A mother’s journal, by Margaret Quennick
An original journal written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.
In this journal, kept in 1862, the wife of a shopkeeper in a market town nurses her three young children through whooping cough.
March 3rd. Dr Quarrier came this morning and pronounced it whooping cough, as I had feared since Saturday, when I first heard Willie at it in the night. He says that all three must keep to the nursery and that I am to have the windows shut, a good fire, and the kettle always steaming. I have sent Hannah to her aunt’s in Thornbury, for she is seven months from her own confinement and must not catch it, so I have no help but Keziah, who is sixteen and very willing but frightened of the sound. I am not frightened of it. I have nursed my brothers through worse.
March 6th. Willie and Bertha are both coughing now. It comes upon them in fits, a dozen short coughs one upon another without a breath between, and then the dreadful drawing in of the air, like a saw going through wet wood. Bertha is sick after nearly every fit and will take nothing but milk and a little arrowroot. I sit up with them by turns with Keziah. I have made a list on the back of the laundry book of every dose and every fit, with the hour, so that Dr Quarrier may see how they go on.
March 9th. Baby has it. She is only fourteen months and so small. Dr Quarrier looked graver today than I have seen him, and told me that it is the very young who are in danger, and that if she turns blue in a fit I must hold her up and clear her mouth with my finger, and send for him at once at any hour. I said ‘Very well’ as if he had told me the price of candles. When he had gone I went into the linen closet and shut the door and cried for perhaps a minute, and then I washed my face and went back.
March 12th. A terrible night. Baby had four fits between midnight and dawn and in the third of them she went quite dark about the lips. I did as I was told. I do not remember being afraid until afterwards, when Keziah brought me tea and I found I could not hold the cup. Robert has been sleeping at the shop since the doctor came, for fear of carrying the infection to his customers, and I wrote to him this morning that all was going on well. I do not know why I wrote that.
March 20th. The fits are fewer and shorter in all three. Willie asked for bread and butter today and ate two slices, and Bertha has been sitting up in bed dressing her doll. Baby still coughs, but she laughed this afternoon when Keziah made the cat jump for a ribbon, and I had to leave the room. Dr Quarrier says the worst is past. I have kept my list, though there is no longer much need of it. I find I cannot stop.
“The writer remains calm and in control throughout her children’s illness.”
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120 exam-style questions on Eduqas GCSE English Language 2.1.1 Two unseen non-fiction texts, 19th and 21st century. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.