‘A WOMAN WITH ALLERGIES’

Born in 1480, she was the daughter of a baker whose customers constantly complained about the amount of sawdust on his floor. He was often drink and occasionally violent, once hitting his daughter so hard that she fell and factured her skull.

The family kept a cat to try to deal with rats and mice, but it preferred to scavenge its food from the middens in the street and became infected with tapeworms, which was then passed to the family. The girl was fed mainly on stale bread, vegetable broth and offal.

The dust and flour in the air made her sneeze and her eyes itch. When the cat was in the room she even had trouble breathing.

Thick smoke hung over Leith in winter, making her chest worse and in summer she suffered badly from hay fever. She was usually congested and sneezing, and had a sore nose. She also suffered asthma attacks, each worse than the last.

One day a well-heeled timber merchant’s son spotted her sweeping the street outside the bakery and weeks later plucked up the courage to ask if he could walk her to church.

She began to see an escape from home and accepted a proposal of marriage. His parents, however, did not approve of the match and threatened to disinherit him.

Her father marched around to harangue the boy and his parents. The girl, seeing her future hopes fade, found she could not breathe. She died in her young man’s arms.