Saving souls, saving lives

Originally published 24 April 2005

I have been read­ing Judith Flan­der­s’s biog­ra­phy of the Mac­Don­ald sis­ters, four Vic­to­ri­an women best known for hav­ing mar­ried or moth­ered famous Vic­to­ri­an men. Geor­giana wed the pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Bourne-Jones, Agnes mar­ried the Roy­al Aca­d­e­mi­cian Edward Poyn­ter, Louisa gave birth to the future prime min­is­ter of Britain, Stan­ley Bald­win, and Alice was the moth­er of the poet of Empire, Rud­yard Kipling.

Not a bad record for the daugh­ters of a low­er mid­dle-class evan­gel­i­cal min­is­ter and his wife. These were smart, tal­ent­ed women, and in a less patri­ar­chal soci­ety they might have achieved great things on their own. Flan­ders uses the Mac­Don­ald women as a way to describe fam­i­ly life and mores in Vic­to­ri­an England.

Her sto­ry reminds us just how far we have come dur­ing the past cen­tu­ry in the domes­tic appli­ca­tion of sci­ence and technology.

George and Han­nah Mac­Don­ald, the sis­ters’ par­ents, had ten chil­dren, more or less a child every eigh­teen months, a not uncom­mon course of events in the days before safe and reli­able birth con­trol. Three of the Mac­Don­ald chil­dren died as infants, anoth­er at age six­teen. Typ­i­cal­ly, half of all Vic­to­ri­an chil­dren were dead before the age of six.

Sick­ness was always present: chick­en­pox, colds, whoop­ing cough, fevers, inflam­ma­tion, small­pox, diph­the­ria, scar­let fever , menin­gi­tis, tuber­cu­lo­sis, cholera. Adults and chil­dren lived much of their lives with toothache, which often led to abscess­es, fevers, and migraines. Add to this the ever present dan­ger of acci­dents due to open fires, and lung dis­ease from smoke and soot.

Han­nah lived on the brink of har­ried mad­ness, always preg­nant or breast feed­ing, bur­dened with unend­ing house­hold chores. Keep­ing the home even rea­son­ably clean took an enor­mous amount of time. The aver­age Vic­to­ri­an house­hold burned a ton of coal every six weeks and the dirt thrown out was immense. Oil and paraf­fin lamps were smoky and time-con­sum­ing. Run­ning water was avail­able only in the scullery, and must be heat­ed over a coal fire. Laun­dry in the days before deter­gents took full day or two every week.

In a let­ter of about 1843, Han­nah com­plains: “The chil­dren have colds…I am so wea­ried of sick­ness and nurs­ing in addi­tion to my many domes­tic cares, that I some­times feel almost stu­pe­fied, and fear­ful of sin­ning against God, by a sort of reck­less indif­fer­ence to what may befall me.”

Mean­while her hus­band George was out and about sav­ing souls.

What con­so­la­tion did reli­gion offer Han­nah? Flan­ders writes: “Griev­ing par­ents were told that they should see a child’s death as a chal­lenge to their faith and humil­i­ty before God. If they mourned their lost child, they were refus­ing God’s les­son of sub­mis­sion, and har­bor­ing the sin of pride.” One of Han­nah’s sons thought reli­gion sus­tained his moth­er in her tri­als; a daugh­ter felt that reli­gion only added to Han­nah’s sense of hopelessness.

Which is not to say that church­go­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the evan­gel­i­cal denom­i­na­tions, did not offer com­pan­ion­ship and sol­i­dar­i­ty in the face of tri­als, and a promise of some­thing bet­ter after death for those who kept the faith and endured. The one thing reli­gious faith did not pro­vide was ame­lio­ra­tion of hard­ships and tragedies in the here and now.

But sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy were flour­ish­ing dur­ing the Vic­to­ri­an era, and ulti­mate­ly pro­vid­ed sub­stan­tial relief for daunt­ed moth­ers and home­mak­ers such as Han­nah. Fara­day and Maxwell laid the basis for the elec­tri­fied home and mod­ern elec­tron­ic com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Sem­mel­weiss, Pas­teur, Koch, Jen­ner, Lis­ter and oth­ers helped free humankind from the age-old scourge of infant mor­tal­i­ty and infec­tious dis­ease. Engi­neers pro­vid­ed clean and reli­able pub­lic water and san­i­ta­tion sys­tems. Chemists con­tributed clean­ing agents and disinfectants.

And, not least, Dar­win and his con­tem­po­raries gave us a view of life in which humans are no longer the arbi­trary play­things of the gods. No longer must men and women resign them­selves to what­ev­er fates befell them; they could work to shape lives of free­dom and har­mo­ny. Slav­ery was abol­ished. Wom­en’s rights affirmed. Gen­er­al pub­lic edu­ca­tion established.

The dri­ving force of mod­ern­iza­tion was access to reli­able pub­lic knowl­edge of the world — sci­en­tif­ic knowl­edge — unob­struct­ed by sec­tar­i­an­ism, jin­go­ism, racism, archa­ic cos­molo­gies, and superstition.

Of course, reli­gion did not with­er away, nor should it. There is much to be said for col­lec­tive pub­lic cel­e­bra­tion of the mys­tery of cre­ation, rites of pas­sage, works of char­i­ty, eth­i­cal teach­ing, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy can cre­ate the con­di­tions for per­son­al ful­fill­ment, but they are not by them­selves par­tic­u­lar­ly fill­ing. There is a part of us that longs for con­tact with what­ev­er is the source of the world’s mys­tery and beauty.

Han­nah Mac­Don­ald found some solace late in life, with her gar­den and her grand­chil­dren. If she had the choice, I won­der would she choose to live in a mod­ern sec­u­lar soci­ety, with long healthy lives for her­self and her chil­dren but with­out the promise of eter­nal life, or in the sooty domes­tic slav­ery of a mid-19th-cen­tu­ry God-fear­ing Vic­to­ri­an house­hold buoyed only by the hope of some­thing bet­ter to come?