And you thought you had it rough...

[swee'pea99]

Sitting having a quiet coffee at an outside table in a cafe built in/by an old church in Oxford a couple of days ago, and I found myself reading the stone people were walking over with their cups of tea & cookies...

I think it was the repetition of the name that really drilled it home.

When you think what we bitch about these days....honestly, we don't know we're born.

 

[ColinJ]

I noticed something similar in a graveyard in Haworth. There were scores of names of young people from the same families, and there were some names of very old people, but surprisingly few aged 25-75. I suppose that hunger and disease saw off the weak when they were young and the strong survived through to old age!

 

[Risex4]

Savage, sobering stuff.

On a slight tangent, here in Exeter the old Norman castle complex has (obviously) been diversified, and now a part of it has been turned into a nightclub. There is a plaque next to the bar pertaining to the Bideford Witch Trials and explaining that below these very floorboards the last people in England to be tried and executed for witchcraft were held prior to trial. (Not quite factually accurate as to the last, but still).
Outside, the walls/borders are "decorated" with old tombstones, which make a convenient place for pints and fag ends to be stashed. Although time has more or less obliterated the details, some are still faintly legible.

I've often sat out there on a Saturday night, watching the ladies strut around in their evening attire and the alpha males doing their best to convince said ladies out of said attire, pondering just how ignorant the human race is to its own nature.

 

[classic33]

On the one in the picture, the bottom one(the second one is wrong) when you read the dates.
The other way to look at this is this way. That stone was supposed to mark their final resting place & now it forms part of a path.

 

[Octet]

There is a carved granite stone on a set of steps which also describes (in rather vivid detail) the events of a witch burning which took place in Guernsey (Channel Islands).

It describes how the woman being burnt gave birth whilst on the stake, the baby was initially saved but later thrown back onto the fire.

As with a lot of these things, no one notices them and unfortunately the only real knowledge of their existence is in a book, in a library, that shall probably not be touched for years.

 

[Arch]

I noticed something similar in a graveyard in Haworth. There were scores of names of young people from the same families, and there were some names of very old people, but surprisingly few aged 25-75. I suppose that hunger and disease saw off the weak when they were young and the strong survived through to old age!

Yes, we assume the shorter average lifespan in the past just meant people didn't make it to old age, but in fact it's just heavily skewed by heavy infant and child mortality. When you think of the conditions now that can be treated with day to day regularity, which would have simply killed a child within days or months of birth. And if there was a genetic condition that caused a weakness or susceptibility, that could affect most of a woman's children.

Of course the real eye opener is in how much of our wonderful modern world this is still the case...

 

[classic33]

Or common diseases, then, were often deadly. Most have been made treatable nowadays, so we don't suffer as a result in the same way previous generations did.

 

[classic33]

I noticed something similar in a graveyard in Haworth. There were scores of names of young people from the same families, and there were some names of very old people, but surprisingly few aged 25-75. I suppose that hunger and disease saw off the weak when they were young and the strong survived through to old age!

Just curious, but do any of the dates tie in with military campaigns?

 

[Arch]

Just curious, but do any of the dates tie in with military campaigns?

Merging your last two points:

In York, there's a memorial to one of the older wars (Boer? Not sure...) Anyway, it lists three categories of men of the York regiment - 'killed', 'injured', and 'died of disease'.

The number of men in the third category is greater than the other two combined. Imagine them, going off with pomp and circumstance and full of heroic ideas, and ending up dying of dysentery, poor sods.

 

[ThinAir]

When you think what we bitch about these days....honestly, we don't know we're born.

This. People whine about far too much.

 

[classic33]

You survive getting shot/blown up & die whilst being treated.
I wasn't thinking of oversea military campaigns either. Some more local & recent(ish) given the location of Haworth. Coiners, Luddites.

 

[ColinJ]

Just curious, but do any of the dates tie in with military campaigns?

I'm not sure - it was a long time ago that I was looking at the tombstones.

I was just reading about the Brontës. Disease ravaged their family and most of them did not live long lives.

Parents:

Patrick: 84.
Maria: 38.

Children:

Maria: 11.
Elizabeth: 10.
Charlotte: 38.
Branwell: 31.
Emily: 30.
Anne: 29.

If they hadn't been relatively well off, I reckon Charlotte, Branwell, Emily and Anne would have died even younger.

 

[classic33]

The Bronte sisters. Frequent guests of Ann Lister, Shibden Hall.

 

[ColinJ]

The Bronte sisters. Frequent guests of Ann Lister, Shibden Hall.

Guests, or 'guests'?

"I love and only love the fairer sex and thus beloved by them in turn, my heart revolts from any love but theirs." - Anne Lister.

Me too! (Apart from the "beloved by them in turn" bit. )

"Yet my manners are certainly peculiar, not all masculine but rather softly gentleman-like. I know how to please this fair maiden of mine." - Anne Lister.

Me too! (Apart from the having a fair maiden to please bit. )

 

[classic33]

Look to the buildings before North Bridge, Halifax. After the Broad Street White Elephant. Former casino & brothel owned & run by the Listers. Most notably, Ann Lister.