Near the T. B. Sanitorium
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This plant was collected behind the Florence County T. B. Sanitorium in November 1938. I got curious and looked for a record of the Sanitorium, and found this: http://legacythegift.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/no-crystal-stair.html It's all someone knows of her grandmother who had eight children, lost two as babies, and died in that same sanitorium at the age of just 31; a mere six months before the plant was collected.
Suddenly the plant feels like a very real connection to something in the past; and I'm feeling oddly angry at the two women who collected it. I'm imagining them as healthy, well-nourished college girls from privileged backgrounds, whose educations had not been interrupted, and who at that point presumably had not had the awful pain of losing babies. None of that is their fault; that would be a ludicrous thing to say; but this one is making me hurt.
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wreness
What an incredible story, it's amazing you found that. It's very sad. TB was so common then, what a horrible disease.
I bet those girls had no idea what was going on. I had an uncle who was in a TB Sanitarium (it's not far from me but is a Nature Preserve/senior housing place) They were all beautiful "estates" with trees, lawns, air, sun, gardens. The whole idea was to rest, as if you had any choice in the matter. The public didn't know the horrors of it since it was highly contagious. We'd go visit my uncle (he ended up dying from it, too) and you'd see people lounging in chairs, being served drinks by white-clothed attendants and nurses, given medicine...it looked like "fun and relaxation" if you didn't know better. Children didn't stand a chance. I'm sure the girls who were collecting the plants near there only thought of the place as some kind of Rest Spa since that's what they presented it to the public as.
I had a Bug the other day that was collected from an insane asylum. I looked it up and posted a link to the place, too. Yikes, is all I can say.
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YIkes indeed - they were terrifying places and so easy for, say, an unwanted woman in 19th century England to get signed away into.
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