazingly clear nightmare, so scary that I woke myself up reciting the Lord's Prayer over and over. So clear that I had to write it down. So weird ... that I now have the beginning of a plot for a story based on my family research.
Eureka!
Then today, wandering round an antiques fair, I spotted an unusual object that could have been used by one of my ancestors, and immediately a possible storyline popped into my head.
Double Eureka!

I'm still researching. I'm still eagerly sending off for birth, marriage and death certificates, and I'm still trawling through military records and devouring every fact that I can glean about these people whose genes I share.

But, alongside that, I'm starting to write again.
Thank goodness for that!

Spanish Flu

I've been looking up any info I can find on events around the end of World War 1 and realised that I'd totally forgotten the influenza pandemic of 1918.
How could I have forgotten that?
Hundreds of millions of people affected by this deadly virus, more people killed by it than during the whole of WW1. Incredible!
What made it so deadly? How did it spread so far, so rapidly? Where did it originate?
Whatever its origins, it's fair to say that its effects were devastating.
Younger, previously healthy people appeared to succumb more readily than the elderly or infants.
At least ten percent of those infected, died from the disease.
I did notice that my dad's dad was recorded as having a wife (my paternal grandmother) and three children. I have never heard of two of those children. I wonder...did they die during this outbreak?
So it's back to the Ancestry website to find further details.
Life must have been one long struggle in those days. War, disease, poverty...how did they get through it?
The stories that I've uncovered so far have amazed me. Just my little family has given me such rich material for my writing, and yet I'm still putting off actually getting started on any stories.
Yes, procrastination IS the thief of time.
Note to self - get a move on!

Dad's dad in WW1

I'm amazed! Just logged on again today to the Ancestry website and - I kid you not - the military records of my father's father popped up!
I'm not joking. They literally popped up onto the screen. I'm sure that, last time I was a member, things like this didn't happen.
I suppose, the more information you have in a family tree, the more the site is able to give hints.
Well, whatever the reason behind all these little helpful pushes, I'm grateful.

Today, with very little effort, I have discovered the my dad's dad was 5 foot 8 inches tall, with a fair complexion. I have his chest measurements and certain distinguishing marks, such as tattoos on both forearms. The records say that he had blue eyes. He had pock marks on his thigh.

I can't believe I have so much information now.

His records seem to show that he was in and out of the army, and it's a bit confusing to me - he is down as serving 8 years, being discharged as unfit for war service, re-enlisted, transferred...I just can't get my head round it all. Then, to top it all, it says he is called up for ninety days service in 1921.
So...I've just been trying to find out what was going on around that time.
It seems Lloyd George declared a state of emergency because of the economic slump.
I need to research this. I'm a bit ashamed that, at my age, I don't understand the details of why this happened.
I think the coal mine owners tried to cut wages drastically, I think there was a threatened strike, and I think the government set up the defence force to keep industry going...BUT...I really need to try to understand it fully.
Something to keep me busy for the next few days I think.

It's a small world.

It surely is a small world! Especially now we have that clever little thing called the inter..thingy something or other.
I was just doing a spot of research on the ancestry website last night, trawling through the names and dates, yawn... when up pops a family tree for Samuel. (Remember Sam? He's my granddad on my mum's side - I know, it's a lot to remember, even I'm getting confused to be fair.)
I hadn't posted this particular family tree and so I was quite excited to see it, even though it was incomplete. My mum was missing from it, as well as one of mum's brothers.
I clicked on it, then debated with myself, should I contact the person who had posted it?
Did I contact them? Yes I did! I'm so glad that I did.
I found out an amazing piece of information about one of my uncles, and I have made contact with a long lost cousin.
The background to this uncle's story is quite shocking really. The consequences of his actions were tragic. Someone was killed and this really brings home the very real nature of the research.
Sometimes the people can feel so distant...when I'm looking at names and places in the 1800s it has the feeling of make believe in a way, but when I come across events that happened in the twentieth century it all becomes so much more real.
I spoke with my mum to corroborate the things I'd been told and, surprisingly, she agreed. I had no idea. For years she's never said a word. For years she's hidden this piece of information from us all. For years she stayed away from her brother, maybe because of this tragedy.
I have two brothers. I hope I stay in touch with them both, no matter what, but events in our childhood shape us, and maybe even shape the turns that our lives will take.

Holidays

Back from holiday and feeling quite chilled.
Flew to the one of the Canary Islands and relaxed for two weeks in the sunshine. Perfect weather, just like our summers used to be when I was a child.
Odd really, I always remember the wonderful summers and the spectacular winters.
As kids, we would be taken for our annual caravan holiday at the seaside. We spent every day in swimsuits and shorts. The sun shone. The blackberries ripened early and we would be sent out with pyrex bowls to pick the luscious fruit for tea. In the small town close by the pavements melted in the blistering heat. We jumped waves that seemed to tower above us, huge watery fists that lifted us off our feet. It's a wonder we didn't drown.
The winters were cold - just as they should be. I remember making an igloo with my brother after one especially heavy, late snowfall. We chiselled blocks of compacted snow and even made ice furniture. I might be wrong, but I seem to think it was quite late - around April I think. At any rate my mum grumbled that it would still be there in June at the rate it was going.
Even then, without central heating, we were lucky. We had a range in the kitchen and a gas fire in the front room, as well as a portable electric heater that, even used sparingly, took the chill off the bedroom.
What must it have been like in the times before electricity?
The dark, cold night, chilblains, open fires that needed raking and setting daily.
As for flying to exotic destinations...forget it.

Off at a tangent

Right, you know how sometimes you just want to focus on one path, but suddenly another crosses the path that you're on?
Well, that has happened to me.
My mother in law was chatting yesterday and, oddly, I found myself listening carefully to what she was saying.
It was the usual start...rambling about this and that, general stuff - mostly about people we have never met or are ever likely to. It struck me what a head for detail she has, especially when recalling the distant past.
Suddenly she was back in nineteen o blob and telling me about her mother, who was blind.
Now, I knew that Grandma was blind, and I've always had the utmost admiration for her, given that she and her (blind) husband worked hard and raised five children.
What I hadn't realised though were the circumstances in which she had found out that she was going blind.
...and here's the really poignant part...
Grandma was eleven years old. Her eyesight started to fail. Certain people suggested old wives' remedies, such as blowing sugar into her eyes...well, I can only imagine how painful that must have been.
She had waited for an appointment at the hospital. It came - the date for her to attend was on her eleventh birthday.
On attending this appointment she was told that she was definitely going blind. There was no doubt about it, in fact, she would soon be completely blind and therefore she must be taken immediately to the Blind School.
So, on her eleventh birthday, she is taken straight from the hospital to the Blind School and left there as a boarder.
To add insult to injury, her beautiful long hair, long enough to sit on, was cut off to a short bob.
Was she bitter? Seems not, as, when asked, she simply said that it made total sense. The people looking after her and the other children had enough to do without having to worry about brushing numerous heads of glorious locks.
How very pragmatic.
Makes me feel ashamed of myself.

Seventh child of a seventh child

Ok, so I've organised my file with all of this information in order.
I've kept the relevant families together - I know that they are all my family really but you know what I mean.
My mum's parents, dad's parents, their parents, etc.
It's easy to get a bit lost and very easy to get sidetracked.
For instance, my dad always used to tell stories about when he was a lad, also he'd say he was the seventh child of the seventh child of gypsies. Things like that fascinate me, and so I find myself looking for confirmation in the records on Ancestry websites.
Some things can't be confirmed on any website though. Like the dreams dad would have - he always said if he dreamed of his mother then something bad was going to happen - he said she came to him in his dreams to warn him of impending incidents, and he wouldn't be able to settle until that incident had happened.
Now, I'm not sure if dad's mother actually did come to him in his dreams, but I'm inclined to believe that she did, given what happened to me on the night that dad died.
I was on holiday in Germany. I lived away from home anyway and hadn't been home for a couple of weeks before going on holiday. When I had visited them, both mum and dad seemed perfectly well and I went on holiday with no reason to worry about either of them.
One night, after a busy day sightseeing, I found it almost impossible to settle to sleep. By the early hours of the morning I was worn out, but every time I started to nod off I could see my dad wearing striped pyjamas and lying in a hospital bed. He was agitated about something and I tossed and turned all that night. Every time...EVERY time I closed my eyes - there he was in hospital.
The next morning we were up and out early. We had a busy day planned and it was teatime before we arrived back at the flat. We were greeted by the news that my brother had been trying to get hold of me that morning - this was in the days well before mobile phones - and had left a message for me to ring him urgently asap.
When I got hold of him it was to be told that dad had suffered a massive heart attack the night before. He had passed away in the early hours of that morning.
I will always believe that Dad had come to Germany to tell me himself.
Seventh child of a seventh child...

Mum in Fulwood Cottage Homes 1934 to...?

OK, so there's me, then my parents, grandparents, great grandparents...you get the picture, and you know that I've been looking at Pearl, then Sam, both from my mother's side of the family. Mum knows very little as she was orphaned at such a young age, but she thinks that she had grandparents and Aunties and Uncles still living quite nearby when she was taken into the orphanage - called Fulwood Cottage Homes - in Sheffield.
This seems such a strange thing for the authorities to have done, but mum is insistent that she, and her brothers and sisters, were all put into the homes because the extended family would have had to split the kids between them. Unbelievable. I just can't get my head around that piece of information.
I've just been trying to find out more by looking at chat rooms and forums but they seem to be out of date. Found some pictures of the place from the 'olden days' and it looks as if the women working there wore nurse's uniforms.The children seem fairly well dressed in the pictures - in the picture I have of my mum she is dressed in a plain smock type of thing. Hair looks to be basin cut. She thinks she's about eight in that picture. She's smiling in it, so that's something.
My mother remembers they had a house mother and house father. She has some scarring on the bridge of her nose which is from the time she pulled a huge kettle of boiling water onto her. It was her birthday and she said she had been given a rag doll. She was clutching the doll and trying to get the kettle off the range at the same time. (It was her job to see to the kettle for some reason.) Mum reckons it was her sixth birthday? I think she would have been in the homes for four or five months by then if that was the case. It seems unlikely to me that they'd have let a six year old near a kettle but there you go.
She remembers sitting at the window at night and looking over towards the lights of Sheffield.
She said her brothers regularly ran away but they'd get scared by the time they reached the fields - the cows put them off going any further. I suspect the boys were walloped - there certainly must have been some reason for them to run away so often.
How did it turn out for them all?
Well, that's to find out. I need to get names, dates and destinations from my mum. Where did all her siblings go and what happened to her older relatives?

Losing the plot?

I started this blog as a way of setting my thoughts down in some sort of order.
I thought it would help me to organise my research about my family tree. In actual fact, it's started to take me off in lots of different directions.
That's fine. I'm enjoying the journey. It's only a blog. My scribbles.
I realise that I've left Pearl in limbo while I nip off into the past looking for Sam.
I think that's ok too.
In fact, I realise that I need to just go with the flow here. Whichever direction this takes me is going to be ok.
Thing is, I used to write...about pretty much anything.
I think I lost the discipline to sit down and do that a couple of years ago.
For some reason I decided that no-one would ever want to read anything that I'd written...and that was that. I now see that it really doesn't matter whether anyone else wants to read what I've written or not.
The important thing for me now is that I want to write. I had lost the will to write.
Pearl has given that back to me.

So many stories...

My research this morning led me to various websites about conditions for workers around 1900.
For some reason I found myself following a link to an index of records of patients who had been admitted to the then South Yorkshire Lunatic Asylum - between 1872 and 1910.
Wow! Incredible stuff!
'Reasons for Insanity' were identified, and ranged from 'Trouble and old age' 'Intemperance' 'Being blind and deaf'' 'Confinement' 'Attending spiritual meetings' 'The Change' 'Inflammation of the eyes' 'Excitement over the election' to 'Love and religion' and 'Domestic troubles' but the most poignant for me were the women whose 'cause of insanity' was put down as 'pregnancy' as this took me right back to the days when I worked in Sheffield in residential care homes during the early 1980s.
Around that time there was a move to close the large institutions where people had been kept, sometimes for years without review. In some cases people had been inmates for so long that they were unable to cope in the community.
One lady who came to live in the care home where I worked was one such case.
Wearing clothes that were clean but impersonal and carrying a bundle in her arms, she stood stock still in the doorway and looked around her in silence. I took her bags of belongings, sparse though they were and offered to carry the bundle that she gripped close to her, she refused, but followed me quietly to the bedroom that had been allocated to her.
She sat on the bed and smiled at me before asking, 'Do you want to see my baby?'
Moving forward I could see the doll that was nestled in her arms, wrapped carefully in a baby blanket and dressed beautifully in clothes that some kind nurse at the hospital must have provided.
This woman's story is unsettling but not rare I think. She was placed into the asylum when she became pregnant as a very young woman. Shamed, her parents signed her into the custody of the asylum. She was one of the longest staying inmates, and had spent more years in the asylum than she would ever spend out of it.
Another woman who came to live with us had offended her father's new wife, who had quickly found a number of reasons to have her locked away so she could enjoy a marriage without a troublesome new step daughter.
It seems that, in the search for my own story, I have recalled so many others linked to my own experiences, even though they are not a part of my own history.
It just serves to remind me that everyone has their own story, and that all of our stories are of equal importance.

Look to the living

Not been researching or checking any old papers today. Instead we've been visiting living relatives and checking they're ok. It's easy to forget about the people around us when we start delving into the past.
I wonder why that is?
I can spend hours nosing around in old records online, trying to fit pieces of the past together.
The day flies by and I find. to my surprise, that I've been so immersed in the past I've forgotten about the present.
So, today I spent a few hours here, in 2016.
But I still found my thoughts drifting back to the coal mine in 1868, or to the workhouse in 1901, and thanking my lucky stars that I was actually born in easier, happier times that my ancestors were.

Coal mining 1901

OK, so I found a bit of paper that I'd scribbled on from the last time that I was researching my family history. On it I've written that Sam was down as a coal hewer. This ties in with his place of birth on census records - a village whose livelihood centred around the pits.
I started to look at old records for that particular area, typed in the year and found a site that listed the recorded accidents from around that time, thinking maybe there would be a link to Sam and a possible reason for his leaving the place of his birth.
What an eye opener that was!
The list of accidents over a relatively short period of time, and the list of fatalities, was so long...
In some cases there were members of the same family killed or severely injured in the same accident.
One recorded incident tells of an explosion that killed 45 men.
Most distressing is the report that one of the search party, who entered the pit immediately after the explosion, was the father of four of the miners involved. Reports in the local newspaper tell of the courage of the father in undertaking this task. He entered the mine while there was still 'foul air and flaming blasts' along with the rest of the search party. His brother and eldest son appear to have been dead when the rescuers found them, but three of his other sons were found alive. George, badly burnt, Robert, severely burnt and William severely scorched, however, their names appear on the list of those killed, so their injuries must have been too bad for them to survive.
I know these men have nothing to do with my ancestors. I know only their names and what I have read about their injuries and the circumstances of their deaths. But I can't help feeling sorrow for their tragic passing. I can't help thinking of their mother and the grief she must have felt...I keep thinking of the courage of their father who lost sons and a brother that day...and who then went back to working in that same pit.

Getting organised

I'm struggling to find out actual facts. Such a lot of this is guesswork and I find that frustrating in one way, yet liberating in another.
Yes, it would be amazing to be able to set down categorically that Pearl met Sam in such and such a place, and that this and that happened. Yes, it would be wonderful to be able to tell my own sons about their ancestors...but, as I can't...as it's mostly guesswork and speculation, I suppose I'll need to use my common sense and a hefty dose of imagination.
I am supposed to be a writer after all.
When I have the bare bones I will have to embellish. When I have the background facts I will need to add some flavour to this story of my family.
Today I set out all the census returns, birth certificates, death certificates, marriage lines, etc. in a folder. I've separated the different branches of the extended family and tried to follow threads wherever possible.
Tomorrow I think I will need to put these in some sort of order. I'll need to weed out the red herrings and focus on the most likely facts.
I haven't yet researched the working conditions of 1901, and I still need to find out possible reasons why Sam was in the workhouse.
I know I will get there eventually. I just need a bit of patience and perseverance.

1901: Samuel in the workhouse

I decided to try to find out about the general conditions in workhouses in 1901 in England.
Surprisingly, the food sounds considerably better than I'd have imagined - There was, of course, the inevitable 'gruel' but, looking at one menu from the time, there appear to be things like Shepherd's Pie, Fish Pie, Roly poly pudding...the kind of meals that I've eaten all my life. (No wonder my kids have been grumbling at me for all these years!) On closer inspection, however, the quantities seem quite small - 6ozs bread and 1oz cheese for breakfast for an able bodied man, for instance, would not go down well with my other half.
Samuel is down as a single man, aged 23, on the 1901 census. I can only guess as to why he was an inmate, but apparently people could apply to be admitted to the workhouse and they could ask to leave with only a few hours notice. Technically, leaving wouldn't be a difficulty - the workhouse wasn't a prison, however, there were no grants or financial support to help you set up home. If you left the workhouse where would you find money for rent and food?
I suspect that, once you were in, it would be difficult to find a way to leave.
Samuel was lucky, he was a single man. Married women - in 1901 - still could not leave without the permission of their husband.
Samuel was described as a pauper. Why was this? He was presumably able bodied at the time - I've seen nothing in the other records to suggest that he was an invalid. Maybe 1901 was a period of great unemployment.
Another area I must research.

So Pearl, how did you guys meet?

Trawling through pages of records is no easy task when your ancestors have such common names as mine had. Fortunately, I had Pearl's address from when she married and also when she died. That helped a little. By looking at the census records I was able to find a couple of likely start points for Pearl - using her real name, obviously - and by adding in the names of aunties and uncles I was able to find her eventually.
Much harder to find was my grandad. Another very common surname - crikey! Nothing is easy is it!
After looking at dozens of records for Sam (likely Samson or Samuel according to mum) my conclusion is that he was born out of town and made his way to Pearl's birthplace to find work.
One intriguing 1901 census entry puts a likely Samuel in the workhouse. Tracking this particular Sam to 1911 census then seems to lead to the same area as Pearl and her mother. He shows up on this census as being in lodgings just a few hundred yards from them.
This is the Sam I will pursue!

On digging a bit deeper...

Discovering a little about how my grandmother lived, and died, as a relatively young woman, made me curious to find out more. On pumping my mum for information I was surprised to find out that Pearl appeared to have had a child out of wedlock. Mum said that her eldest sister, Frances, was born before her mum and dad were married. The story was that Granny Pearl had become pregnant to a young man who had gone off to the first world war. He had been killed and Pearl was left in the predicament of being pregnant and single. My grandfather, who was fifteen years older than Pearl, married her and they went on to have a further 7 children I think. I found 6 more entries in the register corresponding to the names of aunties and uncles. Mum said there was another child who fell off a wall and died. She can't remember the name of that child. How sad not to know the name of your brother or sister who died before you were born. But then, there was a lot of sadness in Pearl's life. Married at 20, widowed by age 34, dead just a few years later leaving my mum and the other children orphaned.
Recalling this, I'm left feeling that I want to find out even more about Pearl. What was she like as a person. The trouble is, I have no way to find this out. I'm told Pearl was a nickname, given to her because she was regarded as a 'pearl' and yet I have no way to find any concrete facts about her.
This is so frustrating for me. My mum remembers so little; let's face it, she was orphaned at about 6 years old and so can't be expected to know much about what was going on in the household at that time. There must be a way that I can find out more. Maybe I need to look at Pearl's earlier life, before she met my grandfather.

The first I heard of Pearl

The first I heard of my grandmother, Pearl, apart from snippets about how hard her life must have been, was when my mum described how she and her brothers and sisters were eating tea when her mother (Pearl) died. Mum told me how the doctor pushed through the kitchen into the bedroom and pronounced Pearl dead. Mum always said that Pearl choked to death, but years later, I sent for her death certificate. On it the cause of death is brain haemorrhage, due to chronic nephritis. Googling this brought up that chronic nephritis was a side effect of TB.
This one piece of information helped me to see the bigger picture of Pearl's life, and of the lives of her children, and her husband.
In those days TB was common. People lived in overcrowded conditions and there were no antibiotics. If you contracted the disease it was likely that you would be sent to a sanatorium where you would spend most of the time resting in the fresh air. This seems to have been the only treatment in those days, and I guess the survival rate must have been very low. My grandfather (Pearl's husband) died in a sanatorium. TB was on the death certificate. Decades later, my mum had a chest X ray that revealed old TB scarring. In their household there were at least ten people. I guess the wonder is that they all didn't die from the disease.

Purpose

Yeah, so I was thinking. What is the purpose of this blog? Last time I decided to keep up a blog I lost the will to continue. There was no reason to do so. I just didn't have anything to say that was worth writing -  I felt anyway.

But I've had a bit of an epiphany.

Pearl...the Pearl of the title...is actually my Gran. I never met her but, I'm told, she was called Pearl by neighbours and friends because she was that to so many people.

And it seems to me that my blog ought to be about her, about my quest, if you like, to find out about her.

I think that's fitting.

January 2016

...and I'm back! So where did the last few years go?
They say that time speeds up as you grow older, but this is ridiculous. Talk about in the blink of an eye!
Anyhoo, back to the jolly old blog.
Only a three year gap. What's the problem with that?