Saturday 1 August 2015

This or this. And a real sad story from 150 years ago.











10 comments:

  1. I couldn't make out a lot of the last photo, just bits and pieces so not sure of the sad story.
    As for the pictures. I like them both, but leaning towards the color because of all the color in it. The red and yellow and the contrast with the roof and the house - well there is a lot to look at there.
    When I visited a hundred years ago, I remember being told that the thatched roofs can last 20-30 years but the trade was dying as there were fewer and fewer people learning to do it. Is this a rarity anymore? It's lovely. It seems to be connected to the building next to it - is it someone's home or a business?

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    1. In this tomb are the mortal remains of:
      Georgina:
      The beloved wife of John Phelps and daughter of Major Robert Maunsell.
      She was married on the 6th day of September 1856 and died at Rome
      on the 4th day of November of the same year.
      Aged 21 years.
      This monument has been erected in her memory by her morning husband.
      Anno Domini 1857

      I'm missing out the middle names but I doubt it matters too much. I was wrong below. She was married for only two months. Is it just me, or is anyone else a tad suspicious. Seems very soon.

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    2. Thatch is very 'green' and it works here really well. But it doesn't have the longevity of hard roofs. In the recent insanity of the Celtic Tiger lots of people became craftsman/person too as a few chicks went into the game. I like it, but sometimes it can get a bit twee and biscuit boxy.

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    3. Yes, very sad and very soon. It's hard to say suspicious or not. Accidents and illnesses happen, but I'm sure, if it were to happen these days it would be investigated, but back then? You'd know better than I if it were a rare occurrence.
      I think they're quaint. I've always wondered what they look like inside? Are they pretty bare bones or modernized? Can you go inside this one and take some pics for me? ;)

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  2. I couldn't get the thing to resize. The gist is. Georgina got married in September and was dead in Rome by December, aged 21.

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  3. The B&W vs the color give the photo an entirely different feel. While both are interesting, I do prefer the color in this instance. It just gives the photo a more "finished" look, imo.

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  4. I found out more about Georgina. Her granddad was rector and vicar of the church, and her family were from Limerick and Galway with a bank in Limerick. There were well connected to second rank nobility. And her grandma was German baroness who met her hubby when Napoleon was being a pest around 1805. Her husband remarried but not for a decade and had 11 children some of whom died young. the 2nd wife was named Vandeleur. An aunt to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Vandeleur and Giles.
    More about her I cannot find, yet.
    It just seems odd that a young woman would die so soon after a marriage. She wouldn't have encountered the usual causes for death for young marrieds. TB creating a blockage in the Fallopian tubes and a pregnancy developing rupturing the tube causing massive sepsis. But at two months, less actually, that's not likely. Nor was there an outbreak in Rome.

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  5. Being partially colorblind, I am usually attracted to the black and white photos and this case was no difference.

    In my genealogy research, I have lots of mothers who died young and the large majority died during child birth or as a complication of child birth. That would probably assume she might have been pregnant before being married though. I only have one mother in my family tree who died of a disease young (but out of childhood) but that was easy to figure out since 5 of her 7 children died of the same disease in the months leading up to her death.

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    1. Yes, there tended to be ages which were especially dangerous. Kids younger than 4. Kids that survive but were weakened were then prone to epidemics like measles and other childhood illnesses. But if they survived to teens then the dynamics changed somewhat. Men with TB infection that was slow moving lived til 30-40 before it became the cause of death. But had bone and muscle issues. It was ssaid by doctors in the 1890 that they could 'see' TB infection. Dorian Grey is Oscar Wilde's notion of the illness for people with TB had a beauty about them and a youngness to their features well lower than their actual age. The issue with women tended to be pretty immediate once married. They may have all the facilities to breed but might have poor development of the pelvis so 'died in childbirth' didn't necessarily mean bled post natal. And then the other really nasty one was syphilis.

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  6. A beautiful church--i love the thatch roof

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