Death from TB

Death from TB

Public Health

An audio clip that describes seeing a dead body that had been laid out in a front room.

Public Health compilation on https://specialcollections.le.ac.uk/digital/collection/p15407coll1/id/547/rec/5

EMOHA

You may use this item in accordance with the licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

.mp3

English

1 min 24 sec

If anybody died, there was always a woman in the street that used to lay the people out and put them in the front rooms. And they used to put blackboards up at the window so that you knew somebody was dead. And when we were kids, we used to creep, and we were terrified, you know. One of the most horrible things I thought, thought it was a child, should be about 10, and a friend of mine used to play about. She went out to go to the hospital with tuberculosis, and when she was up there for quite a while, my mother used to visit, and eventually she died and they brought her home. She, well, there was only, it was at the back of this little shop that was against where we lived, and they've only got that one room, and it was her grandmother she lived with, and they fetched me in one day when she came home and I'd never forgotten it. She was there in a coffin and it was all sealed up except for a glass panel where you could see her face. And the old lady said to me, she said, ‘If you don't come and see her, you'll have her on your mind all your life’. But I did go and see her, but I've had her on my mind all my life. You know, I can still see her now. This girl, you know, in a coffin, and she got on two chairs. And this old lady was living in that room with her, her granddaughter, on there. I think that was awful, really. But I do remember.

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