Tales of Consumption .....

Even as late as the early nineteen fifties one of the most common causes of death in our corner of North Kent was Tuberculosis known as Consumption and it penetrated local families with a quiet persistence determinedly stealing away youthful health and vigour. When I speak of our little corner I mostly mean Gravesend and Northfleet followed by Dartford, Crayford and Erith. Most of my mother’s family, all my aunts and my numerous cousins lived in and around Iron Mill Lane, Crayford though some were being pressed to consider moving to new estates just a little further afield. Wherever their main base was, however, Consumption was never far away.

My mother said she had wept copiously when Greta Garbo died in a film called Camille in 1938, shedding far more tears than had fallen for her own younger sister who had perished in 1937. This was mainly because Greta Garbo was resigned to her fate whereas Phyllis was convinced she was going to recover – it was merely a matter of time. This particular aunt, gone long before I had a chance to get to know her had been the family extravert, always happy, always sharing a joke and yet she succumbed so easily to the illness becoming pale and thin and no matter how positive her attitude was, dying within a year.

By the time I was a preschooler and more aunts had perished my mother had developed an exaggerated fear of Consumption despite the fact that there was by then an assurance that medical treatments were rapidly improving and very soon a cure might be possible. This fear was handed on to me to whom she elaborated upon the various states of the sufferers among our immediate neighbours. These information updates ensured that I hurried past their homes not daring to breathe until I had safely passed the places where the not-yet-deceased but dangerously disease-ridden victims lived. When Mrs Morris, two doors along from us whose bouts of coughing could be heard from dawn to dusk, decided to donate the remaining bones of each Sunday dinner to our decidedly underfed pet dog I was horrified. I risked being savaged by him on a regular basis by wrestling them from his jaws once she had safely disappeared back through her scullery door so great was my fear that he would contract the disease. And if he happened to win the occasional struggle for the next ten days I found it hard to sleep at night and by day hovered around him ever vigilant that he might start coughing in a dry and tubercular manner. Fortunately he escaped the clutches of the disease but the weekly combat changed our hitherto friendly relationship and he found it impossible to forgive me which he demonstrated by treating me to menacing looks coupled with an occasional snarl and refusing ever again to join me for walks around St Botolph’s Churchyard.

Although it became clear that Consumption did not affect canines it continued to spread with ease from person to person. Sometimes the newly afflicted were sent to special hospitals called Sanitoriums where they remained for months at a time, enjoying gentle walks in the fresh air and good, wholesome food. One of my uncles even sent his two daughters to Switzerland, the place where Heidi and Peter spent their time tending goats but then he was said to be Flash and Made of Money. Many sufferers were thus destined to recover but there was a strange reluctance among a sizeable proportion of the working classes to actually avail themselves of such an opportunity.

Patsy Pitt, who lived in Springhead Road and was therefore almost but not quite middle class decided she would take the offered Cure. This was not simply because of being almost middle class but also because she had at the age of thirty found herself a Young Man called Alfred to whom she quickly became engaged only weeks before finding out that her sudden weight loss was not simply Love, but the first sign of the illness. Concerned to ensure she would be fit for her planned summer wedding she agreed to three months on the South Downs without argument as long as her beloved would agree to visit every Sunday without fail, which he did. She was later devastated to find herself jilted shortly after finding herself cured and sank into a deep depression.

My mother said she did not have much sympathy since Alfred had kept his word about the visits and had waited until she was pronounced Fit and Well before casting her aside for an usherette who worked at The Majestic. In her opinion Patsy Pitt should simply Get on With It as she herself had been forced to do when her Poor Fred had perished in similar circumstances back in 1930. Whenever Poor Fred was mentioned, which was never ever in the presence of my father, she paused a moment, eyes glistening and might then perhaps be forced to brush a tear from her cheek because no matter how hard she tried she had never been quite able to stop loving him.