Looking Back: The Story of Margaret 

From 1954

The Story of Margaret

Why she died – was her death preventable – how many others will die like this in 1954?

A letter written by Andrew A Fyfe to the Editor in March 1954

Sir,

People can be murdered by apathy, by the complacent allowing of the conditions that cause death.

This will be a longer letter than most, but I feel that I must write and tell you that Margaret died just a few weeks ago. You didn’t know Margaret. She was just one of the many thousands of people living in Edinburgh. She was twenty. She died of a haemorrhage from a lung that was destroyed by tuberculosis. In the months before she died, when I was visiting her in hospital and at home, the thing she liked to talk about most of all was her wedding which she was planning for the Spring of next year. When they sent her home from hospital she thought it was because she was getting better and that very soon, when her general health picked up a bit and she had put on a little weight, she would go back to the hospital for an operation that would heal her. She was full of hope – the ‘spes phthisica.’ In fact, she was sent home to die, so that a bed might be made available in hospital for someone else on the long waiting-list in Edinburgh.

In the week before she died the early spring sun with its warm promise of new life came streaming in the window of her little room in a drab tenement house; and Margaret, thinking she would be up and about in a few weeks, asked her parents if she could have a new spring outfit. They knew she was going to die very soon, but they bought her a new dress, and a coat, and a pair of shoes. As Margaret died, the spring sun shone on her and on the pathetic symbols of her hope, the new clothes that lay on a chair beside her bed, so lovingly folded.

Do we say that this was the will of God – that Margaret should die at the age of twenty, of tuberculosis, in the capital city of Scotland, in the spring of 1953?

If I know anything of the Gospel of Jesus Christ I am assured that the will of God was that Margaret should have health, and should have walked out in the spring sun, and married next year, and lived to find joy in happy, healthy, bright-eyed children. But Margaret died. It was the powers of darkness that had their triumph here.

Margaret was murdered, but not by God, whose loving will is health and wholeness.

“My people shall live long, as lives a tree,
Long shall my chosen folk enjoy their earnings;
They shall not work in vain,
Nor rear their children to die suddenly,
For they are a race whom the eternal blesses,
And with them shall their children live.”

Margaret was murdered by the apathy and the carelessness and the moral dullness of the people of Scotland. Too many Margarets die every year in our country – die of tuberculosis, which has been described by a doctor as a preventable disease which is not being prevented.

Every week I used to visit in hospital, and at home, people suffering from this disease – mostly young people. More and more I became ashamed of Scotland in this regard – ashamed of her black record with this disease; ashamed particularly of the shocking housing conditions which we seem, strangely, to take so much for granted, and which are so big a factor in the cradling and spread of tuberculosis; ashamed above all by the dull apathy, and in some places the informed complacency, of the Scottish people. Ashamed for myself, I may say, as much as for others, because until recently I was as unconcerned as most. With regard to our housing and health, an Englishwoman who knows more than most Scots about the social conditions of Scotland said to me, “You Scots have no spirit; you conduct yourselves like a subject people.” I’m afraid she is right. We are, in fact, when one thinks in terms of housing, a backward and dispirited people; despite many things of which we may be justly proud.

I just wonder how many more Margarets must die before the people of Scotland waken up from their ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude – the attitude which is responsible for the unnecessary death or prolonged illness of thousands of our young people; and older people too. There is a rot at the very heart of our national life.

Cannot the Church, throughout the country, give a lead here, and show in action something of the compassion of Jesus in the healing of the multitudes? But how do we begin? How can we get people to feel enough about this kind of thing in Scotland? For so long people have come to take for granted a terrible housing situation that it is difficult to break through the general indifference. We are known far and wide for our slums, but we don’t seem to be terribly worried about this; and, as a people, we seem to be doing little about it.

Is it that people know about the situation but feel, dully, that there is nothing they can do about it? Or is it that people just couldn’t care less anyway? There are things that can be done; but first, people must get this thing on their consciences. Grand pioneering work has been done within the Presbyteries of Edinburgh and Glasgow – but done by a handful of people. All our Presbyteries should be in on this – and all our congregations; the country ones as well; because the problem is not one only of the cities.

It is not enough to leave it to the ‘authorities’ who are, on the whole, doing their best under the circumstances, to build as many new houses as possible. Edinburgh, for example, has recently doubled her rate of house-building. But this is still inadequate. We must demand that the problem be tackled as a national emergency throughout the country.

And, as we must strengthen the hand of those who are trying to build new houses, so too we must help the doctors. Thanks to chemotherapy and the new surgical techniques, doctors have been able, quite dramatically, to bring down the tuberculosis death-rate in the country. But they are not complacent; they would like the help of everyone so that the disease may be rooted out completely. Though the death-rate has gone down, the incidence rate is going up quite rapidly. Though fewer people die, there are more and more notifications, indicating that tuberculosis is becoming more widespread in Scotland. Chemotherapy and lung surgery can do much to heal, but if this preventable disease is to be prevented, many other things have to be done; the most urgent of these being to ensure that our people are given a civilised standard of housing. The tubercle bacillus hates sunshine, cleanliness, fresh air and good human nutrition. We must create the conditions in which the tubercle bacillus, instead of Margaret, dies.

This can be done. It is not lack of knowledge, but lack of social initiative – the initiative that comes of true compassion and concern, that prevents us doing away with this disease.

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