The Sad Tale of Uncle Charley’s “Rose Tait-er”

In an earlier post, I republished the correspondent’s article describing Uncle Charles Dixon’s Christmas adventure with the girl next door, one Rose Tait. I checked, and confirmed that Rose did not become Mrs. Charles Dixon. And now I know why.

I first saw a report that she was seriously ill with “consumption”. That’s code for Tuberculosis or “TB”. I had hoped that the correspondent was just being lazy with his medical terms. Alas, the diagnosis was reported correctly and within a month this article reported that she had died of consumption... “in her twenty first year of age”. The death notices a week or so later confirmed the diagnosis again and gave her age as 19 years, 5 months and some days.

The Tait family, wealthy farmers, had no luck at all health-wise during this era. I was also struck by the commonality of losing a young adult to common infectious diseases during this time period. It seems like every month some teenager or twenty-something was dying. Some quite suddenly. They really did not understand these diseases and had no effective treatments.

So now I wonder what John Tait, her father, was thinking as his young daughter partied with the 21 year old man next door. Was he thinking that she deserved to experience romance before she died? And did Charles Dixon know she had consumption when he walked her from the party?