Edith Venables' death was not the first tragedy to visit the family, nor the last. Her father, Arthur, had himself spent some time in an asylum, though he more or less recovered. Her mother, Agnes, fell ill 3 weeks after the birth of her third child, in August 1893, with post-partum psychosis, or puerperal mania as it was called then, and was admitted to Littlemore Pauper Lunatic Asylum:
“A pale and anaemic woman who looks weak and ill. Is under the delusion that Angels haunt her room, also that a man had been standing at the window of her room with a big stick in his hand, & waving it in a threatening manner at her. Her Nurse informs me she is at times violent, refuses food, that she fancies men are about the house. Patient seated and incoherent on admission – talked about being put asleep & an illegal operation being performed”.
Apart from a couple of home visits, from which she was promptly recalled, Agnes remained in Littlemore for the next four years. In 1897, she was discharged, “at the request of her mother, who undertook all responsibility”. In 1898, she was hurriedly readmitted.
“Her countenance expresses mental pain. Memory markedly defective, not able to sustain a conversation. Language obscene. Bursts of laughter alternating with crying. States that she hates her mother. Her mother states that she has threatened to beat out her (mother’s) brains; that she wanders about at night without any cause”.
There Agnes stayed, in one asylum or another, for the rest of her life. She died on March 22nd 1922 in Buckinghamshire County Lunatic Asylum at Stone, from Lupus and TB. Her husband Arthur died just three days later from a stroke. His sister wrote: “Poor Agnes. They had been married 36 years, and had only spent six years together when she was taken away”.
So much pain, within just one family.