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.
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