I is for Isabella. Isabella Fairlie was the first wife of my second great grandfather Edward Biddle. Now, I know she isn’t a direct ancestor but I enjoy finding outmode about so called collateral ancestors who aren’t directly related to me. I first came across Isabella’s name on the death certificate of Edward Biddle and I became interested in her life and death, especially as the couple had children together who would have been an integral part of the lives of my Biddle family.
I found that Isabella had been born around 1871 in Ayrshire, Scotland. I don’t know anything about her life in Scotland or indeed if she even grew up in Scotland or if she grew up elsewhere. I knew that she was living in Australia by 1889, when she was married to Edward Biddle at the age of 18. Being under the age of 21 parental permission was required, and it was given by her father. So that confirmed that her father at least had come to Australia with her. However, she couldn’t have lived in Australia all that long before her marriage as on her death certificate it states that she has only been in New South Wales for 8 years. If correct, this would put her year of arrival at 1889.
It seems that there were other members of the Fairlie family living in New South Wales at the time, as the marriage took place at the residence of a William Fairlie and one of the witnesses was a David Fairlie. But Isabella’s father was John Fairlie. How were these men related to Isabelle? Were they cousins? An uncle? Or maybe even elder brothers? these are all questions which may be answered in the future with further research.
The couple had their first child in 1890, followed by a second in 1892 and a third and final child in 1896. But by 1897, Isabella was dead from Phthisis (Respiratory Tuberculosis) and Exhaustion having suffered from the former for two years. At this time in history tuberculosis was fairly widespread around the world and was the leading cause of death for 25% of the adult population in many European countries. Although Australia is not a European country, but it seems that we had similar statistics with 150,000 people dying from Tuberculosis in the years 1856 – 1906.
What makes me so interested in Isabella is the fact that her three children were still so young when she died, aged six, five, and one and a half years old. But she had suffered from the disease for two years. That means that she well and truly had the disease whilst pregnant with her final child. How hard must this have been to carry a child to term and then go through childbirth all whilst suffering such a debilitating and wasting disease.
From what I know of tuberculosis, individuals often had the disease for some time before showing the most well known symptoms such as the coughing up of bloody sputum. So Isabella probably had tuberculosis for more than two years, but regardless of how long she actually had the illness I think it would have been difficult for her children to remember her as not being sick especially as they were so young when she died. Her youngest child wouldn’t have remembered her at all, being only one and a half when his mother died.
To me, this is incredibly sad as family is something that is important to me and I am unable to imagine how hard it must be to grow up without a mother that you only remember distantly or perhaps not even at all. And I imaging also that it would have been sad for Isabella when she knew that she had tuberculosis and was unlikely to live to see her children grow up.
N. B. Tuberculosis statistics obtained from:
de Looper, Michael Willem “Death registration and mortality trends in Australia 1856-1906”, A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The Australian National University, May 2014, https://openresearchrepository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/16791/1/De%20Looper%20Thesis%202015.pdf