My grandmother's father died from tuberculosis when she was 4. Her mother died from a type of kidney disease when she was 6. She was left with one sister who was 10 years older. Three other siblings also died - a baby girl from breathing difficulties before she was a month old and twin brothers - I can't find out how or when they died.
Her mother's brother came to live with the two girls after their mother died. In that same year they all contracted the flu. The girls got over it but he died.
Their aunt Agnes then came to live with them. She died within a couple of years from heart disease. My grandmother, still a young teenager, reported how her aunt must have died in her sleep and that she (my grandmother) tried to wake her up in the morning but she wouldn't stir.
This all happened in Northern Ireland in the early part of the 1900s. The two girls had no one left by this stage and they upped and emigrated to Australia as orphans who immediately went to work in a linen factory in Sydney.
What amazes me is that my grandmother, despite knowing all this death, was such a lovely, happy, generous, contented and generally sane person?
Kath
